XACTIC Gimbal Integration with Sentinel

[SMRazaRizvi]

Hello,

I am planning to integrate the XACTIC CX-GB300 (Multispectral gimbal camera) with my Sentinel drone.

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Following these instructions I am guessing I will have to buy an add-on board (Which I already have since I have the LTE 5G Modem), and the 4-pin JST to USB 2.0 Type A Female (MCBL-00009-1).

Now, can anyone guide me about the next steps required for the integration

[admin]

@SMRazaRizvi

I found this page that doesn't have the exact model above, but other similar models are stating UVC (for video) and CAN (for control) as interfaces.

ArduPilot

Gimbal CamerasInformation for ArduPilot users OverviewSpecificationContact Us Currently CX-GB series for ArduPilot is av

手振れ補正ウェアラブルカメラで遠隔支援｜株式会社ザクティ (xacti-co.com)

The UVC portion could work (https://docs.modalai.com/voxl-uvc-server/) although we've never tried this and there's a chance the kernel of VOXL2 could require some small tweak to work if the USB ID isn't recognized for some reason.

For the control portion, we don't support CAN on VOXL2, so that interface wouldn't work unfortunately.

You'd end up with stabilized video, but likely no way to control zoom/pan/tilt etc.

[SMRazaRizvi]

@admin Thank you for the response.

On the link you posted, it says

Interface
Communication Interface for Control Signal: USB(UVC) / CAN(DroneCAN)

Does this mean we can use either of them and we can still control the pan/tilt/zoom through UVC?

[modaltb]

@SMRazaRizvi UVC isn't generally a control interface.... just the 'usb camera', so I wouldn't expect it to be able to control the gimbal....

[SMRazaRizvi]

@modaltb I see. In this case, what should be the work around if I really need to control the gimbal?

[modaltb]

@SMRazaRizvi we don't have something out of the box to recommend at this point.

We have had success with MAVLink into Gremsy gimbals (https://gremsy.com/)

We focus mainly on MIPI based sensors, and don't have native HDMI input.... so really UVC is easier to integrate at this point.

[SMRazaRizvi]

@modaltb Which Gimbal(s) did you try from Gremsy? They are a bit expensive so I wanted to see if the ones you tried satisfy my requirements, I might as well get the same one.

[modaltb]

@SMRazaRizvi we used this one on a big drone and were able to control via MAVLink:
https://gremsy.com/products/product-gimbals/mid-size-gimbals/gremsy-s1v3

But, re-thinking this, we actually don't have the GIMBAL PX4 driver in voxl-px4, we used our Flight Core to control this which had the driver.... So to get native gimbal support out of a UART from voxl-px4 itself would need some custom work as well.....

[SMRazaRizvi]

@modaltb I see. Thanks for the heads-up.

Any suggestions on how can I get an easy-to-use gimbal attachment to work with the Sentinel? The simplest for now, but I should be able to control it while getting the live stream.

[modaltb]

@SMRazaRizvi we honestly don't have any gimbals on our products at this time so hard for me to say as I would want to have a working reference..... the gremsy gimbals are super nice and if they have a MAVLink interface, but to get this controlled straight from VOXL2 at this point would be some custom coding as we don't have a reference at this time...

[SMRazaRizvi]

@modaltb I see.

Just one last thing, do you think a gimbal of ~900g would be ok to be attached to the Sentinel without any issues? As the quoted max. payload for the Sentinel is 1kg?