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Jon now has a KAP rig that has been laser cut and with a little bit of ingenuity can be adapted with servo's for r/c control

Very interesting.... don't see it listed on the website. Is it just his own, or has he just got them in for sale? Would be very keen to see it.

Took advantage of the sunshine today with a little bit of flying and kaping with the new Ultrafoil 15 and my HQ Flowform 2....

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By the way, a John Deer wheel spinner makes a very good handle for a line reel. Figured it's easier to use a harness to take the pressure off the arms...

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The new Ultrafoil 15 from Cobra Kites is a 15 square foot, reasonably stable kap platform that flies at a good high angle for a foil and can handle up to 30mph. I had it up in 16 knots or so with gusts over 21 knots and it seemed fine with between 3 - 6 kg of pull on the line. Easily handled the GoPro.

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Now would that be the US Survey 1 foot =0.304800609601m or the international 1 foot = 0.3048m? :D . I just assume the international foot and rounded to the nearest 0.1m^2. Or would it be the Hamburg 1 foot = 0.2868 m or the Warsaw 1 foot = 0.2868m or the China Builder's 1 foot =0.3228 m ..... oh dear the list goes on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_%28unit%29#Other_obsolete_feet :D:D

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Been looking around for a compact camera that has a time lapse/interval setting....that doesn't cost more than a couple hundred bucks and just can't seem to find one. So I built a rig for my panasonic lumix that can remotely trigger the shutter. Works extremely well - now I need to source a 360 degree servo so I can make the whole thing point in any direction....

A few scrap bits of ply, spare servo / battery pack, 'borrow' a rx from a glider, bit of alloy and hey presto, one really ugly piece of work!

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The gopro does indeed do interval and takes a hell of a good picture. There are times, however, when I'd like a 24-28mm lens rather than the really wide angle of the gopro. In nearly all other areas like shots per battery charge and dynamic range and sharpness, the gopro is brilliant. Any suggestions on a 360 degree servo?

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The hero3 has wifi, so if you had one of those it should be easy, although having said that I've not yet tried mine in this manner, but I've not been a KAPer so haven't needed it.

There's some pretty fancy gopro gimbal mounts made for some of the various quadcopters, but it seems what you've got works so why change.

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Any suggestions on a 360 degree servo?

You have options....

Modify a standard $6 metal gear servo removing stoppers etc and it will turn infinitely.

Buy a sail winch servo, which go 360 degrees typically.

Buy a antenna tracker servo like the HiTech metal gears for pan which can go to 720 degrees.

For that camera, on a pan servo I would just go something like a $6 or $9 turnigy metal gear and remove the stoppers. It then just becomes a small stepper motor geared down to push 2.25kg on a 13gram servo.

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Just put GOPRO and GIMBAL into eBay .....

Yeah and avoid 99% of the listings unless you know what you're looking for and are in to PID tuning. Those brushless gimbals are doing similar to a multirotor board, they're balancing your gopro, so you have to spend a fair bit of time tuning them out and they're not cheap.

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Modify a standard $6 metal gear servo removing stoppers etc and it will turn infinitely.

Don't have any metal gear ones....have some plastic ones and couldn't for the life of me see what was stopping it. There was a short section of raised teeth on the top most gear which I bandsawed off....didn't make any difference :dontknow:

Can I do 360 degrees with a std TX ?

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Joel.

By PID I assume you mean proportional + integral + differential control?

John,

I have a book from my uni days on the theory of control systems, it will blow your mind. :D . It's all about poles and zeros and where to place them on the complex frequency domain plot, keep your poles to the left of the origin and you have stable system, on the right of the origin it becomes unstable, shift it either side of the horizontal axis and you get more damping. Oops am I diverging? The book is almost as thick as the phone book, when do you want to start reading? :D:popcorm1: . But seriously there are some interesting chapters that could help in practical aspects of tuning the system.

Do you want absolute position control, ie turn the TX dial to 90degrees and your CAM turns to 90 degrees or the more simple, flip the control to the right and the cam slowly turns right until you tell it other wise? If the latter perhaps a suitably geared motor would do the trick where you just change the polarity to make it turn one way or the other. That way you would have plenty of torque available to you.

Love the wood work John.

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it will blow your mind.

I wouldn't last 5 minutes!

turn the TX dial to 90degrees

Dial? Nah, don't need anything accurate...just nudge the elevator/throttle/aileron stick a little to spin the camera 'round a bit. I normally walk the kite down after 10 minutes or so and turn the camera manually then let the kite back up. Probably have to carry a pair of binoculars to see which way the camera is pointing if I do it by remote.

It's one of the ugliest bits of woodworking I've done. Methinks I might get some alloy and actually make one with square corners!!

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Hi Norm,

Indeed, continuous loops that calculate. You need to tun the control boards some what or they twitch/don't give expected results.

Send a 3 axis gimbal up on a kite, and pan/tilt/roll from a cheap $25 TX on the ground.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Got a 360 degree Sail Winch servo for the pan and a 180 degree servo for the tilt. She's all set now - I can pan, tilt and remotely trigger the Panasonic from the ground. Although I need a pair of binoculars to see which way it's pointing!! Just need to add a safety line in case of servo screw failure and a bigger battery as the Sail winch servo is pretty hungry. Sent the gopro up on it this morning and it all went pretty smooth.

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Something like $25 or so. The 180 degree servos are about $5, I used a rx I already had but ended up replacing it - $6. The 360 degree servos are expensive (comparatively) at $12 and the little blue servos are only about $2 or so. Battery I already had but will replace with a better lipo and BEC, so you can probably add another $10 or so. All the bits are from Hobby King in China....locally, they'd cost five to ten times as much.

It's the most ill-conceived and poorly planned thing I think I've ever built. Not to mention looking like a rat's nest. I dare say it will get re-built and refined over a season or two. Or replaced by a commercial unit :dontknow: Function before form I guess!! Looking forward to seeing how it goes with some video at Speed Week :D

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 year later...

So After a bit of reading and some advice from John, I think I might get a Ultrafoil 15...

http://www.kapshop.com/p348/ITW-Ultrafoil-15/product_info.html

And a KAP shop rig...

http://www.kapshop.com/p331/%3Cb%3EKAPshop&%2339s-Small1%3C/b%3E/product_info.html

Should I just start with the simple rig...?

http://www.kapshop.com/Rigs-Rigs-for-Kites-KAPshop-KAP-Rigs/c46_107_111/p330/%3Cb%3EKAPshop&%2339s-Small0%3C/b%3E/product_info.html

And 200m of line!

A part from a winder what else would I need to get me going?

What is the best way to secure this sort of set up? Could I secure it and keep on buggying?

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