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Pan drift almost always is generated from within the gimbal’s IMU (“Inertial Measurement Unit”), the sensor that serves as source of stabilization. With the tilt and roll axis, the IMU has the strong field of gravity to reference. But with pan, there is no equivalent strong force. It can sometimes use a compass, but compass consistently and reliability is low. The compass is only reliable outdoors away from dense urban environments.
The Inertia Wheels themselves have no drift. The wheels are fully digitally encoded with absolute position sensors. And from the start to the finish of the signal chain, the Inertia Wheels use lossless digital communication. With many gimbals, like the Ronin and MoVI, the signal the Inertia Wheels output into the gimbal is also digital and lossless. So when the wheels are not moving, the signal being sent to the gimbal is static. Drift does not come from the wheels.
In some analog heads, drift is possible, but these heads are not common so these cases are rare.
In some instances, users may connect their Inertia Wheels to the gimbal, and suddenly experience drifting that was not present before. This isn’t from the wheels, but rather, this is because of how gimbal’s change their stabilization configuration when wheels are connected.
For example, in a MoVI, without the wheels, the MoVI by default is in Majestic mode. In Majestic, the gimbal uses the pan motor’s encoder position to align pan with the MoVI ring. This encoder effectively eliminates pan drift. But when the receiver is connected, the gimbal automatically exits Majestic mode (the MoVI only allows either Majestic or wheels at any time). When this happens, the pan encoder is deprioritized and the IMU is completely relied on for pan orientation. This can mean that drift from the IMU is no longer filtered out and can become visible.
The Ronin is similar, but you can enable Smoothtrack (the equivalent to MoVI’s Majestic mode) simultaneously while the wheels are in use. But with Smoothtrack off, drift is more likely to appear.
To summarize, when in single operator handheld mode, gimbals reference the gimbal mount to eliminate pan drift. When remotely controlled, they do not reference the mount, enabling drift to potentially pass through.
This has fooled many user into thinking the wheels are the source of the drift.
Because drift comes from the gimbal, to eliminate it users must focus on the gimbal. And since each brand of gimbal is unique, users should look to gimbal manufacturers for best guidance.
[$] Managing drift is a key aspect for Stabilized Head Technicians. Once wheels are connected to a stabilized gimbal, the gimbal is now a stabilized head, so a thorough understanding of the inner workings of a gimbal is a professional requirement.
DJI provides troubleshooting guidance.
We also suggest rebooting the Ronin 2.
The main setting to adjust how the gimbal handles Pan Drift is called “Heading Assist”. Freefly also provides troubleshooting guidance for dealing with drift.
[$] With the MoVI, if you tilt the gimbal all the way up or down and allow it to rest for 30-60s, the IMU will self calibrate itself. In our testing this works well.
In the Inertia Wheels Output menu, there is a Pan Drift Compensation option.
[!] Users should only use Pan Drift Compensation as a last resort for static shots. Attempting to use it for a moving shot will amplify IMU instability.