Mastor G Gimbal: First Impressions on the All New Brushless Gimbal for GoPro Hero Sized Cameras

After several weeks of waiting I have received a parcel from BEVRC . It was the highly anticipated Mastor G Brushless Gimbal for GoPro sized cameras. Those of you who follow the scene more closely have probably heard about the new buzz in the FVP topic: Brushless gimbals. We have reported briefly from the Nuremberg Toy Fair about the DJI Zemuse prototype for GoPro cameras. Several other companies (mostly in China) jumped onto that subject and announced several products to hit the market somewhere this year. Chinese brand Mastor was one of the first to launch a industry grade brushless gimbal to the mass market. And here it is.

The Master G Brushless Gimbal

Some first impressions on the gimbal. It ships with an cable for power and pitch control connection (with proprietary plugs). The weight is specified as 232g without camera. I am no material expert but form its looks and feel (although the surface of parts looks like carbon fibre) I guess the material is glass fibre with fake carbon fibre prints on it. As it was not mentioned anywhere that the material actually is carbon fibre there is nothing to blame about that. The rear arm houses the controller board with the main CPU to put the two purpose made brushless motors to action. Everything seems nicely built and machined.

The Master G Gimbal mounted at the Hexacopter

Before I mounted the gimbal to my Hexacopter I did a quick ground test and the gimbal calibrated automatically. The balance algorithms work really fast and you will be blown away by the accuracy if you have not seen a brushless gimbal in action before. Unfortunately I did not read the manual before the first test flights. So here is a remark to everybody who also tends to leave out manuals: The gimbal will only work for 3 minutes if you do not register it via the downloadable software (BEVRC.com and Foxtech.com provide the download). This is a security issue to prevent the controller software from being pirated by other (most probably Chinese) companies. It is a matter of 3-4 minutes to do this.

I have not cut the first onboard shots from the hexacopter. So please stay tuned for an update on the Mastor G experience and some video footage of it.

First snapshot with the new Gimbal