Hello fellow Inspire 1 pilots,

has anyone ever opened up the individual gimbal axises? My gimbal acts crazy and flicks around like crazy with no chance of auto calibration.
So I figured it might has to do with manual adjustment of the individual axis (nut under each gimbal board)

You guys are probably asking why I would like to do that...so this is what happend before:

I use the inspire 1 dualmode commercially..at least I did..
Me and my partner where making aerial videos of two huge event locations in Germany. The shots from above went well. The inside shots of the first location went well as well. We flew in attitude mode due to the construction elements of the arena. We only started in areas where "safe to fly non gps" was indicated.

The second indoor shoot ended the dayafter 8 hourse of successfull aerial filming. The heavy metal beam structure on the ceiling interferred with the signal of the I1 (even though we where flying in attitude mode) The I1 took control and not even the command to shut down the motors was received by the crazy out of control bird.  no circles just full throttle sideways away form us. Fortunately the first obstacle was kind of close. From the sound I thought it was torn to at least 10 pieces. The grounding was hard. Surprisingly only two props got damaged and the legs where kind of crooked.
We could fix the legs with some screwing. All the warranty labels kept intact.

We went outside into a parc and calibrated the compass and checked the imu and the aircraft for any signs of damage but everything sounded and looked normal. Everything exept the roll axis of the gimbal. Flying sideways left and right it would not correct and stabelize the movement of the craft. After checking the gimbal I noticed that the roll axis was not moving  as smooth as the other axises..I figured the impact let to a mechanical tightening.

Back home I opened the roll axis of the gimbal and cautiously disconneted the two cables under the metal plate, unscrewed the roll-board and gently tightend nut under the board. Afterwards I closed everything again (The two cables are fragile but are no problem if you act careful.) and after the metal plate was back in place I connected the gimbal to the the craft and started the RC and MC to see if everything is normal again.

It was not. The gimbal would not calibrate itself. Since then it moved like crazy so I was in fear that it would tear itself off. I went back a couple of times to the nut to adjust it better but no chance.

Any experience with that? After the crash everything was normal so I think it has to do with the nut.
Right now I have no chance to update the firmware of the Aircraft since the gimbal never stopps to party. So my second question is if anyone every made a succesfull firmware update through the mini usb port under the indicator light at the back of the I1?

My confidence into the bird has demolished since I cannot trust the attitude mode...dear dji I would love to have the option to shut down the compass to just fly and film...

Waiting for your thoughts.

If it were me I would buy another Camera.  Three reasons:
1. in case you have a problem you have a spare
2. since you have taken that one apart, you can open the working one and see how it is aligned (you may be able to fix the one you have) I think it is similar to the P2 (see attached http://www.phantompilots.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=19653) It will show you what I mean.
3. you can send the broken one in for repair and continue to work.

Did you do the compass calibration inside or outside?  Some people have said they calibrated inside if they fly inside.  Don't know if that is correct.  If you are in ATTI, GPS should not have an effect........However you could try taping foil over the compass and see if that helps while you fly inside.

Have you thought of prop guards for inside work?

Can i ask if you got this problem sorted , i have myself got the same problem after removing the screw to check the sequence of spacers for a faulty x3 . My x3 was 100% perfect , i removed the motor adjustment nut to check the sequence of the nut and bush/pressure washer . Now i have the same problem my x3 just goes crazy if moved by hand and it will not do the calibration dance .

I haven't had a chance to test my gimbal alignment process, but I'm reasonably confident it'd work..

I've only recorded my X3 yaw gimbal so far but here it is:

With the yaw MOUNT rotated maximum CLOCKWISE (or to look at it another way, the camera rotated to the maximum anti-clockwise) the nut and washer arms look like this:

With the yaw position held like that, the poles on the nut can be checked with a compass:

As you can see, on this one at least, the north pole on the nut lines up with the first pcb ribbon clockwise of the main camera ribbon

I plan to confirm this against another X3 and a couple of X5s. Watch this space

Edited to add: I've just confirmed the same alignment on my second X3 so am pretty confident this'd work at least for an initial setup. Additionally I would be tempted to to count the number of turns when removing the nut, in order to try and get the nut/pcb clearance correct. The X5 and X5Rs I've autopsied in the past show around 3.5 - 4 turns. From speaking with a guy that repairs a lot of X3 and X5 breakages though, alignment is the important factor.

It'll take me a couple of weeks to check both X5 cameras but I'll post back what I find. If anyone has a damaged Zenmuse of any type, it'd be interesting to get some more data on nut orientation - it only takes a cheap button compass, removing 5 screws (X3) or 3 screws (X5) and popping off the PCB for a minute.

Just checked one of the X5 yaw gimbals. Remove the yaw PCB, hold the top mount and rotate the camera anti-clockwise as far as possible.
Sure enough the North Pole of the nut is aligned with the first pcb ribbon again: