Barebones camera gimbal.

[bensid54]

I was in the process of building a new camera when the belt on my lathe packed it in, can't complain it's lasted a couple of years. So I was forced to make a much simpler gimbal system with less parts and if it works I may just keep it. I was having a fuzzy view on my FPV googles so the gimbal I made looked like it could add some minute vibration due to having the whole system hanging off one small servo. I painstakingly balanced some new props for my Hex to omit that source of vibration and they will be installed once I make sure this this responds properly to the controls. Now onto the gimbal, I've used two sided sticky tape on the pitch big servo to Hex side and foam tape above for the safety zap straps. The big servo has the large round disc to which the small pan servos "L" shaped bracket is attached by two sided sticky tape. The camera is mounted on top of small servo body and all loose wires zap strapped into place, this will be interesting to see if it works while wait for my belt in the mail.

 

[Benjamin Kenobi]

Nice and simple. I like it!

 

[bensid54]

Two good things! First off my gimbal works just fine and may be one of the reasons I didn't have a crisp view with my goggles. The other and I believe more important thing was six new balanced props first I d have a bit better view with my camera and now my Hex is much better behaved in it's overall operation. It holds position better is less twitchy and responds to my inputs better. I think one problem is the camera lens focus it looks like it can be adjusted so I'll have to look into that.

 

[bensid54]

As it turns out the camera focus can be adjusted, so now I'm going to have to do some field testing and adjusting.

 

[Bartman]

Was just wondering why no one's tried a gravity powered camera gimbal yet. FPV'ers seem ok with a small amount of tilt compensation and no lateral stabilization so why not hinge a camera mount so it will stay mostly looking forward as the heli pitches forward to start flying? a little damping in the hinge to keep it from swinging would be enough to make it perfectly useable. No?

 

[bensid54]

Was just wondering why no one's tried a gravity powered camera gimbal yet. FPV'ers seem ok with a small amount of tilt compensation and no lateral stabilization so why not hinge a camera mount so it will stay mostly looking forward as the heli pitches forward to start flying? a little damping in the hinge to keep it from swinging would be enough to make it perfectly useable. No?

I think the wind would make it unusable unless you placed some heavy ballast at the bottom and it may also tend to swing back and forth until it settles from sudden wind or movement. Just my opinion but unless someone has a system to dampen movement then that sort of gimbal would likely be unstable.