I like flying my DJI F550 hexacopter to shoot aerial video of various scenery, I use a Contour HD 1080P camera mounted to the F550 to capture the video. I have been through countless iterations on mounts for the camera and my current contraption is a "Food Storage Bowl" with some memory foam inside to reduce the vibrations from the airframe to the camera. I can't even remember how many modifications I've gone through with shaping the foam inside the bowl of this setup nor how many different foam types I've tried until by chance I got a piece of this memory foam.
I get a lot of teasing from friends who also fly about the food storage bowl..."you got a sandwich in there?"
Now that I've gotten most all of the jello out of the camera the next step was to get the camera stable so the wind affecting the airframe won't affect the camera's video recording. I need a gimbal.
One of the nice things about having a food storage container below the airframe is that it makes for excellent landing gear. It also is darned good protection from impact for the camera, and yes I learned that one the gard way, but that's another story.
So my gimbal needs to fit inside the confines of my food storage container.
Most of the gimbals I've seen are all very tall and hang low below the airframe. I wanted to do something different.
I found some really great mechanical parts atServoCity, specifically their "Servo Blocks". I also wanted some good fast and powerful servos so I got a pair of Futaba BLS156HV. This is what I've got so far:
This setup is very low profile and also eliminated a bunch of mechanics because the servos output shafts direct drive the shafts of the Servo City servo blocks.
This setup is strictly Roll and Tilt, no Pan because I just want to eliminate airframe motion.
I also needed the "Roll" servo to be concentric with the camera lens centerline. A fellow local flyer with a CNC was very generous with his time and even found the piece of aluminum channel at a local boat builder. Thank you John!
The Contour HD camera has a mount bracket with a 1/4-20 standard camera thread and the fabricated "L" bracket has a hole positioned so the camera is as far back in the assemble as possible.
Next up is the mounting of this gimbal to the airframe. This will be done with some Servo City spacers that fit to the four holes seen in the lower gimbal photo.
Wait until you see the new food container!
Comments
Hi,
MIV, there is really nothing to make, you just buy the appropriate servoblocks for your servos here:
https://www.servocity.com/html/servoblocks.html
A friend of mine has used these and here are some thoughts based on his experience.
They are probably strong enough to build retracts around, but you would probably want hard stops at open and closed positions, the power of the servo could be a limiting factor.
They are really too heavy for a front mount on most H quad style multicopters as they are themselves quite heavy and it puts the weight out front too far.
The servos have backlash (maybe not so much the extremely expensive brushless ones that John is using, but most normal ones.
This means they tend to jerk or cog a bit and produce less than optimal video (brushless gimbals work much better).
They are very sturdy and my friend has changed them to mounting an FPV camera on a ground type Rover, works great for looking around in that configuration.
Basically they seem OK as a ground mounted Camera scanning device, but as a motion compensating gimbal, not so much.
Also they way the gimbal is constructed you will notice that the pitch servo block has quite a bit of camera weight towards the front of the camera causing the camera to hang straight down whenever it is unpowered and requiring a fair amount of force (and battery) to keep it pointing straight ahead.
These are really nifty bearing blocks and their are all kinds of great things you can make with them, but from our experience a self leveling camera gimbal on a multicopter is not one of them.
Best Regards,
Gary
Are you able to make more of these if so how much would it cost?
im not sure if you understand me,wass talking about making something like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NorfS_OxMew
Thanks for all the useful comments. I've got this project on hold due to some other stuff but should have more to report later and I will certainly post video as soon as I shoot some.
@Emin Bu - The Servo City blocks are very strong and I would be confident using them even for a very heavy airframe. I think the weakest part will be the servos you select. I chose the very powerful Futaba brushless BLS156HV (see the link in my original post). These servos are overkill in my application and are very fast and have plenty of torque.
John,what do you think is this servocity servoblocks strong enough to attach carbon tubes and use it as retract landing gear?sorry for out of topic but this is only way to know before i order...
hello John,
if not too late for the next steps of your build, please find here after some thoughts about using these servo city blocks I've been playing with recently:
-it is very difficult to attach the resulting roll/tilt gimbal to the frame while keeping a rigid mount (the camera should not shake when the servos are operating) and balanced frame (you need to play with the battery weight to balance the rather heavy servo blocks). I used some aluminium 1/2" tube abd special clamp, also found on servocity for attaching the resulting mount to the frame.
Two issues appeared, resulting from simple laws of mechanics:
-the standard servo size is big and powerful : when they move, they generate an opposite counter reaction. As a consequence it shakes the total mount versus the frame.
-I find the servocity blocks unable mechnically to align both roll and tilt axis along the camera roll/tilt sensor's axis
As the servocity blocks are quite rigid, they transmit vibrations very well. So you must ensure that the total mount is fixed on an anti vibration/dampening system. You can use rubber spacers or silicon gel dampened plates.
Also, be aware that if you use APM, the roll/tilt A10 & A11 ports output at 50Hz, which is rather slow and causes jerky servo stabilisation movements. We will have to wait for PX4 ARM processor power to hope for a more efficient gimbal stabilization autopilot.
Anyway the following video shows you the test results I 've got with a gimbal identical to yours (servocity blocks and rubber spacers). It is excellent to remove jello effect as you see in the video but it does not remove shaking, nor gives perfect stabilisation (APM):
@Jim Brett - I have some pre-gimbal footage on my YouTube channel.
@Euan Ramsay - Very true. If you want to carry a big camera, like a DSLR, doing what I've done wouldn't really work. One day I'd like to see something like these become more readily available:
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/hero-3-with-interchangeable-len...
Indeed. Good show. Fair point about the low hanging gimbals - especially the brushless variety. I have 155mm legs which have plenty room to hang a gimbal under, but looks like I need bigger legs still if I want to go brushless...:-(
I suspect the reason gimbals (brushless or servo) are the way they are is that x number of degrees roll needs to be built in. For a wide camera (eg: iphone 5 on it's side), that's a big rotational diameter which needs a lot of clearance. Limit it to more "square" cameras and accept a limitation on degrees of roll (say 30' instead if 45'), and the gimbals can be quite compact, even with the damping ball frame. I might be tempted to build one exactly with that in mind, once I relearn AutoCAD...I can barely recognise it after a 10 year absence!
Very nice. Looking forward to seeing this in motion as well as some flight footage.
Good work, tnx for sharing, Pls do keep posting