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Taking a budget amateur aerial video setup to the next level

Posted by Charlie Raley on September 6, 2014 at 12:26pm

UPDATE:

Spent another evening capturing some footage on the farm of cultivating this time. Wind picked us slightly causing some unwanted yaw wobble in the shots but overall im very pleased.

Take a look, I hope you will enjoy it:

After many months of trial and error and budget building I have finally ended up with footage worthy of a youtube upload!!

I am extremely pleased with the results I am now getting using my home designed hexacopter built from plywood and aluminium box section:

I am running a hobby king apm 2.5, cheap 20 a esc's and even cheaper hobbyking dt750 motors.

the gimbal is my own design and uses a Martinez board (That took about 2 months to tune!!!)

Here is the video I shot of farming in Yorkshire and I hope, like me, you will be quite impressed with the results:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O57pZUvoN8

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aerial, footage, gopro, hexacopter

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Replies

Charlie Raley September 15, 2014 at 1:37pm

Another piece of youtube worthy footage!!

Plans of third axis stabilization are in the works to try and get rid of the yaw "swaying" when the wind picks up a little!
Julien Dubois September 8, 2014 at 4:28am

Great video and nice copter design, that is a good DIY example!!
- Charlie Raley > Julien Dubois September 8, 2014 at 6:12am
  
  Thanks!
  It actualy folds down, 4 of the booms hinge into line with te other two making it easy to transport :)
  http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UUvqIkAo4CY
  This video I made for a project shows it at the beginning.
  
  YouTube
MR60

Hugues September 7, 2014 at 11:22am

Nice considering the costs. It would be nice to share about your plywood gimbal and suspension system if you have any details/conclusions to avoid vibrations ? What did you tune for 2 months ?
- Charlie Raley > Hugues September 7, 2014 at 11:59am
  
  The martinez board from hobbyking comes with very bad PIDs and is notoriously sensitive to small changes and tuning. I spent months using the GUI altering the settings holding the gimbal by hand even before I got rid of self enduced oscillations ect. and bothered to mount it to the hexacopter. I came very close to giving up at times but it's payed off now! :)
  
  I have tried many different methods of vibration for cameras even before I built a gimbal.
  Four of these rubber "balls" seem to work but I did find the wight rating for the balls affected the results a lot.
  I can find out what the rating for the balls I'm using is if you like?
  - MR60
    
    Hugues > Charlie Raley September 7, 2014 at 2:04pm
    
    Yes please thx
    - Charlie Raley > Hugues September 8, 2014 at 6:21am
      
      The ones I'm currently using that work the best are rated at 100g.
      Previously I had eight rated at 80g each and I got reasonable results but still some jello.
Paul September 7, 2014 at 9:48am

Nice job, great footage.
- Charlie Raley > Paul September 7, 2014 at 10:57am
  
  Thanks
Greg Nuspel September 7, 2014 at 7:36am

The only thing you might want to revisit in your design is the camera suspension. It looks like the camera hangs off the plate using the rubber mounts. A better design is where the camera gimbal is attached to the top plate and the bottom plate is attached to the airframe. This way a failure in the rubber mounts does not put the camera in danger of falling off. Nice work both in the multicopter and the filming.