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3D-printable gimbal for RaspberryPi camera

Posted by JeanLeFlambeur on August 29, 2016 at 2:30pm

I ordered these motors and this gimbal controller some time ago to make a gimbal for the Raspberry Pi camera. This weekend I managed to model, print and test it.

It weights ~65 grams, is very compact and fits perfectly on my new quad (more on this some other time).

Here’s a timelapse video of the modelling process:

And here’s a video with me mounting it:

It works on 6-8.4V (2S), and is very quick to print.

The total cost is ~50e for the controller and motors. In the future I’ll model some extra motor mounts for some more micro gimbal motors.

 

The STL + Design Spark files will be very soon on github.

Blog: https://jeanleflambeur.wordpress.com/

Tags: gimbal, raspberry pi camera
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Comments

  • Marc Dornan March 4, 2017 at 6:55am
    Just saw this. Great idea. I think a lighter ribbon cable for the IMU is a good idea, but you likely have already thought of this. I am playing with light gimbals for fixed wings and I wonder if I could adapt your design to work with a Mobius lens. I think I could. I would likely need to add a little counterbalance for pitch.
  • JeanLeFlambeur March 4, 2017 at 2:45am

    @Ted - somehow I missed your question... The gimbal pitch is not balanced as it relies on the camera being light. It can take a slightly heavier camera or the RPI+Lens but I didn't test it. The motors are definitely strong enough to move more weight, but without proper balancing there might be more vibration.

  • Ted Morgan September 7, 2016 at 9:03am

    How do you think it would hold up if the RPi camera had an attached lens on it that was bigger/heavier?

  • Moderator
    Vladimir "Lazy" Khudyakov August 31, 2016 at 10:26am

    Nice job!

  • JeanLeFlambeur August 30, 2016 at 12:46pm

    I intend to buy these and solder flexible 26AWG silicon cables to it.

    Fitting the pi zero on the gimbal would make it bigger and it would need more space to rotate freely. This is an issue on the mini quad I'm building.

  • Moderator
    Roberto Navoni August 30, 2016 at 8:32am

    When you try to connect the camera to RPI the problem could be the flat cable ... my suggestion is to put on gimbal all the RPI board . You can use RPI 0 rev 1.3 it's very small ... and can fit on your gimbal.

    If not could be a lot of problem with the Cable ...

  • JeanLeFlambeur August 30, 2016 at 1:12am

    Files are uploaded here:

    https://github.com/jeanleflambeur/silkopter/tree/master/printing/gi...

    jeanleflambeur/silkopter
    UAV autopilot. Contribute to jeanleflambeur/silkopter development by creating an account on GitHub.
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