A $109 GoodLuckBuy Brushless Gimbal for the H3 GoPro

Here's a short clip, somewhat adulterated by YouTube, of a test of this inexpensive gimbal and controller that I bought from goodluckbuy.com. The Goodluckbuy SKU is 98952, you can look at it by entering that in their search engine. It's made to mount on a Phantom but it's not hard to work up a mount for most any copter.

Here I'm flying it on my DJI 550 Hex "The Witch." I didn't use the provided vibration mounts but rather some stiffer "lord" type mounts I had lying around. Also there are rubber grommets involved.

This gimbal comes without a shred of documentation and I haven't yet figured out how to find the appropriate software. However, it works "out of the box". The only problem is a slight off-level lean on the roll axis, which I've fixed for the moment by simply shimming one end of the GoPro. Build quality is very high. It's all aluminum so not super light.

In this video I've intentionally left bits of the airframe visible to show how hard and well the gimbal is working.

The entire 8 minute flight is as smooth as the 29 seconds seen here.

Slightly off-topic: This clip starts with the hex under manual control in "stabilize" mode, approaching a Geofence that starts at the weed line. When the hex hits the fence it goes into RTL and heads home. It overshoots home (the red landing pad) and neatly turns back to it and ends up right where it should be, at which point I take back control and the clip ends. The slow flight home is my setting, and I think the overshoot might be a result of settings I've made as well, as I'm looking for smoothness, not speed, when I'm tuning.

I'm excited by this gimbal. The YouTube video doesn't really do it justice. If anyone else is using  one of these I'd like to hear from you.

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Comments

  • 100KM

    Appears my FTDI chip was faulty, apparently common from GLB. A friend of mine replaced the chip and I can now program it.

  • 100KM

    based on this post, I've purchased this gimbal:

    http://www.goodluckbuy.com/dji-phantom-brushless-gimbal-camera-moun...

    It works fine, but I'd like to send the min and max positions for the pitch and roll, however I'm unable to connect to it using any of the software I tried:

    • SimpleBGC
    • GUI-blg-tool

    What do you guys use ?

  • 100KM
    Mine have been making that noise from the start and still does after 3 crashes. As you said, it only emits the sound while stabilising. Sorry can't comment on what could be wrong with yours.
  • My gimbal motors just started to emit a high pitched noise the otherday after a crash. It tries to right itself and the motors rotate a bit then jump back and continue to repeat this action. Ive noticed a few other people saying the same annoying noise does happen. Ive noticed during the booting phase when only the power (red???) is on there is no noise, but as soon as the other led (green???) turns on and the motors try and level out the noise appears.

  • I have a 6 channal remote (mx 12 graupner), all channals are in use, now i need a channal for the gimbal. I have the idea of using an additional remote with 2 channals. Anybody an idea which remote I can use? Maybe other hints?

  • If you place any gimbal upside down you'll need to re-orient the sensors otherwise it will be fighting to turn the 2 axes back to the natural or right side up orientation. 

  • Gimbal up side down? Thinking about using a GLB gimbal in my TBS Discovery up side down, place enough. Has anybody any experience with an upside down gimbal from GLB?

  • Thanks Randy. I'm hoping someone will weigh in. Trialblazing isn't my fav. 

  • Hey James,

    Thanks for the link. I put it in my wish list. I bought the 2-axis version for about $100. It did take about 3 weeks.

    Good luck, I'll be watching on the side.

    r

  • No problem.  I ordered mine from Ebay.  It took 3 days to arrive because the seller was in Puerto Rico.  I have heard delivery from GLB is very slow.  Good luck (no pun).

    http://www.goodluckbuy.com/3-axis-aluminum-brushless-camera-mount-g...

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