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.

Reporting in...after reading thru many of the strings and finding what you just described, I mounted my GP3 and the gimbal settled right down. The other odd note is on the power sources I was using. I initially used a 2s 7.4 1000mAh and both the pitch and roll axes were level. Spent about an hour or two loading all the different GUIs and couldn't find one the actually talked to my board, but still working on that. Then tried a 3s 11.1 1500 mAh and the angles of the pitch and roll were a little better. Then tried a 3s 11.1 2200 mAh and it leveled right out.

I still want to find the right GUI so that I can adjust the pitch to look a little more downward. I would guess that would be a + pitch, but we'll see.

You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!

Join diydrones

Comments

Randy Campbell September 20, 2013 at 7:58am

Yeah. I saw that too a couple of days back. Still haven't had a chance to test mine outdoors yet as I'm rebuilding the hex. Hopefully this weekend I will get to play some.

rumblecloud.com

Rumblecloud RC – Almost everything you need to know about RC flying.
100KM

Hein du Plessis September 20, 2013 at 7:36am

A high wind test!

I see it's only $99 now...
100KM

Hein du Plessis September 19, 2013 at 8:35am

Well I received mine this afternoon, fully assembled & programmed, working right out of the box!! Took me all of 2 minutes to cable tie it to the bottom of my quad and off I went. Was rainy outside so I tested it in the garage:

http://youtu.be/AtHIz828XQ4

If you're thinking of getting a gimbal, buy this one IMMEDIATELY. Thanks Oliver!! Now youtube will fill up with better looking FPV vids :D
Randy Campbell September 16, 2013 at 7:36am

Heck if I know. I was just trying different batts and that's what happened. I'm kinda wondering what will happen if I plug it up to a 5000 mAh : /

r
100KM

Hein du Plessis September 16, 2013 at 7:27am

Wow.. how does the board know how many mAh is in the battery?
Randy Campbell September 16, 2013 at 7:11am

Reporting in...after reading thru many of the strings and finding what you just described, I mounted my GP3 and the gimbal settled right down. The other odd note is on the power sources I was using. I initially used a 2s 7.4 1000mAh and both the pitch and roll axes were level. Spent about an hour or two loading all the different GUIs and couldn't find one the actually talked to my board, but still working on that. Then tried a 3s 11.1 1500 mAh and the angles of the pitch and roll were a little better. Then tried a 3s 11.1 2200 mAh and it leveled right out.

I still want to find the right GUI so that I can adjust the pitch to look a little more downward. I would guess that would be a + pitch, but we'll see.

r
Scott Berfield September 15, 2013 at 4:34pm

If you don't have a GoPro (or other equivalent mass) mounted on it then you will get odd behavior like you describe.
Randy Campbell September 15, 2013 at 5:39am

Hi All,

Just received my gimbal yesterday and am starting to play around with it. Out of the box, i plugged in a 2s 1000 mAh. It powered the board, red light to green light. The pitch motor reacted, leveled off, then dropped back down and leveled off again. It just continued to do this continually. Hope it isn't f'ed up.

I'll be downloading and trying a larger 3s 2200 later today. I'll add the results later today.

BTW thanks for all the links to the other duscussions, manual and GUI.

r
100KM

Hein du Plessis September 12, 2013 at 8:04am

Thanks for the height! (small!!)
Eric-Jan Swinkels September 12, 2013 at 7:57am

@ Richard: I havehad it working with 2s and 3s batteries without any problem. Somewhere in my previous posts I mentioned where you can find tuning information. Worked fine for me, and I am not an expert at all.

of 10

This reply was deleted.