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.

E-mail me when people leave their comments –

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

Join diydrones

Comments

  • okay got it... I used the 2x3 pins work perfect for both tilt and roll.. Just use the gnd pin from the rx to one of the lower pins (gnd) and the other 2 signal pins to the top 2 pins..

  • Hi Randy.. It seems intuitive to use the pins labeled, but....?   Yes, I got the three wire cable too, maybe for the pins on the right; GND, A1 and A2..

  • To Hein and Sandy:

    Hein, your image of your gimbal board is totally different than mine.

    Sandy, Your image of your board is exactly like mine. Did you also get a single cable with three individual female pins on either end? I'm at a loss as to what to do with them. Also take care when plugging into and and of the mini USB port as it may just fall off.

  • 3692839334?profile=originalThe gimbal is performing almost perfectly but I need a little downward tilt via slider on the radio.. Which pins do I use for the cables from the rx?  It looks like the 2x3 pins labeled "Pitch"on left and "Roll" on the right.. I nowhere see A0 nor A1.. I really see no need for further tweaking..

    Thanks

    Sandy

  • OOps. I guess so ha.

  • Four inputs?? Will this blog allow images?

  • 100KM

    3692839034?profile=originalHi mP1, I hope you can make this out. There is 1 ground & two signal that goes to the board. No VCC from the rx.

  • @Hein

    A photo or scan would be great. Unfortunately mine came in a white box with a few plastic bags to hold the rubber bits, the plates and some screws. The goodluck.com website doesnt have any link to an online manual :(

    I havent tried just yet but it seems easy enuff to figure out the pan/tilt but thats only 2 and theres 4 inputs.

    http://goodluck.com/
  • 100KM
    Let me know if I should scan it for you.
  • 100KM
    Mine came with a leaflet explaining how to connect it up.

    I use 12v straight from my battery to the power plug of the gimbal.
This reply was deleted.