Servo Gimbal on an FPV Drone

[@suppermud4017]

I think you can get rid of some of those jitters by duplicating the input of the sticks, inverting it, and putting that signal directly into the servo so it does the exact opposite of what the sticks do, and effectively counteracting them all together. It might take a little tuning but it could get rid of those jitters. And put it exactly in time with the turns so real steady dosen't have to work so hard

[@jaknowwho]

I would agree. I could very easily be wrong about this, but I think that is how the dji phantom works it's rotations into it's gimbal. I've noticed it when I just hold the phantom and give the controller turn input. Not sure if it's be possible but someway of adding both would probably be the most beneficial. Say having the controller input as the main control until the FC is past a certain value and it takes over from there until it's dropped below that set value again. Just an idea.

[@MoppelMat]

that would only work in autolevel mode

[@OwenBuckingham11]

3:30 I see quarantine has been getting to you as well 😂

[@carboncubss]

You cleaned your workbench mat! You have no idea how hard I found it that can you work with all the stuff everywhere. I know how easy it happens and the mess builds up quick when you're busy, but I try to stay as organized as I can, not the best myself really! Kudos to you man! Kudos to you!

[@heimwolf]

Servo Gimbal.... 2014 wants it´s content back!

[@YancySmithTurboRexPerformance]

I did something similar to this on a wing to get rid of the "waggle" in the video. It worked fairly well on the yaw axis.

[@NURKFPV]

How did you get it to output the yaw axis? I wanted to try that a little bit..

[@mflacke]

@@NURKFPV I was working on this for a while with a Storm 32 controller and gimbal motor on fixed wing. I could never get the little shakes tuned out. Stunt Double FPV did some great work on this...kzbin.info/www/bejne/nn68c3ujabWNndk . I may try BF on a FC with a little 6amp ESC and the gimbal motor next.

[@dutchdrifter8740]

@@NURKFPV I used to do this with openpilot. It had a seperate gimbal control build into the software.

[@YancySmithTurboRexPerformance]

@@NURKFPV I used one of the servo outputs like you did and set it up for the yaw axis. One thing I did different from your setup was to mount the camera on it own pivot and had the servo accurate it with a pushrod.

[@haythamfpv]

@@mflacke did you manage to control the esc and brushless motor out of the servo signal from betaflight?

[@RimmyTimfpv]

This is really interesting! I LOVE witnessing the hobby and the art of FPV being pushed to new heights! I have thought so many times about what it would take to successfully mount a gimbal of some kind onto a miniquad. I've never really thought about combining those efforts with ReelSteady though. This is really astounding what results you have achieved just in a few hours/days/ whatever of rnd, and testing. Looks really like relatively minimal effort, a little bit of tinkering, and you're already like 90% of the way there. Keep it up for the sake of the hobby!

[@Reecefpv]

That's awesome but need to try the brushless version gimbal

[@an_R_key]

nice proof of concept. looking shweet!

[@klopossa2]

I just started flying a 1 axis Feyutech gimbal I got cheap w my 2s Force1. It flies ok but will try 3s next. Will loose some drone smoothness, not much, but gain it back in cam footage. Great vid..the comparison was epic. Very helpful to me. The Ftech gimbal wks flawless, but like to shave some grams off. Could still get down view with tweeking. 1 servo is all thats needed for that, so 10 or so grams for micro servo.

[@lebasson]

Awesome to see how relatively imperfect hardware leads to such big outcomes. And man, Reelsteady is impressive. Cool exploration Paul, thanks for taking us along with you.

[@aztecjoe29]

That's a cool idea I did that with with my fpv camera on my DJI 450 drone couple years ago I still have it's pretty cool

[@itosan8004]

Really nice video bro 👏

[@tolycobbold7659]

I have no idea what you are talking about but I’m subbed and find it very interesting. I have a mavic mini that I am still learning about

[@windwalkerfpv]

I just wanted to share as I've bought/tested hundreds of servos. Emax makes some of the best/cheap digital metal gear servos! I typically use the ES08MDII on 90% of my projects. They really improved my 3D planes as they are very hard to break plus much more precise/smooth than any other cheap servo I've tested. If you need more strength/torque for the qopro the ES09MD are a bit bigger/more powerful. Should be less wobbly... might take a crash or two.

[@shanewatters9251]

I've seen digital servos on pan and tilt and they can have that digital jitter. Some people like full size analog servos because they can be smoother but then you have to deal with huge heavy full size servos

[@omarperchov6411]

You should make a better gimbal and then do rolls and inverted yaw spins to see how it looks

[@ArakNafein]

Look into SimpleBGC. Get some brushless gimbal motors & 3D print the gimbal arms. Full control with PID tuning on your own gimbal design. Full manual or auto level modes, depending on what you want.

[@russandzuzanamoody9689]

Great video Nurk, it's nice to see people sharing ideas.

[@jessefpv9217]

The very first drone I ever had a servo gimbal it was a hobbyking 220 something. That and steele got me hooked ever since lol

[@johnjeremih]

I like your content! I live in Indianapolis as well.

[@MeDavidGusta]

Honestly, even though the gimbal isn't perfect, I couldn't keep my eyes off the bottom left screen when you show the three perspectives. It really screams cinematic and action.

[@NURKFPV]

Totally agreed - it's a start

[@MB3Drift]

You are in a good way to reinvent the brushless GoPro gimbal^^

[@CarbonGlassMan]

What a want is a servo that will take the FPV camera from zero degrees to 15 or 30 degrees or whatever you want to fly at. Put it on a radio switch so you can have a high camera angle for fast flying and no angle for landing or if you just want to slow down and look at something. No gimbal, just a fast adjustment from zero degrees to whatever you set the other angle at.

[@Infernokron]

This was a away more interesting project than the thumbnail led me to believe. Neat concept, I'm looking forward to your next iteration.

[@offaxisfpv]

DUDE, you are by farthest the most innovative and awesome dude. been following you for a a while now and love your videos! keep it goin!!

[@josephrossman1600]

Those "clippies" are for the larger cheap fpv cameras with a unprotected pcb baseboard, I see them more in fixed wing fpv than quads.

[@0KiRi021]

this is so cool. you should definitely keep expanding on this because the footage difference is definitely worth the trouble

[@offgridas]

This could be the future of a lot of things

[@devilidol]

If you want a smoother roll axis stabilization, I'd suggest use a gimbal motor instead of a servo, the servo is probably jittery because of the weight it has to carry, using a higher torque servo should solve your problem, but won't be as smooth as the gimbal motor. If you want to combine roll and pan/tilt, then you have to balance the entire gimbal else your motors will always be struggling to keep the camera level.

[@alexoliver9201]

Great video ! I love the topics you cover in the FPV community. It’s always unique.... but relevant and always enticing! Cheers Nurk

[@NURKFPV]

Trying to find anything that I can to work on in these strange times.

[@alexoliver9201]

NURK FPV well I liked...subscribed and commented.... because .... bro... you need some new shoes 👟✌🏻🤣

[@Daniel.Palmer183f]

i like just the way it looks playing better before even considering resolution

[@nathanwiw9731]

It's pretty cool and im looking forward to seeing you do more stuff with the Gimbal! And thanks for your awesome videos! :)

[@Sombre____]

Nice stuff !

[@100sons]

Loved the animatronic play moment at 3:40 :D

[@Techado]

old trick 2020 showdown! but you are amazing

[@jrb8081]

Nice job.

[@andyb4272]

Check out the Align MR25XP, that has a servo gimbal as standard. only operates up/down but can be semi-stabilised.

[@licensetodrive9930]

Surprisingly good for a servo gimbal, but really I think even a cheap/low quality 2-axis brushless gimbal will provide much smoother footage for Reelsteady Go to work with. Regarding the weight problem of them, most generic 2-axis gimbals are quite heavy due to the big motors, but the old Quanum Q-2D uses much smaller motors so is notably lighter, and has pitch+roll servo signal inputs.

[@haythamfpv]

man keep working on it, it's a really useful thing. look at Steadywhoop, they've done a lot of work in this direction

[@RobRosendahl]

Nice idea! I did something similar years ago to stabilize the pitch axis on my mobius I had mounted on a phantom with a tilt mount. It was really nice for flying stabilized. The Naza actually had gimbal hookups...and used the internal gyro. I will say brushed servos can work smoothly but the digital metal geared servos are the best.

[@bytesabre]

Use a PDB for a wing. Should fix your servo power issues. I’m gonna put one on my TricopterLR when I start building that

[@musaka14]

So now you got me thinking... probably not gonna try to make a servo gimbal any time soon, but using a cheap gopro gimbal, something like feiyu tech wg2x with reelsetady go, might give pretty good results for me. Thanks for that video!

[@NURKFPV]

Those are such weak gimbals that they give up under the g force

[@phildawe7172]

that's a really good result! the image looks good. well done

[@MortonsontheMove]

I have always wondered what results of a build like that might look like! Great Job. I have watched people play with the OSMO pocket on FPV but the results are not great and just looked like DJI drone footage, although able to go a few more places.. but truthfully if i want that then i just risk the mavic :) Flips and spins are worthless with it. I do think that if you could emulate the stabilization of reel steady with the gimbal and take input from the drone the end result would be much better, probably need additional external vector processing tho.

[@abc121xyz]

I tried this a year ago, even with a good servo you get jitter, you need to use a brushless motor with its "gimbal" controller if you want no jitter though they are super big, maybe we can ask betaflight guys to revisit this code and let us use a brushless motor an a esc for the servo tilt feature

[@chbooboo]

Chipmunk Nurk is the best Nurk.

[@pakmotodnb]

The old kk2.0 fc’s had a built in stability for gimbals, I made one up for my old sk450 frame and it worked very well, and at the time we didn’t have stability using GoPro 3’s 👍

[@VeoismMusic]

Check HITec Servos they may have a digital brushless servo that will make it butter

[@KernsJW]

Cool, nice insight

[@TeslabladePlaysMC]

I wonder what a DJI Osmo Pocket on a drone like this would look like. It's basically a DJI Mavic's gimbal on a tiny hand mount, and it is usually extremely smooth. plus, 4k, up to 60fps.

[@Syncopad]

so much good content !!! f*** yes Nurk !!

[@dividingbyzerofpv6748]

This was what I was wanting to do for the CheaterKwad up until I figured that a 360 cam could likely do what I need if I properly mount it. I gave up on idea of a gimbal due to wanting something that can acro hard going forwards or backwards(or at least fly equally fast backwards as forwards like with your chase/follow example) and the CamStab would probably freak out if I didnt have a process for disabling it. Also didnt like the idea of the servo failing me. I did do adjustable 0-60deg uptilt for the FPV cam which I think could be hugely advantageous for certain builds with a 360cam where the drone is hidden in the blind spot. It would revolve around climbing tall vertical surfaces and low tilt would make it hard due to thrust angles to spot your climb out gaps. Looking at my 6in on 2150kv 5s for ripping and a 7inch Project399 Deadcat with 6000mah of 6s2p LithiunIon to get me 23min of forwards/backwards smoothness. I just need to get on the 360 cam game. Givem your experience and expertise with the 360 cams I would like to hear more of your opinion where this CamStab option is better than 360 cams. Would it boil down to the options of 4k and better quality of Hero 7/8 with ReelSteady versus the 360cam?

[@MrDavidSkinner]

love these doco style videos!

[@maxrei8786]

I think you could throw the slowest PIDs on it and it would be a lot smoother.

[@kanalunuifpv6395]

dude you were having way to much fun with that gimble!🤣

[@SANDY-FPV]

This is awesome! Cool idea

[@jlarson42]

Awesome potential, thanks for sharing.

[@curillaenator]

You should try Inav for your gimbal's fc! Inav works nice with servos and can be configured for your need, like setting up pids and weight/power things for your servo gimbal. It should definitely help on jitter issue, cause with Inav you can tune it! Search for how to setup tail servo on tricopter builds, all you need is to use roll stab input instead of yaw stab input for your servo.

[@DragonEyeMedia-ProfessionalFPV]

Great idea and video seeing the progress and the explantion ... awesome job :))))

[@klopossa2]

Bought a single axis gimbal from Horizon Hobby. Feiutech, not long ago..not for Hero but probably wk. Need to trim the batt stuff down to lighten it but its a real brushless gimbal for under $40.

[@riggermortisfpv526]

Rad, to bad TBS doesn't offer the discovery anymore, it had a setup designed for something like this.

[@DrFPV-ex5ft]

I see I am not the only one with this idea of stabilising the horizon :-D Unfortunately I haven't finished it to the end. But wanted to achieve it with gimbal brushless motor. I have bought Quanum Single Axis Gimbal in sale and hoped it would work also for roll axis and not just for yaw axis as it is described. Maybe I missed something in the settings or maybe it just isn't possible to set it properly without flashing the firmware...so I gave up. I am sure that if man can attach GoPro precisely in its COG, even a small weak gimbal motor should work good and definitely react faster than a servo. But a good start of a research, that for sure! :-)

[@NURKFPV]

trying a futaba brushless servo next to see what that does for me

[@spikester]

I guess the next step up, a DJI gimbal that tracks your DJI goggle head movements. They left the door wide open for installable addons for those things.

[@JosephDawson]

All of the issues your having is why we moved away from servo gimbals in-camera quads years ago to brushless motors in our gimbals. Just get a small single-axis brushless gimbal and you will be shocked on how good they work.

[@4DCResinSmoker]

Few things that could help... Increase the servo voltage to 6-7 volts and increase its PWM rate to the maximum it can support. Maybe set your filtering for it lower as well. Best regulator I've useds was the mini-360 BECde.banggood.com/Small-Mini-360-Adjustable-DC-Power-Supply-Module-Mini-Step-Down-Module-p-917568.html?cur_warehouse=CN There should be an equivalent you can get locally.

[@leighhoyte6230]

Have you considered the following- Hard mount the camera and point it at the gimbal then put a mirror on the gimbal? I could see a future fpv camera project where the fpv camera points at a tiny servo gimbal holding a tiny mirror. Usimg a mirror means it lighter and so can use smaller servos and then the whole weight comes down Also if you crash your more likely to break the servos and mirror rather than camera which could be easierto replace. Also, also we could have smart features in betaflight like - head tracking - head tracking which adds to your pitch and roll stick values . So you steer a little by head tracking.. - camera up pitch changed on switch

[@ojkolsrud1]

How did you connect the servos to the FC and have the FC control them based on orientation? Because this could be the basis of a really cheap pan-tilt selfie cam.

[@zippycfpv3619]

Sweet look!! Better servos should be awesome! Love the floating feeling it gives

[@EthanMitchell_YouTube]

@Nurk FPV def let us know when you get this down!! I got the Shendrone Thicc on order and would love to use it with a gimbal for my big cam.

[@Mitri82]

i think the gitter is from the servos or"gimbal" sensitivity, you should try it with the least sensitivity and see how that works, that would be the easiest quickest thing to try without having to change hardware... sorry if u tried that but i skipped through the video a bit i was in a hurry ;)

[@Silikum]

very cool

[@ithacarob]

Using an rc car stearing stabilization would do the job, better then an additional FC

[@EugeneKreger]

I wanted to make something similar, although I wanted a single servo to tilt fpv camera to change its angle on the fly, but I couldn’t figure out how to set up servo in BetaFlight. Any help would be appreciated.

[@MarkBakerFPV]

It probably looks wide on the hard mount by the car because it ks mount further back on the drone so captures more of the shot that the gopro up front

[@peterzingler6221]

Also very good for wings

[@NURKFPV]

Totally

[@chadpeterson5723]

I have a fatshark like system that works with headtracker kinda cool

[@flymario8046]

Yeah gimbals that I see for quads use brushless motors which react very quickly and don't have servo jitter. It is impressive what you got from your setup though. The way you fly drones it would seem you need some really fast actions.

[@Quick-Flash]

Increase your acc filtering. Set the filter to be set to say 10hz. Should help a bit with this.

[@tonyhoff86]

I am curious what it does when you continue a roll through 360 degrees. My camera gimbal is not very good at handling that either. There are also relatively cheap brushless camera gimbal controllers available that may work better for the application. They'd take the place of your 2nd flight controller (and obviously you'd need a brushless motor on the roll axis). There are also a handful of brushless servos out there I believe, but I think they're super expensive.

[@despuesdecuarentena8452]

dude can u do a video explaining how to install all the parts for the servo?

[@MiniMattTV]

Awesome

[@evanouellette9400]

good vid

[@jarydmahmood8099]

great video and ingenuity. not seen all comments so not sure if someone has said but is there a way you could replace go pro with another dji cam and hook the gimbal up to a second set of goggles to control gimbal by their head movement. a passenger on your flight? may require a second air unit so may require 12s/large quad. maybe pointless but may have a use for your clients on shoots and work

[@zdm5290]

This will likely be buried, but one things some of the best record players do is they have a very small motor driving a much larger platter via a belt to add some damping and gear the system way down to increase the number of effective steps in the motor. You might be able to do something very similar, albeit a bit convoluted, with a pulley driven by the servo, and finding some way to retrain the system to the new degree of movement required to achieve the same result. From what I can see in this, there might even be other benefits to this sort of system, as it seems your servos like to move at a little higher speed. Sort of a mechanical version of raising the D term?

[@swissfreek]

2:05 holy cow that vintage radio

[@NURKFPV]

Sometimes it's fun to have a throwback

[@thirtythreeeyes8624]

Haha 2.4ghz vintage and it's not even an og dsm. Damn we're living in the future.

[@VicknairDoesThings]

Very interesting project w impressively good results. Would love to see the evolution of this project. Maybe pid tuning the gimbal fc? Or using a cheap brushless 2 axis gimbal?

[@fpvclub7256]

I've been thinking of doing this same thing.. I think maybe your gimbal strength is a bit high and you're not staying on the horizon as much as it should. Might reduce the vibrations as well.. Just a thought. Also.. what would happen if you put your FPV camera on there!. would it be flyable? I might try this with a 2nd HD board.

[@jeremyhenion8231]

have you tried blackbox data on gimbal fc to make sure it's not gyro interference and the fc is introducing "wiggle"??? OR filters/active breaking settings

[@RCOverKill]

This is way cool! How are you connecting your gimbal to the fc? Any quick explanation, and I think I'll get it. Thanks Paul!

[@K_Nasty]

This is my favorite part of any hobbie. Having g an idea and making it work. Very cool

[@NURKFPV]

That's why I wanted to tell the story all the way through - not just show you the end.

[@aztecjoe29]

Also have full control of the server I can move it any angle I want

[@Rinden80]

Used to make SSG (Super Simple Gimbal) on the tricopter with kk2.0 ;) some years ago.... :D

[@DutchCommando]

feels like i'm back twelve or so years! that setup is how we oldtimers used to get a somewhat decent footage out of our wobbly multicopters.. also.. in the first test you used a insta360.. and it just does what you are set out to achieve with a gopro and some gimbals and realsteady go... except for the adventure and discovering what the old dudes went through years ago to get somewhat decent footage, why would you add complexity and extra postwork when a decent 360 cam can give the same result?

[@Niggels1404]

Gopro footage >>>> Insta 360

[@MoppelMat]

I guess it is jittering bc the 2nd FC feels the vibration of the gimbal movement. you may be able to filter the servo reaction frequency out alltogether or just soft mount the 2nd FC

[@NURKFPV]

also in the works - the VHB + ziptie method was pretty lazy haha

[@KelkieFPV]

high torque high speed high volt servos and a external regulator. try different servo setting in baseflight

[@MrGaussFPV]

Can't wait to get my custom insta

[@Bossbmx]

Hi there nice vid and enjoyed your silly fast 12s vid. I made the equivalent but for full size drift cars so a box with servo that basiclly stays straight or straighter when the car turns underneath it. I used a rc drift gyro to control it but i had the same issue of servo judder and havnt got round to solving it. I also realise now im only getting a few degrees more than what modern go pro stability will do let alone reel steady. Im using a hero 3+ so none of thats an option but was a fun experiment. I could gear it so it gives much more angle but id be interested to know if you solve the servo judder. I like the idea of what you're chasing tho and a less cropped image is always better. If you get it reacting smooth enough and fast enough you maybe able to not use reel steady and get the same results with no loss of information

[@bikkevliegenfpv5867]

hi I'm on the same journey. I was thinking of buying more ready made solutions. There are some available. But they all have their drawbacks. I was wondering if you finally settled down on something useable? Because in this video, the movement is super jittery. Guess they were cheap servos. But still, a brushless motor gimbal would be better still than a servo.

[@scorpionfpv6412]

I have done this myself already on an FPV camera on my quad just on the vertical though, the jitter is coming from the second FC you can run it from your actuall FC if using betaflight I never got any jiggle that way

[@sneakyfpv8914]

Try to use small brushless motor for the gimbals servo

[@cristianofpv]

I want !