I made a gyro camera thingy! For Rossi style footage

You've all seen the MotoGP footage of Rossi's bum, where even tho the bike is leaning the horizon stays in the right place on your 42" tv right?
Having had the thought to try this out for a while, last night whilst you lot were having a life I decided to spend a few hours sorting it out.

I took a control board from my Tricopter project which has various electronic gyros and accelerometers on it and re-flashed the code with a firmware version which can be used for a standalone camera gimbal.

Normally a gimbal has 3 axis to keep a camera pointing dead ahead whilst the object it is attached to can move in any axis.

I only needed the one axis, for the sideways tilting of a motorbike.

A few head scratches trying to work out the settings and eventually I got this:

Not bad for a first go, it needs a little tuning. Then I need to package it in something and try it on the road.

[rapidgaz]

That's the dogs. Wonder if you could use a standard gyro of a helicopter as in tail gyro. . You can pick those up dead cheap now second hand.


Sent down the wires from home

Very nice, packaged correctly I recokon you could flog them, however, I'm not sure how much it cost to make?
Good luck with it.

[yorkie_chris]

rotate...


P.S more info on tricopter project required

[muzikill]

I thought using a camera on a counter balanced middle rotating axis would work just as good.

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Originally Posted by rapidgaz

That's the dogs. Wonder if you could use a standard gyro of a helicopter as in tail gyro. . You can pick those up dead cheap now second hand.
Sent down the wires from home

I'm not sure, I was trying that out too, but didn't get as far as switching it into heading hold mode, too busy getting this version working.
In theory yes it cud work, not sure it'd be accurate enough.

Originally Posted by yorkie_chris

P.S more info on tricopter project required

I built one of these:
http://rcexplorer.se/projects/2011/0...ricopter-v2-5/

I never got very far with it, I didn't have the patience to get the settings dialed in. I prefered my plane with first person view flying!:

Originally Posted by muzikill

I thought using a camera on a counter balanced middle rotating axis would work just as good.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

I saw some made like this but the damping on the weight would be too complex for me. They work ok at slow speed but thru a quick chicane it'd be all over the place.

Very cool, gap in the market for that sort of thing?


Sent via Crayola using the black crayon.

[Ch00]

Some clever people on the the Org!!

[kaivalagi]

Nicely done!! Have you come up with a decent housing and mounting for the board yet?

When I upgrade my quad from a KK2 to an APM I know what I'll be doing with the old board!

Can you share any links to the firmware and any instructions / manuals for it?

Originally Posted by Lawman

Very nice, packaged correctly I recokon you could flog them, however, I'm not sure how much it cost to make?
Good luck with it.

Amazing how cheap these electronics are nowadays thanks to China, you can get that board from HobbyKing for about £20

Originally Posted by kaivalagi

Nicely done!! Have you come up with a decent housing and mounting for the board yet?

When I upgrade my quad from a KK2 to an APM I know what I'll be doing with the old board!

Can you share any links to the firmware and any instructions / manuals for it?

No decent housing yet, I'm gonna chuck it in something for testing first.

OK so if your sitting comfortably I'll try to provide the info:

(These are links to the items, you can get them from other UK ebay sources too)

So the board you need is the KK2:
KK2 Board

Then you'll need the programming cable for it:
Programmer

Then any "Standard" servo, digital is better to provide more accurate positioning.
I used this one:
Servo

Now you need to download the "Flashing" software and follow the instructions to install the "OpenAero2" firmware. The software will have that firmware in its library of frimware
This page gives all the info on that:
http://www.multi-rotor.co.uk/index.php?topic=1198.0

I followed these instructions on how to setup the board as a standalone controller. This gets by the need to have the usual remote control receiver inputs that the board usually uses to fly the aircraft.
(I haven't done the gyro / accelerometer setup as described, I just calibrated the sensors on a flat surface and it was pretty good.)
https://code.google.com/p/nextcopter...b_Setup_Part_1

The only other thing i did was "Mix" the output to the servo with itself, this gives more rotation to the servo to get the servo to move the same degrees opposite to the board.

And thats it, easy peasy!!