I've been playing around with pan and tilt mount camera mounts, down linking and video recording for aerial videos for many years. I think my first experiments were around 1999-2000. Here is an earlier mount designed for a standard analogue video camera.
- Pan & Tilt Mount 2.jpg (67.12 KiB) Viewed 10595 times
This the current version, it's the 4th or 5th I've built (I've lost count!) and the first designed for a trusty GoPro.
The basis for all my mounts to date is a large diameter, small ball, ball race in an ali mounting. Driven by a modification of a 360 sail winch. The modification being to replace the original servo amp with a better one for improved repeatability. Unfortunately, the new one won't fit in the case so it lives outside!
- Sail Winch Mod 1.jpg (70.88 KiB) Viewed 10595 times
The tilt mount drive is a modified 148. The modification being to provide a second bearing, the easiest and most accurate way of achieving this being to use the main bearing from another 148. So, the victim was mutilated so that the top could replace the standard case bottom to provide a "double ender"
- Dismembered 148.jpg (56.46 KiB) Viewed 10595 times
- Bearing Plate.jpg (68.03 KiB) Viewed 10595 times
This enables two "tops" to be mounted on one body ...
- Double Ender 1.jpg (65.19 KiB) Viewed 10595 times
- Double Ender 3.jpg (64.62 KiB) Viewed 10595 times
The camera mount was fabricated from steel sheet
- Camera Mount.jpg (68.25 KiB) Viewed 10595 times
and when assembled looks like
- Assembled 1.jpg (62.31 KiB) Viewed 10595 times
so the finished thing looks like
- Seat Mount 1.JPG (64.61 KiB) Viewed 10595 times
The idea is that the system is self contained and can be moved from model to model. The photograph above shows a seat shaped mount although this has now been replaced by four captive nuts discretely mounted directly in the fus into which the four pillars are screwed.
When installed it looks something like
- Img_0092.jpg (76.19 KiB) Viewed 10593 times
The next development will be a complete redesign to use brushless gimball motors for smoother operation, particularly for the tilt (the existing version really needs some chunky counter balance weights as a GoPro cantilevered off of a 148 is asking rather a lot!). I'm at the experimenting stage at the moment and really need to get down to the engineering now to produce a perfectly balanced gimbal in order to make some progress.
Alan
