Aerial video stabilization: DJI phantom, Gopro and a Zenmuse gimbal

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I had an interesting weekend mounting a gimbal to the DJI Phantom. DJI calls the upgrade plug and play, however their concept of plug and play involves completely dismantling the quadcopter to a point that replacing (soldiering included) the main electronics board is part of the process.

For those who don't know what a gimbal is ( I didn't either before I tried to mount one ), it's a device that keeps the camera stable no matter what happens to what is holding it. It is used a lot in video shooting, but given the prices it was mainly high end productions - ie Hollywood. Nowadays with technology getting cheaper a small gimbal for a Gopro can cost from 100€ upwards. The idea behind is that you have a type of gyroscope sensor and some servos.p - the gyro tells the servers to move to the opposite direction of the movement.

For a demonstration see this video:

 

I'll add a how-to video of how I mounted it to the copter eventually, but for now here's the fun part - flying and recording. Before getting to the video, a quick review of the gimbal.

I got a DJI Zenmuse H3-2D, mainly because... There was a guy selling a second hand one cheap. It was new in the box, never used - he says he changed hobby so never got around to using it. Good luck for me as I had investigated this gimbal for a while however it was waaayyy to expensive for my "hobby" budget - it costs almost as much as the whole quadcopter.

Usage: after the complicated set-up, everyday usage of the gimbal is a breeze except for one point - the first one of adding the GoPro to the copter. It HAS to be a GoPro 3 (not 2 or 3+) without it's protective housing and for mounting DJI supplies you with a bracket and really small hex screws. Not easy to put on or off, and you need to buy a hex tool. With that exception in mind the rest is easy. It is pre-calibrated for the camera so starting is as easy as turning on the camera and plugging in the battery to the quadcopter - it sources it's power from there. It automatically puts the camera in the right position and keeps it there, no matter how fast you swerve the copter. It does this silently so there is no servo noise to add to the video. Really - none. Mount quality is good as we'll, very sturdy.

Results: WOW - I don't know how to write the difference this does to videos. Up to now all my videos with the phantom are shaky due to:

1. The way a quadcopter or helicopter flies. To go forward or backwards or to the side, a quadcopter inclines into the axis it wants to go - i.e. To go forward the rotors on the back of the device speed up slightly to incline the device - it then goes forward. The faster or steeper you incline, the faster it goes in that direction. If you have a fixed camera on the bottom it "sees" all these inclinations making changing directions or going fast a crappy videos, you just see things inclining up or down.
2. Wind / instability: a little gust of wind makes a very shaky video

As to eliminate the two above, up to now I minimized my shots to slow / stable / constant movements. I would position the helicopter, try to glide as much as possible then stop. Editing was a pain as I could only salvage some of the glide and needed a lot of video stabilization processing.

 

The other issue was the jello effect of the GoPro's CMOS sensor with thy quadcopter vibration. As much as I tried to eliminate it via foam, mount changes or propeller changes, it was there.

 

With the gimbal...WOW!!!! My first tests show a stability I would never ever achieve without it. Video is always on a fixed plane, even when a movement starts the gimbal has no latency to adjust. As you can see in the video below I really went at it and nothing!

 

Let's see what I can do with this upgraded flinging platform :-)