ModMiniGimbal - DIY 3axis GoPro Hero5 Session Handheld Gimbal

Spent a lot of time tweaking this, it's not perfect but it works!

Gimbal is meant to be modular, the "handle" which is attached via zip ties can be removed from the main body housing the gimbal controller to be replaced with other mounting accessories (e.g. body mount, bike mount, etc). The front of the video shows a "piggyback mount" which just straps the battery to the front of the gimbal but allows for a much more compact setup. The turntable animation shows the handle version which houses the battery within the handle. I've yet to design the bike mount, that's next on the list.

The Micro Storm32 is a pain to flash firmware but it works and its small and cheap enough for this project. One big issue is I2C errors, this was resolved with the ferrite ring (which takes up valuable space) and might have been helped by the shielded 4 core wire (which I used because my IMU wire was too short).

That said, the onboard 2nd IMU also works surprisingly well after some tuning. However the controller does not have pot or aux inputs, as such all signals in have to be converted to PWM signals. I did this using an Arduino Pro Mini using the servo library and converts the on off state of the buttons into the required PWM signals to be sent to the respective RC pins.

4 push button switches control the pitch and yaw. Pressing pitch up and down together recenters the camera, pressing yaw left and right together puts the gimbal in standby mode and wakes it up when pressed again. I had a joystick but it was too big, also the joystick only had 1 switch (PSP joystick has none), so I went with push buttons instead, so far they have performed pretty decently.

Unfortunately the gimbal motors I chose didn't have a hollow shaft big enough to fit all the wires once it got to the yaw motor. A better motor with sliprings would work but would drive the cost up significantly.

GoPro Hero5 Session is held in by friction using a little piece of plastic behind it (seen in white) or by a strap (not shown in video).

Test video at the end you can see a tiny bit of the Session Holder in the corners of the video, this has hopefully been addressed in the latest STLs by widening the opening slightly.

Parts:
1 x Micro Storm32 bit Gimbal Controller (with I2C IMU)
1 x Ferrite Ring (to get rid of I2C errors)
1 x Shielded 4 core wire (for IMU, also because my IMU wire was too short)
3 x DYS Hollow Shaft 2606 Gimbal Motors
1 x Arduino Pro Mini
4 x Push Button Switches & Misc electronics
1 x Push on Switch
1 x 1000mah 4S (because I have them lying around, 2 x 18650 NCRs should work)
1 x 12V regulator (I've heard 9V might be better but didn't have one)
Misc 3D printed parts (Will upload to Thingiverse soon with more instructions and the Arduino code)