Alta X – Pro FPV Piloting Gimbal (Servo Tilt)
Medlin Drone single-axis “Timing Belt” FPV gimbal designed to mount to a Freefly Alta X. Pre-built Alta X Piloting Gimbal and ‘AIO’ available here! This gimbal improves your ability to navigate complex environments and track subjects, allowing full view above and bellow the craft. It can be controlled via a dial/slider, head tracking, and various other methods. This is the…
Whoop FPV Gimbal
This is a FPV Gimbal designed for whoops/micros that mounts to a standard whoop board (26mm x 26mm). Kits and Pre-Builts available at the Medlin Drone Store! Files on Thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5733796 Long overdue, I have finally made a tiny whoop gimbal to practice and enjoy flying with a FPV gimbal, via head tracking or other means of…
Timing Belt Linkage – The Ultimate Solution?
This is a rough account of the design progression of the Timing-Belt FPV Gimbal. It doesn’t cover every hurdle or design revision, just some of the major points of progression. First thoughts (Approx 6/15/22): I have recently had my kits and designs get in front of more people at higher levels. This has provided me…
TBS Tango 2 and Mambo – Head Tracker Compatibility – The Saga
Unfortunately, the TBS Tango 2 and Mambo aren’t currently compatible with the head tracker. I have talked to TBS about this, they said they could make it compatible with a firmware update (to allow a ‘wired trainer’ function) but didn’t say if/when they would. The more people that reach out to them the more likely…
FPV Gimbal + “Cheater Quad”
Flying with a head tracking FPV gimbal allows backwards flight while maintaining framing on a subject. However, it can be risky to fly backwards for a long distance or through obstacles, a visual observer can help confirm safe trajectory, but I wanted to see if a ‘Cheater Quad’ setup could help solve this problem. For…
Yaw Head Tracking
For those who don’t want to read all of this, flying with yaw head tracking works and is flyable. I have flown a dual-axis gimbal (pitch and roll) head tracking setup, but until recently had not tried using yaw head tracking. There are a few reasons for that I’ll get into later but considering the…
Replacing Vertical Servo Mount with Push-Through Servo Mount
The servo is large 40x40x20mm and a lot of frames do not have the space required for horizontally mounting the servo to the top plate between the front four standoffs the same way the Terraplane does. I had solved this by mounting the servo vertically, this worked well at first but once I switched over…
Cinelifter FPV Gimbal
It’s here. Still a work in progress, but the design works well enough for me to start teasing it. In my opinion no one should be using this with head tracking until they have mastered it on a smaller and less dangerous setup. It is worth mentioning that this (and all Medlin Drone gimbals) will…
Head Tracking FPV Gimbal Simulator with VR Goggles
Until recently, the only way I have known of for someone to learn to fly with a head tracking FPV gimbal has been to have a drone in the air. This is a significant problem since when learning it is easy to get disoriented and crash. I was not aware of any simulator that supported…
Fully Switching to the Universal Mount FPV Gimbal
Announcing a full switch to the Universal Mount for standard single-axis FPV gimbals. It works well. It simplifies and increases consistency across different designs. It has excellent durability and camera protection, it’s smaller and looks cool, it’s just better, and it feels like a much more optimized system. My whole fleet is already switched over,…
Universal FPV Gimbal + Quark Stabilizer
The dual axis head tracking FPV gimbal is very difficult to use effectively, I am still practicing with it occasionally but for now I believe a single axis is more practical. However, someone (PKNEXUS) brought up the idea on discord to have “a single axis gimbal on the roll for the gopro only, with pitch…
Adding a FPV Gimbal to a Multirotor
Here are tutorials for adding different types of Medlin Drone FPV Gimbals: Seem like too much work? The store sells a selection of Fully Pre-Built Gimbal Drones!
Adding a Head Tracker to Your Setup
This tutorial is for adding a prebuilt or DIY head tracker to a FPV setup. Open-source firmware and configuration software can be found here and open-source designs by Medlin Drone can be found here. This should be applicable for any transmitter running OpenTX that has a 3.5mm auxiliary trainer port, there are SBUS and wireless…
Transmitter Auxiliary Port Fix – Radiomaster TX16S
The TX16S is my current preferred transmitter, however it has an issue with the aux port for the head tracker, you have to pull the plug out slightly to get it to work and sometimes it will unexpectedly disconnect. This is a known issue but I have found a solution. You can open the transmitter…
FPV Gimbal – Universal Camera Mount
This is a FPV gimbal design that accepts any camera via the standard action camera ‘tab’ mount. This is compatible with all existing kits and tutorials and with almost all of the existing Medlin Drone gimbal designs, mounting on the standard Medlin Drone 20mm bearing housing, and will work with analog, DJI, and Shark Byte,…
Gimbal Design Options: Wire vs. Steering Linkage vs. Direct-Drive/On-Servo vs. Geared Drive
I want to cover why I have been designing gimbals with wire linkages, and discuss some of the potential advantages and disadvantages of some of the best alternate design options, and why I may start to adopt them. Wire Linkage: The main advantages of a a wire linkage are durability, flexible application, good performance, and…
Dual-Axis FPV Gimbal
I have finally tried building and flying a dual axis FPV gimbal, with camera pitch and roll being dynamically controlled via head tracking. I wanted to know if this would be possible to fly in acro, how difficult it would be to learn, and if it would be practical. I want to briefly discuss what…
Waterproof and Weather Resistant
The LDX-218 seems to be fully waterproof and can handle freezing temperatures, extreme heat hasn’t been tested yet but it will likely not be affected by it.
Flight Tips – First Flights with FPV Gimbal
This is a set of tips and recommendations for trying out a head tracking gimbal for the first time.
How-To 3D Print a FPV Gimbal
This is a quick run down on how to print a Medlin Drone FPV Gimbal. Print in TPU, 100% infill, 0.2mm resolution, supports enabled, print on the side such that the hinge profile is not sliced by layers, reference the pictures bellow. I recommend using ‘harder’ TPU filament, as it aids in stiffness for the…
Do You Need a Head Tracker?
No, there’s a limitless selection of alternatives that will work to control the gimbal/servo, and you can also set up a switch that changes control of the gimbal from various inputs. For example, a three-position switch can change control between the head tracker, a slider on the transmitter, and a constant value or Betaflight function…
DJI Digital – FPV Gimbal
I finally have built and tested a FPV gimbal with DJI digital. I have not adopted DJI digital and have so far stuck with analog, for many reasons. However, it has become very prevalent in the FPV community and industry, so I have included support for it in my designs and am testing with it.…
FPV Gimbal – Camera Mount Options
Many of the open source gimbal designs share the same 20mm bearing housing, this means that for most designs the only frame-specific part is the base, while the top/camera mount is cross-compatible between all designs that share the 20mm bearing housing. This doesn’t mean that they will all work perfectly on any base/frame, this just…
Configuration and Setup for Adding a FPV Gimbal to a Multirotor
This is a tutorial for the setup and configuration required when adding a FPV Gimbal to a Multirotor. Seem like too much work? The store sells a selection of Fully Pre-Built Gimbal Drones! Steps: Joshua Bardwell made a video on adding a servo to a FPV drone, if you prefer that format follow his video…
3D Printable Accessories
This post will contain an assortment of accessories related to head tracking gimbals for FPV drones. Servo Wire Bending Jig for 1mm Servo Wire (20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, and 32mm): https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4957904Apex RC Servo Horn Sleeve/Insert for 1mm Servo Wire: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4983071Camera Cap for GoPro-specific designs: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4957902Gyroflow – Cold Shoe GoPro Tab Mount: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5242803
FPV Gimbal vs. 360 Camera
The new capabilities of a FPV gimbal drone share some of the advantages of a 360 “invisible drone”, originally pioneered by Stan-FPV. I am yet to operate one of these “invisible drones” but have been intrigued for a while in how they deal with some of the limitations of a traditional FPV drone. It’s along…
On-Servo Design
I have started tinkering with a design where the top “hinge” rotates directly on the servos axle instead of having a secondary axle and linkage. This would provide some advantages if it were able to produce smooth movement but will also have some notable disadvantages, worth testing though. Will update post after initial testing. Update:…
My Setup and Gear
The head tracker doesn’t add much to the overall system once it’s set up and working, I use the same carrying cases and bag. Your gear doesn’t need to match this to use a head tracking gimbal, the only thing you need is to verify that your transmitter supports a trainer function via an auxiliary…
Servo vs. Brushless Gimbal
The intention is to try both. I have started with an assumption that servos will provide the best general-purpose support among other advantages, but the DJI FPV drone uses a brushless gimbal for camera pitch so my concerns may be invalid, regardless of that here are my initial thoughts on it. General Application A concern…
Finding the Right Servo in the Wrong Places
In my early testing I did a lot of tests with a lot of expensive RC servos (consider supporting Medlin Drone), only to find that each new servo had the same twitchy movement of the last, even the programmable servos tuned to maximum dampening vibrated the camera when moving. But then I tried the LDX-218,…
New Capabilities of FPV Drones with Head Tracking Gimbals
FPV drones have been limited in the types of footage they can capture, unable to replicate what standard cinematography drones can create. The addition of a gimbal on a FPV drone allows it to seamlessly transition from dynamic “proximity” flying into more traditional (non-FPV) drone shots, and vice versa, as well as a whole new…
Early Designs
After some early testing I started to make some changes to the gimbal designs Andy Shin had made, reinforcing the hinge and even experimenting with designs that intentionally added friction to the hinge in addition to a sprung servo linkage in an attempt to stop the servo jitters from making it to the camera. I…
Early Testing
Initial testing was more for the viability of a head tracking gimbal on a FPV drone than anything else, I had the idea several months back and after finishing some work on my home it was time to give it a shot and see if it would be flyable. For initial testing I used the…
Head Tracking FPV Gimbals for Multirotors
This sub-system significantly augments the flight dynamics and capabilities of FPV drones, taking them from four degrees of freedom to five. This allows FPV drones to capture more traditional (non-FPV) drone shots and seamlessly transition to dynamic “proximity” flying, and vice versa, as well as a whole new set of maneuvers. FPV pilots have gotten…
Follow My Blog
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
Medlin Drone 