compensate drifting of gimbal

[maiermic]

The BaseCam gimbals tend to drift over time (if no axis is rotated). Maybe this won't happen if the camera is mounted in a better balanced way or if the configuration of the gimbal is tuned more precisely to the camera. However, a straight forward solution/workaround is: Add a controller to compensate drifting of the gimbal.

[maiermic]

Maybe this can be fixed by calibrating accelerometer and gyroscope

[maiermic]

Drifting does not occur on my current profile 2 of my gimbal (Ikan Beholder DS2-A), but on profile 1 with a mounted Panasonic DMC-LF1.

[maiermic]

The difference between profile 1 and profile 2 is that "Follow mode" option "Follow YAW: repeat the angle of a frame by YAW axis" is enabled in profile 2. I enabled it in profile 1 and the drifting only seems to occur for a one minute after powering on. Then it stabilizes.

[maiermic]

Even though the gimbal may drift less (with profile 1 and 2), it still drifts very slowly in one direction. This can be seen more clearly when zoomed in.

[maiermic]

In a recent test run with profile 2, it took 5 minutes for the gimbal to drift 1 degree. The angles returned by the gimbal API (UART) remain the same. Thereby, I could point the camera to a fixed point, get the current angle from the gimbal API, wait 5 minutes, move the gimbal to the fixed point (compensate the drift manually), get the current angle from the gimbal API and compare it with the old angle (5 minutes ago). Coincidentally, the difference was approximately 1 degree.