DIY Gopro gimbal for airplane

This is my DIY Gopro camera gimbal, i am going to show you how to build it, so here we go :)

Step 1: Find a 2-3 mm thick plastic sheet, you will need about 25x15 cm. i just used a plastic lid.

-Tip: this plastic shaters really easy, so cut it with a exacto knife.  

-Tip: to further prevent shattering, put tape on the top, it will hold it together while you are cutting

Step 2: This is the base which holds the gopro in place. draw all the dimentions on the plastic and cut of the outside. then bend up the sides by the bend lines (Red lines) inwards, towards the gopro. do not bend the 2x2 cm flaps just yet, watch the pictures here below.

It should end up looking like this:

Then bend the remaining to flaps backwards.

 This is how the end product should look like, the gopro is able to sit nice and snugly like this.

 Step 3: now comes the finishing touch to the base, for this you need a soldering iron. you have ro melt the backpart and "side cheeks" together. this is done by melting one point at a time. if you try to melt it all together, it will be a mess. just dot the soldering iron on the joint line, making sure you hit both surfaces, and it schould melt together at that point.

Step 4: Now comes the fun part, adding the servoes and making the tilt mekanism. start of by adding you servo to one of the side-flaps(it doesn´t matter which side you choose) and place it with the servo axel (the turning thing the servo arm attaches to) making sure it sits in the virtical middle. Then drill a hole in the Flap right over the servo axel, and glue the servo in place. 

Then you have to make a pivot point on the other side. I used a Front wheel steering anker, which i cut in half. it works really nice and slopless. you can also use any pice of solid plastick which you drill a hole through. Just make sure it is placed with the axel at the same spot as the servo axel on the other side. If they arent properly aligned, it will be acting really wierd when tilting, most likely breaking.

Step 5: Now you have to make the Base holder. it is basically a U shaped piece of aluminium. Again, you can use whatever material which meets the properties of aluminium. it has to be the same with on the inside, as the camerabase with the servohorn attached to the servo. that way, it will all sandwich nice in beetween there.

Step 6: As you can see on the picture above, you have to drill 2 holes, again they have to be the same position on both sides. One to put the steelwire (3 mm in my case) through, and the otherone to be able to screw in the servo arm skrew. The holes are 5 cm up from the bottom.

Step 7: Now you have to ad the servo arms. the first one goes over the other hole in the Base holder, with the servo arm center right on top of the hole.

Then you have to drill a hole in the middle of the Base Holder, and ad the servo horn. 

  Step 8: Put it all together. Make sure that the servoes are centered when you connect the servo horns. Just squeze it in. the aluminium will have some give, and spring back, so you dont have to be to gentle when putting it in. 

And thats it. I changed the tilt servo to a standard insted of the 9 gram, it is alot smoother, and modified the servo for 180 Degree travel. David made a very good tutorial on RCexplorer which you can read all about here http://rcexplorer.se/diy/2010/08/180-servo-modification/ 

And here it is in working order.

Thanks for reading this article, i hope this inspires you to build this or something similar. and if you know any of the terminoligy, like what the servo axel or Side-Flap should be called, leave it in the comments so i can make it look nicer ;-)