Hi community,
i want to make 3 axis gimbal with encoder feedback, i searched the forum i couldnt find. Do anyone tried it before?
Regards
There was an effort by someone, long time ago, not sure if it was successful. I believe the problems that person encountered were, first there is no small BLCD board that fit the profile, and second, that the MCU with acceleration sensor (Nano BLE or something like that) was not available due to the current chip shortage.
Designing an integrated gimbal solution requires custom hardware with real-time communication among five components: two BLDC controllers, two very fast and very accurate angle sensors and one central MCU with an accelerometer controlling the two BLDCs.
Which means you need to get someone to design you the hardware, or design it yourself, or make it from separate parts, some of which may not be available due to the chip shortage.
Cheers,
Valentine
PS. It may be better to just buy a gimbal solution. Unless you are trying to design a commercial one. This is a hobby board, it may be hard to get commercial advice, though not impossible.
PPS. I designed a board with an integrated sensor on the back, this may got the profile for the BLDC board, however you need to integrate this into a much bigger solution and write your own gimbal code.
However this is a paper design, I haven’t even tested it. I mean, I got the board but as this is a hobby project, I have no idea when do I get time to test it.
PPPS. Seems JLC carries accelerometers, in stock, SPI and I2C comms, should be pretty trivial to design a board using them. This may be a good time for you to try your hands at hardware design. Very cheap, too, $0.80 a piece.
Dear Borris,
Making a gimbal I think it can definitely be done, with time and patience. Some gimbals might use on-motor drivers, but others use a central controller board, and pass the wires through the hollow shaft of the gimbal motors.
Storm32 BGC 3.1 is an example of an inexpensive 3-axis controller board that can be made to work, and ST-Micro makes the STEVAL-GMBL02V1 which is even easier to use (but costs a bit more). I’ve made SimpleFOC run with FOC control of 3 motors on both of these boards, but it isn’t necessarily easy - these types of boards aren’t “mainstream” Arduino boards, so need more settings customization in your IDE before everything works.
But even though it should be possible, and a fun project, don’t underestimate the difficulty - it will be quite some work, and by the time you’ve finished your prototype it will definitely cost more than an off-the-shelf gimbal, which are available cheaply online.
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3-axis, I somehow read 2-axis. Well, same thing but three bldc boards and a main processing unit.
Unless as an educational project, I would not trust a $2000 camera to a home-soldered gimbal. An old phone may be but these are so cheap it’s not worth it.
Also, for the 3-rd axis you need a compass accelerometer, not just a simple x-y-z accelerometer. I’m assuming 3-rd axis is horizontal rotation.
Hi @Borris123,
I made a 1-axis gimbal with SimpleFOC:
- Hardware: NUCLEO-L476RG board, SimpleFOCShield controller, LSM6DSOX imu, GBM2804R motor, AS5048A sensor.
- Software: ST libraries.
To move forward to 2- or 3-axis, you need to consider both the hardware and software sides (as there seem to be no integrated open-source library available for gimbal control). My advice is to go for a commercial solution (STorM32-BGC or BaseCam SimpleBGC), as they seem to provide both the controller board and the software components (embedded + tuning app).
Great,
Could you please send me some detail information? Code etc.
Regards
There’s nothing I can give you as-is, as it is part of a bigger project and would require an extensive packaging effort. But I will gladly answer more precise questions.