Drone Buddy Gimbal Controller

I decided to pull my drone out of the void. Since getting my 3-axis camera gimbal tuned and stable, it was destined to be mounted to the 5-foot, 8 propeller behemoth. Long story short, the landing gear was purchased and the mounting plate was custom made to connect it all together. Here's a photo with a test acrylic mount plate:

The acrylic plate is that white piece at the base of the landing gear pivot. I then landed on it and everything toppled over when it broke. I suspected this might happen. I learned nothing.

The pant/tilt movements of the camera and the landing gear retract were paired to the controller. This is great for multitaskers, because there's nothing more fun than steering a brick while trying to fiddle with a camera. I can only assume the GPS will give out when I least suspect it, and I'll need full control over a safe landing.

Queue coworker: "You should get another remote for the camera and we can fly that thing."

That's great, but I'm not going to buy a second remote. That's too easy and I still learn nothing. For the record, that would be the best and most professional method to deal with this problem.

Anyways here's what I'm doing.

After a few iterations, I made (3D print, laser, Plasti Dip, etc) a nice little remote. It has an Ethernet port on the back that will interface with the 16 channel Taranis RC remote, allowing control by two people with the same transmitter. It will pan/tilt the camera, allow roll control, reset the gimbal, and enable/disable the gimbal motors. This way I don't have to land in order to fix resonant jitter issues. There's an extra potentiometer for expand-ability but mostly symmetry.

I've done all the recon and found the pots I'm using work well with the RC remote, it just needs a change in wiring harness to facilitate this. The drone will have a second receiver to accommodate the added channels for resetting the gimbal and roll control, which leads to the sane conclusion of just get a second remote and don't risk making a mess of things. But we're all about learning on this blog.

Shout out to Vetco of Bellevue for the JST PH connectors. They're not free but hey they exist.Stay tuned...