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A simple two-axis gimbal built using two servo motors, an mpu6050 gyro and accelerometer sensor, and an Arduino (Uno).

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Makeshift Gimbal Project

A simple two-axis gimbal built using two servo motors, an mpu6050 gyro and accelerometer sensor, and an Arduino (Uno).

image

A short documentation for this can be found in the Arduino Project Hub. It was built for a workshop conducted in my university in the month of April, 2021.

Here is a helpful tutorial that I took reference of for building this project.

What is a Gimbal? 📝

Gimbals are used to stabilise camera payloads that have been mounted on drones and other autonomous vehicles.

WORKING: The gimbal integrated an IMU (MPU6050) that responds to motion and provides inputs to a controller that activates separate motors to keep the payload steady on each axis.

Components Used 🧮

Before starting on this project, make sure to go through this checklist:

Component Amount Utility
Arduino Uno x1 Microcontroller
MPU6050 Accelerometer & Gyroscope x1 Tilt sensing
Micro servo motors x2 Actuators for stabilizing payload

Schematics 🏗️

Make the connections between your components as follows:

MPU6050

  • Connect VCC on the MPU6050 to the 5V pin on the Arduino.
  • Connect GND on the MPU6050 to the GND on the Arduino.
  • Connect SCL on the MPU6050 to A5 on the Arduino.
  • Connect SDA on the MPU6050 to A4 on the Arduino.

The SDA & SCL pins establish the I2C Serial Communication between the Arduino and the MPU6050.

Servo 1

  • Connect VCC (red jumper) on servo motor to 5V pin on Arduino
  • Connect GND (black jumper) on servo to GND pin on Arduino
  • Connect the signal jumper (yellow) on servo to pin 3 on Arduino

Servo 2

  • Connect VCC (red jumper) on servo motor to 5V pin on Arduino
  • Connect GND (black jumper) on servo to GND pin on Arduino
  • Connect the signal jumper (yellow) on servo to pin 6 on Arduino

Pin 3 & 6 give PWM signals to the respective servo motors to move them to our desired orientation.

Code 💻

The code is given above and the project report for this workshop can also be found.

The Setup 🛠️

image

As I didn't have a 3D printer available for physically implimenting the gimbal, I used scrap thermocol ♻️ to join the two servos perpendicularly to make the two-axis gimbal.

The following research paper discusses 3 axis gimbals with 3 degrees of freedom, namely: roll, pitch & yaw. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326995081_Three_Axis_Gimbal_Design_and_Its_Application

The gimbal we are creating will work on 2 axis and hence will only have 2 degrees of freedom: roll & pitch.

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A simple two-axis gimbal built using two servo motors, an mpu6050 gyro and accelerometer sensor, and an Arduino (Uno).

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