DiA Compact tilt camera system
This is an experiment in making the most compact tilt camera system for FPV quads and planes. The main idea is to make the whole system in the size of the full-size fpv camera. So the whole system could be placed into standard mounts without a hassle.
You’ll need a longer screw for link mount to attach it to the camera.
Experiment with position and the length of the link and the angle of the arm. With all combination, you can set the camera to be more down tilt or up tilt, but unfortunately not both. There is no space for different linkage to make tilting wider.
Download files from Thingiverse.com/thing:3053840
Setup and configuration
This setup requires spare PWM-output for servo usage and most 4 motor FC’s has 4 ESC signal pads and RGB-led pad that can be used with less hassle. But I need 4 motors and I need also the RGB-leds. I had CLRacing F4S and Pyrodrone F4 FC but no luck with them.
But if you don’t need the rgb-leds, then you can use any FC that has this pad.
I’ve got Airbot’s OmniNXT F7 FC that has 6 PWM outputs for motors and servos. But it still required some remapping.
Here we go, at the beginning, I wrote two options for RGB-pad and 5th motor signal pad.
RGB-pad option
First, we need to find out the RGB-pad’s address.
In CLI type resource
command and find in the list where the LED_STRIP is assigned. In Pyrodrone FC it looks like this
resource LED_STRIP 1 B08
So the address is B08.
Now we should free this resource by typing
resource LED_STRIP 1 none
And now we assign SERVO 1 resource to this address
resource SERVO 1 B08
Remember to save the changes by typing save
🙂
Now we have the first servo assigned to led-pad.
In Betaflight’s Configuration tab disable LED_STRIP option.
5th motor signal pad option
First, we have to find out the address of S5 pad. You can check the current resource list by typing resource
in CLI. Different FCs have different resource maps.
There you may see MOTOR 5 or PWM 5 or such. If you are lucky, there could be already SERVO 1 assigned to it. If there is no info about S5 pad, try to google it. If there is no luck. Use voltage meter beeper and try to trace down to which STM’s leg it is traced. Then google this chip leg map and you’ll see the address on the traced leg.
In my situation, on OmniNXT F7 FC, S5 and S6 signal pads didn’t have any resources assigned. So google told me that S5 and S6 pad have C08 and C09 addresses. Used C08 at first, but turned out that they are reversed. S5 is C09 and S6 is C08.
So next we are going to assign servo resource to it
resource SERVO 1 C09
Now we have the first servo assigned to S5 pad.
Configuration continues here:
In Betaflight’s Configuration tab enable SERVO_TILT option.
Now enable Expert Mode and go to Servo tab.
There Servo 0 presents a SERVO 1 resource. So we are gonna use it. Just tap the channel you’ve configured your transmitter input to. Check a correct aux in Receiver tab. Remember to save.
You can now check in the Motors tab that first servo is moving accordingly to your knob’s movement.
If you have soldered already servo’s signal wire to S5 pad, you should see servo moving.
2018-08-31 *Version add**
I did longer version of this body for those who don’t want to remove the connector or want to use bigger cameras like Spilt Mini. But this will require 10mm more space in the quad.