A Better Camera Pan & Tilt Idea?

[ttucker]

Does anyone have a better solution for an on-board camera pan & tilt mechanism? I use the familiar two servo solution with camera riding on top of the pan servo and a micro servo on the back for tilt.

However, I'm looking for a solution that is more low profile, compact and with minimum chance of picture vibration. My current solution is just too high of profile, sticking up into the air slip stream. I can't sink the pan servo down into my wing much further or it will be coming out the bottom! I'm thinking of something that perhaps places the camera on a small turn table with pivot bearing, with the pan servo behind the camera, doing the pan with a push rod or something rather underneath. I can live without a tilt, opting for some type of manual adjustment but tilt is the easy part if using a micro servo on the back of the camera.

Any ideas to share?

[Reverand Blue Chip]

I thought about this as well... from a profile perspective - I would think that a hinged mech with a pushrod would be the best available option.

[SENTRY]

The bigger question is why you need tilt on a wing. With pan only you solve your problem - and quite easily I might add.

[ttucker]

Well like I said I can live without remote tilt but tilt is simple and dosen't add to height profile. My goal is to reduce height profile. I saw a YouTube clip some time ago using some type of swivel. I'll look at the hinge idea but sounds like that might have too much slop. Tollerances need to be extremely tight

[volto]

On my glider I use a micro 5v camera with heatshrink and hot glue to make it more aerodynamic, and the hobbyking mini pan/tilt mechanism, with the pan servo sunk down into the canopy it has a really small drag profile. I believe it's this one: http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...dProduct=11442

[ttucker]

Yea nice.

[ColoradoFlightMedic]

I just dont like how all of those pre-made systems rely on support from the pan servo rotor. There's a lot of leverage with the camera mounted above it, that it can easily snap the rotor, or the horn on a rough landing, or worse, it can happen in mid-air! I gave up on my pan/tilt for now in favor of reliability... I think making a separate swivel mount that's driven by a pan servo would be a much safer option.

[ttucker]

Yea, I've definitely thought of the stress of the camera mount on the servo output shaft as well. However, I've never damaged a pan servo yet, even in very rough landings. I do use the pan function quite a bit, it's quicker than banking the wing around all of the time.

[Hucker]

#define FANTASY (1)

What would be really cool for pan/tilt would be to use a HD sensor with a fish/eye lense and then use software to build the StdDef image based on pan/tilt inputs. It might have some limitations on the field of view, but it would be a fixed mount with no moving parts. If you could use an fpga to do the math you might keep the latency down... If it worked you could even do a little bit of roll stabilization.

#undef FANTASY

[ColoradoFlightMedic]

^ That's definitely some outside the box thinking, and and an interesting concept... But I'm a K.I.S.S. person myself!