GoPro SteadiCam Gimbal for Kayak

thingiverse

I've gotten a lot of questions about how to mount and use this piece, so I'll tell you what I did for my needs. I used a 5/16 inch (Freedom Units) tap to create threads in the bottom hole if the center part of the gimbal. A comparable metric tap should work. I put a bit of plumber's thread tape on a foot-long 5/16" threaded rod and screwed that into the tapped hole. I then used two nuts and two lock washers to secure an entire package of large washers onto the rod for a counterweight (A big thanks to the open source telescope community for that idea!). As for mounting it on my boat, I use two different solutions. On my rotomolded sit-on-top, I use a Scotty #135 Portable Camera/Compass Mount attached to a Scotty #429 Extended Gear Head Adapter seated in a Scotty #344-BK Round Flush Deck Mounting Bracket. For my thermoformed sit-inside boat, I use a Delkin Fat Gecko mount with an extender rod. Combine the gimbal pieces with VikingScientist's helm-cam selfie arm (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:233185) or a comparable GoPro arm and create a waterproof SteadiCam that doesn't need its own set of batteries. This is more of an assembly/adaptation job than an original creation. My big contribution here is an obtuse butchering of foucteau's gimbal center: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1854908 I filled in the center using TinkerCAD, slapped Ghir0's convenient GoPro mount on top of it like a LEGO brick, and put a hole in the bottom for a 5/16ths threaded rod. The v2 gimbal center has been updated with a smaller diameter hole for the threaded rod and a raised GoPro mount to give the camera more movement clearance. Also, a big thanks to flahut59, who re-sized the bearing holes on fouctou’s original gimbal design, so we no longer have to crack that piece when assembling the parts. TinkerCAD file for center: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/6ecg42xJSma-gopro-gimbal-center