Ghetto DIY DJI Osmo

Hi there, this week we have seen the release of the DJI Osmo handheld gimbal camera, which, as most people in the hobby will know, enables the camera handler to record super smooth and steady video footage even as you swing your arm or rotate/pivot. The RRP for this slick-tech is a smooth £549/$850. Throw in a selfie stick extension for another £43/$67 and it's quickly approaching almost £600/$1000!

Can we build this ourselves for ghetto cheap?

Behold! The Gh-osmo!

I built this about 6-8 months ago as an experiment to see if I could extened the usefulness of my DIY 3-axis drone camera gimbal that I have had for a couple of years. It works really really well, and I'm far and away pleased with the footage I get. Here's an example of footage:

(recorded at 1080p 60fps speeded up using Xiaomi Yi)

The quick list of features include:

- Xiaomi Yi Action Camera (Super-cheap sub-£50 2.5k camera)

- Cheap 2-axis Aluminium gimbal

      - Upgraded to 3-axis using:
          -2212 DYD gimbal motor

          -3rd axis extension board (depending on the version of Alexmos board you get)

-Cheap £1 selfie stick

-Xiaomi Bluetooth remote control

-Sony PSP thumbstick (tilt control)

-610mah 3s lipo battery

-Lipo alarm buzzer

Extra DIY parts: Small scrap wood dowel pieces, old pcb board cut for 3rd axis mounting, I designed a 3d printed xiaomi bluetooth remote holder, and also a CP Filter mount for slicker camera footage. 

I can live view, pause, record, snap and adjust with my smartphone, I can stop & record with the bluetooth remote, I can tilt using the PSP thumstick, I can extend the selfie stick for height footage, the gimbal is setup to follow-mode so that it, well, look that one up. Put it all together and you get something like this:

Costs were about 1/7th the cost (about £90/$140), but I already had most of the parts, and I just 3d printed the things I needed so I didn't actually pay anything more.

Happy Ghetto filming kids. Keep off the pipe.