Instrumentation Commons^™

Directional Camera Control On High Altitude Balloons, Matthew M. Plewa, Brent Scharlau

2017 Academic High Altitude Conference

The research reported in this paper examined the design and control of a gimbal for solar eclipse tracking and video recording. The gimbal design required 3 axes of rotation to allow for full range of motion. Utilizing individual brushless motors for each of the axes ensure minimum rotational requirements on each axes. In controlling the gimbal, both a mathematical and visual method were utilized. The mathematical method is a modified version of what is currently used for solar array pointing. The visual method looks at where the position of the sun is within the image and determines what angle changes …