so ive been running a GoPro Hero12 on a 3-axis gimbal (the hohem iSteady Pro 4, not the most exotic thing i know) mounted under my 5inch freestyle build and the horizon drift is driving me insane. like it'll be perfectly level at takeoff and then 4-5 minutes into a flight it starts creeping maybe 2-3 degrees to the left. not enough to ruin everything but enough that i notice it in post and its annoying as hell to correct in premiere.

ive already done the calibration dance like three times, reset the IMU on the gimbal, checked that the camera isnt sitting crooked in the mount. the mount itself is a printed TPU thing i grabbed off printables which i guess could be part of the problem but it seemed solid when i was fiddling with it on the bench. vibration dampening is two layers of o-rings between the stack and the mount plate.

anyone dealt with this kind of slow drift before? im wondering if its a motor fatigue thing or if the gimbal just doesnt play nice with the vibration profile of a 5inch. or maybe theres a pid setting on the gimbal app im missing. open to ideas before i just throw money at a different gimbal.

had almost the exact same thing on a different gimbal, turned out my motor on the roll axis was getting warm and losing torque. you can usually feel it if you run it on the bench for like 10 minutes and then try to resist the roll axis gently with your finger - if it feels weaker than when it was cold, that's probably it. the hohem motors are fine but they're not exactly overbuilt for high-vibe 5inch setups. also check your follow speed settings, sometimes if they're too aggressive the gimbal kind of chases vibration instead of filtering it and that can look like drift over time.

the TPU mount could also be contributing if it has any flex in the yaw axis specifically. even a tiny amount of torsional flex will confuse the IMU because it's seeing slow rotation that isnt really there.

might be a dumb question but are you calibrating it on a level surface or just like on your workbench that might not actually be level? i was fighting drift for weeks and my bench had like a 1 degree slope i never noticed. made the gimbal think level was slightly off from the start and it never recovered in flight lol