this has been bugging me for a while now. running a 3 axis gimbal on a 5inch freestyle build (i know, i know) and about 2-3 minutes into a flight the roll axis just starts drifting. doesnt matter if im hovering or moving. it corrects itself sometimes if i do a hard maneuver but then drifts again.

calibrated it about five times at this point. checked the ribbon cables, they look fine. gimbal is an older one, not gonna say which because last time i did someone just told me to buy a better one which wasnt helpful. motors on the gimbal get warm but not hot. firmware is current.

my best guess right now is either a heat issue causing the IMU on the gimbal to go weird, or maybe vibration from the main motors is feeding through the mount and confusing the stabilization. i used fairly stiff standoffs for the mount which was probably a mistake in hindsight. anyone dealt with something like this

the stiff mount is almost certainly part of it. gimbals really need some vibration isolation between them and the frame or the internal IMU just gets hammered with noise and the stabilization algorithm cant tell whats intentional movement vs vibration. i use a small stack of o-rings and it made a huge difference. the gimbal IMU is trying to sense actual rotation but if its sitting on a rigid mount attached to four screaming motors its fighting a loosing battle basically.

the heat thing could also be real though. some of the older gimbal controllers have an IMU that drifts with temperature, theres usually a setting to enable temperature compensation in the config software if yours has it. might be worth digging into the advanced settings if you havent already.

check the ribbon cables again but actually flex them this time while the gimbal is powered. had one that looked completely fine visually but had a partial break inside the insulation and it would only lose connection when it got warm and expanded slightly. took me forever to find that one