The aim of this project is to be able to use the 3-axis DJI gimbal with a custom open source controller. This high quality gimbal is very tiny and easy to find as replacement part which makes it very suitable for DIY projects.
The Gimbal is composed of a flex PCB with a main connector and 3 smaller for each motor. The main end connector is a 40-pin mezzanine board to board connectors. In order to work easily I have designed a breakout board which open to a 2.54" header.
Connected directly to a MCU and with the Simple FOC Library, open-loop control works quite well. However due to open-loop control, it cannot know when a "step" is missed so misalignment can occur. Also, the motor tends to become quite hot due to the continuous current sent to the coils.
Each motor is composed of two ratiometric linear hall sensors. (Texas Instrument DRV5053 Analog-Bipolar Hall Effect Sensor) They are placed at around 120º from each other (eyes measured) and measure the magnetic field of the rotor.
Ratiometric means that the output signal is proportional to the voltage supply to the sensor. In this setup, with 5V supply, the output measured is between 520mV and 1.5V, so a 1V amplitude.
Since the 2 signals correspond to a cos and sin signals, it is possible to compute the angle inside the period using arctan2 function. However, we have more than one period, it is so necessary to increment a position.
$$\theta= atan2(a,b)$$
2. Incremental position
To increment the position, it is necessary to start from 0 at a known postion. For that the motor is moved in open loop to one end and the position is set to 0.
Then we need to sum all the delta of movement at each measure sample.
In order to compute the angle from the cos and sin with atan, it is necessary to remap the values of the analog readings from -1 to 1.
Beforehand, the maximum and minimum peak of the signals need to be found. It can be done by swiping the motor on startup in open-loop mode.
Then the arctan function can be applied. It is preferable to use arctan2 as it will give an angle within the 4 quadrants (-π,π). Whereas arctan give an angle between (-π/2,π/2). [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atan2)