Spec-ing out the parts

We know we want something stable that can fly for decent periods of time. So it should be easy, right? Wrong. We can't just buy a Phantom and stick a 360 camera on it. The footage will be unstable. So we'll need something that has (what's known as) a gimbal on it. A camera gimbal (usually) uses brushless motors to counteract the tilt of a multirotor vehicle. Multirotors (as we said before) tilt to travel in different directions. We don't want our camera tilting along with it. Otherwise, every course correction will send viewers tilting and twitching in all sorts of ways. We want very smooth footage. You can see what a camera gimbal looks like in the following image:

Of course, our proof of concept gimbal won't be anything near this elaborate but the principle of their operation is the same. We need something to dampen vibration, and counter the constant tilting and rolling of a multicopter.

But we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves. What's a nice, inexpensive camera...