I have this crazy goal of flying my mini to a homeless dude and droppping reese's peanut butter cups.  Problem is, adding a traditonal servo based payload release would add to much weight.  If some of you 3d prinint experts can come up with a design that uses the "camera pan down" as payload release trigger, that would be awesome!

Hello there trader6777. Thank you for reaching out and for sharing this information with us regarding putting and accessory to your DJI Mavic Mini for you to be able to give reese's peanut butter cups to a homeless person. Just a reminder that if an accessories are mounted to the DJI Mavic Mini, it is recommended to enable the Payload Mode for enhanced safety. Please note that the Maximum Service Ceiling above Sea Level is 1500m and the maximum flight speed is limited when the Payload Mode is enabled. In addition DJI does not recommend using a 3rd party accessory or modifying your DJI Mavic Mini for safety purposes. Finally, I hope that you will get the best feedback from our DJI co pilots with regards to this matter as well. Thank you and have as safe flight always.

Don't drop the peanut butter cups, just land and have people take them off the drone

You need to pan down to aim at your target though

djiuser_NEIdpTLAsofu Posted at 2020-6-24 17:19
You need to pan down to aim at your target though

Obviously they meant panning UP.  It's completely possible to fly and aim with a camera pointing straight down (I do this every weekend,  my 4yr old can even do it) and then trigger a drop by panning up.  Not sure why it took a genius to figure out what he meant lol.  I am interested in the same type of mechanism.  It makes no sense to add a servo to a drone when it already has one built in.  I had expected this to already exist and not have to re-invent the wheel,  but it appears no one has had the intelligence/creativity to do this yet.  It's going to require a harness for the camera (or duct tape if you're really cheap like me), a cam arm, a payload holding hook/device, some fishingline and/or gears (I dont think gears would actually be necessary but it does provide extra functionality that you cant get from string such as precision), and a trip mechanism on the holding hook/device.  It will be easy to 3D print all the required pieces.  Every design I've seen so far relies upon an external servo which imo is kinda dumb.  All that does is add unnecessary weight and possibly preserve the life of the camera servo,  nothing more.  I change drones every couple years anyway so I could careless about a worn out camera servo.  You also lose the camera stabilization,  but when your dropping something,  you dont care about taking stable videos.  All you care about is hitting the right spot while fishing or whatever.