The RS 3 mini gimbal is on a flat surface using the tripod legs. It is well-balanced.

When I aim the camera at a 45-degree angle down using the joystick control it can maintain that position until a few seconds over a minute, and then it goes foobar. Foobar means that the motors release, stabilization is turned off, and the camera reverts to its naturally balanced position. I cannot seem to record using the gimbal in a kind of tripod head mode where you can position a camera to a specific angle for a long period of time.

Why would I want this? To record a quick segment of manual manipulation of a small object without having to take the camera off of the gimbal. So I shoot a video of a repair operation while moving with the camera and then make small video segments on a table showing detailed repair operations using the gimbal as I would a tripod. It's extremely convenient but the timeout is a real bother as repair operations take about 3 minutes.


The gimbal does not maintain the 45-degree angle position after about a minute.

Is this a timeout function in the real-time operating system when a position is set using the joystick? Is it the current draw of the motors that resets the gimbal or a timeout function? I cannot find mention of this in the user manual.


Can anyone duplicate this? Timeout? Thanks in advance.

Oh, the gimbal beeps and the message is: "Gimbal locked or unbalanced. Confirm sleep mode".

I now believe that at angles greater than 45 degrees, pointing downward the camera and lens are too heavy for the motors. Most likely after a minute a special resistor heats up and causes an open circuit which triggers the sleep mode. LEGO has these resistors in ther old power packs with the 6AA batteries. Too much current draw causes the resistor to open the cirtuit. I have ordered some weights and will try to see if adding a counterweight to the lens will solve this problem. It should.