I am interested in using the Osmo Unit on a motorcycle (road touring), mounting it using the Bike Mount on either the handle bar or crash bar. The stabilisation feature should work well for the general riding and bumps in the road, however I would be interested to know if the engine vibration would impact the video quality or can the stabilisation feature also offest this aspect. The motrocycle is a larger adventure type, however there can be some vibration at various speeds. Can anyone comment on this?

I'm surprised there's no demo footage at all from a bike-mounted Osmo. No mountain bike footage, no motorcycle footage.  Nothing. All we have is one single promo picture of the Osmo attached to a mountain bike on the DJI homepage.

What we need is some actual video! I'm wondering how the Osmo deals with rough terrain when attached to a mountain bike. When holding the Osmo and walking, there's already a natural cushioning of hard motion, but not when attached to a bike. And your point about motorcycle vibration is a good one. The only clue might be that when attached to an Inspire 1, vibration doesn't seem to be a problem. Motorcycle vibration would be a lot more intense though than the Inspire. To be honest I think a GoPro is the better choice for mountain biking and motorcycles - until I see proof otherwise. You want a rugged camera anyway for those applications, and the Osmo is not rugged.

ke-now Posted at 2015-10-21 06:52
I'm surprised there's no demo footage at all from a bike-mounted Osmo. No mountain bike footage, no  ...

I wonder if it is designed for that type of use?

Calvette Posted at 2015-10-21 11:17
I wonder if it is designed for that type of use?

It was clearly designed for that type of use, otherwise they wouldn't have the accessories or show it attached to a mountain bike.

As it dones't seem to have any vibration absorbers, it might not be able to remove all vibrations that would occur during motocycle or mountain biking. However, it looks like the bike mount does have a stabilizing rod of some sort , so my guess is that it might be able to absorb some shocks/vibrations.

Anything will be better than simply attaching a gopro.

AirborneNinja Posted at 2015-10-21 17:28
It was clearly designed for that type of use, otherwise they wouldn't have the accessories or show ...

The video I get from my gopro is useless when mounted on my bike. OSMO looks a bit soft for off road use.  Looking forward to the videos in the days to come.

AirborneNinja Posted at 2015-10-22 08:28
It was clearly designed for that type of use, otherwise they wouldn't have the accessories or show ...

GoPros are usually attached to the rider's helmet, so mechanical vibration isn't a concern.

It remains to be seen whether footage from the Osmo attached to handlebars is better than footage captured from GoPro attached to helmet. Due to the more compact, rugged design of GoPro, I don't think the Osmo will be pushing into the off-road cycling market with much force.

Highway cycling and motorcycling is another matter, Osmo footage should be nice and smooth there. But it's still less practical than a GoPro (or any helmet mounted sports camera) and prone to dust and dirt.

I'd love to see some video of the Osmos performance on a motorcycle under high g-force. I've seen a lot of gimbals struggle to maintain horizon when exposed to higher centrifugal forces for extended amounts of time, like a 180 degree turn @ 165mph with 50/55 deg. of horizontal roll/lean. From what I understand, without a reference to "ground speed" it is difficult to calculate the "frame orientation" in these situations.

I'd hate to invest in this solution to find it will not work for my application, not that it would be useless, but I would still need to find another solution.

One other option that would make the Osmo a more attractive solution for the "Action Sports" market would be a divorced handle/gimbal mounting option allowing for mounting in tighter locations.

One question I do have is directly to the smooth track settings available. There is an option for acceleration, would this allow the gimbal to be tuned to actually "pan" the camera faster than the handle? I ask as all of the 3-axis solutions I have viewed so far, when mounted in a forward facing direction on a motorcycle, the cameras focal point drifts to the outside of the turn, opposite of what I would like to see. Ideally, the camera would track to the "inside" of the turn, keeping the track/competitors in view. When the camera is rear facing, the slower pan response is actually beneficial as it does look to the inside of the turn effectively capturing the track/competition in frame.

<--- Willing test mule for anyone in SoCal          

TrueNorthStar Posted at 2016-1-6 04:20
I'd love to see some video of the Osmos performance on a motorcycle under high g-force. I've seen a  ...

You can try to adjust the smoothtrack settings of the gimbal, max speed 100, deadband 0, max acceleration 30. Also, then it's in torchlight mode, the camera will always point to the forward direction since pan is disabled in this mode so I guess it will not drift out of the course.