I managed to get great aerial footage of whale sharks is Isla Mujeres by launching a quadcopter off of a 34-foot boat, but the flight controller (DJI NAZA v3.14) made the experience a pain in the butt because it refused to arm until the quadcopter was (relatively) still. had to wait until the boat was not moving in order to arm and take off, and sometimes, this meant waiting as long as 5 minutes with continuous arming attempts. During that time, the gimbal was drawing power from the main battery, so it was a little stressful.
And so, I built this little launch platform. A threaded rod pivots around a ball joint, and with dive weights attached to the bottom (where the tape measure is, in the picture), it should keep the platform relatively level while the boat pitches and rolls. I’m going to test it next week in Tonga.