I'm new to Arduino and I'm loving it! It's simply amazing!
Now, I have tried some basic stuff like showing some calculations on my 16x2 lcd and blinking some leds. Now I want to move forward to a bigger project. I would like to make a dolly for my camera. I was thinking of something that would slide on a rail or something in that direction. Now I would like some ideas on how to succeed.
Will I need a stepper motor for this? If yes, what will I need to get that motor running? Also, does anyone have interesting links on how to translate the stepper rotation in a camera sliding on a rail? Probably using gears?
Thanks for helping this beginner out. Much appreciated!
You should first make a plan of what you want to do.
What is the weight you want your dolly to support? what will me the size, do you want it to be on a rail or on wheels?
Don't forget that motors induce vibrations, stepper motors even more.
Do you want to use the audio coming from the camera microphone?
You have to do yourself the design of your dolly, only you knows how you want it to be.
thanks for your replies. To answer your questions;
I want to use the camera slider (distance of 1 - 2 m) for filming. Programming it als for stop motion/timelapsing would be fun, but is only optional. First I want to be able to slide my camera at a constant speed. I would love to be able to control the speed, using a knob. So I could set it at a very very slow speed too. Maximum speed should be something like 2 seconds over 1m. I'm using the canon 5d m2, which is about 800g. I guess I just want the slider to be very stable and solid.
My budget is ofcourse as low as possible, but I'm willing to spend something between 0 and 450 euros.
You might look at the tracks and rollers available for drawers and sliding patio doors. If you need absolute position control, then you will need to use geared tracks or some type of position feedback for the cam position. Various types of motor drives could be used with speed/direction control.