Hi team.
Hop you are all well and tinkering.
Looking for some guidance on building a motorised pan tilt head for a camera crane.
Using either steppers or servos ( which ever seem better ) with a joystick and speed control.
Any schematic or guidance with code would be brilliant.
Kind regards
Marc
The choice of the motors and gears depends on the required power (torque), which in turn depends on the physical construction. The "camera crane" sounds to me like a very heavy device? Also the motors should work with some existing power source (mains?), or you have to add another power supply. This choice will reveal which motor driver modules are required.
The joystick must fit your handling needs, again your choice. Should it be a digital one, or an analogous one, with/out return-to-zero when released?
Check the servo "knob" example in the IDE examples. Search for "servo joystick" in the upper right search box on this page. You will find similar discussions from the past.
What your working with.
I am indeed looking for it to return to centre and that be the off position.
The picture below is a perfect example. So the very end bit with the camera on is what I am looking to turn. Not going to be massively heavy but will have say around 5kg to move left to right but only the camera plate and camera at 2kg to tilt up and down.
Not really sure what motors will be best
marcjwebb:
Not going to be massively heavy but will have say around 5kg to move left to right but only the camera plate and camera at 2kg to tilt up and down.
If you can provide a counterbalance the actual force needed to move something, or hold it in position can be greatly reduced.
I think you need to figure out your mechancial design first. Maybe you can make a sketch of it and post it here.
...R
http://www.robotshop.com/en/381-aluminum-pt785-s-pan-tilt-system.html
this is effectively what i would like to do , just not with that price tag
marcjwebb:
this is effectively what i would like to do , just not with that price tag
It looks like that tilt system is pretty well balanced so if you can make hardware like that the motor requirements should not be onerous.
I would try to get it working with servos. If you need more than 180deg of movement with position control consider a sail winch servo.
If you don't need position control (e.g. the operator controls the position visually with a joystick) than continuous rotation servos could work.
...R
i do need to be able to do both 360 degree travel plus doing it from my sight and not just constant on.
from the link i posted can you guys tell what type of motors are being used?
Servo city has cam pan/tilt equipment.
https://www.servocity.com/html/pan_tilt_roll___accessories.html
they do indeed but at a premium price of 350 i think ill pass lol thanks for the link tho, plus it takes the fun away from building something
Not going to be massively heavy but will have say around 5kg to move left to right but only the camera plate and camera at 2kg to tilt up and down.
they do indeed but at a premium price of 350 i think ill pass lol
Post up your finished unit when you are done, and the total parts cost.
by all means i shall
marcjwebb:
from the link i posted can you guys tell what type of motors are being used?
I don't have an answer to that.
However the nature of the question implies (to me at least) that you want a complete low-cost alternative design before you start work.
I don't think that is going to happen. Buy a servo and build a test rig and do some experiments.
...R
its the basics with the test rig i am hoping to find some guidance for, want to get the electronics working then then start on the mechanism if thats makes sense.
marcjwebb:
want to get the electronics working then then start on the mechanism if thats makes sense.
The electronics and programming is the easy part when you know what the mechanical system requires. And that probably requires some experiments.
...R
to be fair i pretty much have that made, hense the elctronics, but its not 100% done yet
marcjwebb:
to be fair i pretty much have that made, hense the elctronics, but its not 100% done yet
This feels a bit like trying to get blood from a stone...
Why don't you tell us all that you have already - with pictures of the mechanical setup.
...R
i cant seem to upload a picon here,
i have a frame on bearings like this. - http://cheesycam.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Servo-city-Motorized-Pan-Tilt-272x300.png
it has a forword and backward tilting platform.
and on the top is a left and right moving the assembly again on bearings.
the bit i need to do now is -
use a joystick to control the forword and back on one motor, the left and right on a sepeerate motor, ideally controlled by a joy stick, wiht a pot to chenge the speed of the motors globoally ( one pot effects both motors speeds )
does this help?
use a joystick to control the forword and back on one motor, the left and right on a sepeerate motor, ideally controlled by a joy stick, wiht a pot to chenge the speed of the motors globoally ( one pot effects both motors speeds )
You probably need to decide if you will use servos as the motors, or other types of motors with drivers. The code will be somewhat different between the two different setups. Till then you can connect your joystick pots to the arduino and start working on code that produces usable numeric position values. Look at the knob example in the IDE.
