New to Arduino and First Project: pan and tilt mount

Hello,

I am new to Arduino but have spent a bunch of hours online trying to learn as much as I can to attempt my first project. I am going to try and create a pan and tilt mount that is controlled by a PS2 style joystick. I want it to be able to turn 360 degrees and have a limited tilt motion up and down. I am going to try and use a slip ring so the wires don't tangle and eventually would like to try to have it stabilized. The mount needs to hold around 25 pounds. I also want the speed of the motors to correspond to how much the joystick is pushed, to have variable speed.

My questions are:

  1. Would a servo or stepper motor work better for the project?
  2. Is it possible to code in limits to control how far the servo/stepper motor rotates with out using physical limiters?
  3. Is it possible to have the mount stabilized and also be controlled by the joystick simultaneously?

I am basing my project off of a similar one I found on YouTube (I want the mount to look similar):

Why not have your mount battery powered and you can send the commands to move it over a wireless link , then no need for slip rings etc , which are difficult to construct .
25ibs is a big load , and you will need geared motors .

This may be a big project for a first step , I’d try some simple servo movements first , maybe joystick positioning etc before you try building stabilised platforms etc . Drive some simple stepper motors too so you get to know what is possible , your limitations , and what you need to do for the bigger project.

To what extent do you intend to copy the design in that video - it seems a clever design to me.

For example it is battery powered and the battery and control system rotate with the vertical motion and the two stepper motors are fixed the vertical motion part so there is no question of a need for slip rings. Also there is a quite large reduction-gear for both motors.

I haven't watched much of the video so I don't know how it is controlled but @hammy's suggestion of radio control seems like a good idea. If you want to go that route this Simple nRF24L01+ Tutorial may be of interest. However it is only one of several options. If you were to use an ESP8266 or ESP32 module for the control they come with WiFi as standard.

One thing to watch is that stepper motors are inefficient and not very suited to battery power if you want the system to operate for a long period. Geared DC motors might be better although they don't have the convenient position accuracy of stepper motors. However you have not given any clue about the purpose of your system and numerical position accuracy may not be important.

What do you mean by "stabilised" ?

It makes it much easier to help if you give full details of your project.

...R
Stepper Motor Basics
Simple Stepper Code

A better first project would be Make The Motor Run With Speed And Direction Control.

Did a bunch of hours learning get you past arrays and loops?
Not just if() but also else?
Knowing what switch-case statements are?

If you don't know those, especially arrays and loops, it will take massive tedious to debug code to do simple things.

Thank for all the Info and replies.

In regards to stabilizing the mount I have seen people create pan and tilt systems that are self stabilizing by using sensors like MPU6050 sensor. I will be mounting a Large camera and tools to the mount and if it can be stabilized while on the back of a truck driving or situations like that, that would be great. Unfortunately wireless isn't an option.

Also, I will be making the mount in the video with my 3D printer first and then work my way up to a larger mount with all the bells and whistles. I realize it isn't the easiest project so I'm going to work my way up but figured I would start by using the same type of motors that would be used on the larger scale mount, whether that is a servo, stepper, or geared motor, etc.