Hello,
I am new to this forum, and was wondering what would be the best way to attack this problem:
I am an avid photographer and I frequently use a 'glidetrack' to gain decent 'dolly' shots
with my DSLR.
I've recently been getting into 'astrophotography' lately, and I was wondering: What
if I had a small super-slow servo pull the camera (which is on the glidetrack) ever
slow slightly over a variable period of time (1 hour to 8 hours to pull the camera
3 feet from one side to another on the glidetrack)
If I were to place such a motor on the edge of the dolly attached to a string/cord, the motor
can then gently pull the camera from one edge over to the other.
Basically to get results (even remotely would be nice) like this: Milky Way and Bristlecone Pine, White Mountains, California on Vimeo
Mouvement really adds to the image, that's why I'd like to figure out a simple/easy solution!
Question: How difficult would it be to make something like this, which is small/portable, can run
off of a few (or even one) battery for an 8 hour period, where I can control the amount of pull
the servo motor would have on the camera.
Thank you.
Hi,
The combination of Time Lapse and various Motion-Control approaches on the camera is fascinating.
Take a look at http://timescapes.org/ but sit down, first!!!
The forum is here: http://timescapes.org/phpBB3/index.php
Here's a controller I have been building: http://yourduino.com/whatcanido.htm (Look at Camera Control)..
The basic design and code I started with is this: http://www.mindspring.com/~tom2000/Projects/AI-1_Remote/AI-1_Remote.html which fits in a 168 so LOTS of room for motion control stuff in Arduino today. I also have RF remote added...
Anyone else currently working on this?? I'm thinking of a fairly powerful continuous-rotation servo like this http://arduino-direct.com/sunshop/index.php?l=product_detail&p=130 (which has 14 kg-cm of torque) with an encoder, dacron cord and pulleys??
COOL stuff!
DISCLAIMER: I mentioned stuff from my own Shop...
leifjonker:
Question: How difficult would it be to make something like this, which is small/portable, can run
off of a few (or even one) battery for an 8 hour period, where I can control the amount of pull
the servo motor would have on the camera.
The basic concepts are simple; use a continuous rotation servo and program an Arduino to make it rotate briefly every "x" millis(). It's about 10 lines of code with the Servo library and there's only the +, -, and signal wire from the servo to connect to the Arduino. A little web searching should dig up examples of how to use servos with the Arduino.
Terry you're suggesting a very large servo; 14kg-cm of torque is an awful lot of force and would just require you to add an external power supply. A "standard" servo should be sufficient; perhaps this is part of a ploy to get people to your store? 
Terry you're suggesting a very large servo; 14kg-cm of torque is an awful lot of force and would just require you to add an external power supply. A "standard" servo should be sufficient; perhaps this is part of a ploy to get people to your store?
I'm not talking about rotating the Camera here, I'm talking about a camera dolly or "crane" that can move a heavier DSLR through 2 or 3 meters of coordinated movement to do things like http://timescapes.org/
Substantial stuff like this: http://timescapes.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=4172 (Watch the video at the end ! )..
Serious guys with a van full of stuff driven by Arduino and other Micros are travelling out i the desert and many other places to capture these kinds of images..
I think that a larger continuous-rotation servo could do what they are doing with stepper motors just as well and simpler and cheaper...
I agree that a servo should handle the project well; I was just saying that I think you're going a bit overboard with the size of the servo you had linked. The stepper motor in the dolly you have linked, which looks to be a NEMA 23 size, only supplies about .5 kg-cm of torque.