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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

MakerSlide Camera Slider Control Program at Buildlog.Net Blog

MakerSlide Camera Slider Control Program

There has been a ton of interest in camera slider applications for MakerSlide.  A while ago I decided to make a very simple reference design for a motorized slider.  This design only required fabrication of one part.  The rest of the parts are existing components.  The part can be made on a laser cutter, router or even by hand.  There are no tight tolerances and you can use the MakerSlide carriage as a template for drilling some of the holes.  I can sell a complete slider system including motor for less than $120 for a 1 meter setup.  It would only be $10 for each addition meter.  The longest I can ship is 2.5 meters, but I stock the material in 4.5 meter lengths if you can figure out how t0 get it.

I don’t know much at all about this type of camera work so I did not see all this interest coming.  Several people approached me about buying my prototypes and I have sold several of them.  Most of them asked me how to control the motor.  I come from a CNC background so most of my demonstrations were done using CNC software like Mach3, EMC2 or even GRBL.  This has few issues.  The first is many photographers have no knowledge of CNC or G-Code.   The second is the solution is way overkill in cost and complexity for a single axis machine.  The third issue is portability.  This will probably be used in the field where a PC is impractical and power may be unavailable.

I decided to make an Arduino based controller.  Arduinos are good because they are cheap, small and easy to program.  They also use very little power.  I wrote a similar controller for the PIC processor a long time ago and borrowed the basic algorithm from that.  The method used could work for multi-axis machines if you want to steal the code.  The Arduino is. using my Stepper Shield.  I have just one driver installed and in another “slot” I have a bread boarded switch.  The stepper shield is nice because it can act as a mother board for many future features.

Read More...
http://www.buildlog.net/blog/2011/12/makerslide-camera-slider-control-program/

MakerSlide Motorized Camera Slider



Video Link...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xt77g-Zzdjs






MakerSlide Open Source Linear Bearing System

Read More...
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/93832939/makerslide-open-source-linear-bearing-system


Wow, this is one of the Best Built Projects I have seen! Would love to make one of my own!:)

Don


MakerSlide Camera Slider Control Program for Open Source Linear Bearing System
Motorized camera mount unexpectedly popular for CNC-aimed hardware - Hack a Day
MakerSlide Camera Slider Control Program at Buildlog.Net Blog
Open Source Linear Bearing System - Hack a Day
MakerSlide Open Source Linear Bearing System by Barton Dring — Kickstarter
MakerSlide Motorized Camera Slider - YouTube
MakerSlide Camera Slider Control Program - YouTube
ms:camera_controller | Buildlog.net Wiki


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