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DIY Motion Control Camera

Martin Koch writes about how he made a DIY motion controller:

Stepping motor

Small 12V unipolar (6 wires) stepping motor with maximal 0.5 A per winding.
Costs: about 30 EUR.

My stepping motor needs just 0.16 A per winding and offers a force of just 70 mNm (0.070 Nm = 0.62 Pound-force inches). Nonetheless it is still able to horizontally pull loads up to 6 kg (3 lb). I bought it from RS-Components. The part number is 440-436. In order to fit my interface I had to rearrange the wires. To loosen a wire in the type of connector shown above use a needle to press in the latch from the front then pull out the wire. The wire easily clicks in place at the new location.

Interface

1 ULN2803A integrated circuit, prototyping board, connection pins, wire
Costs: A few Euros.

The interface is as simple as it can get. Make sure to connect the stepping motor wires as shown in the schematic.

It uses the famously adaptable Arduino, naturally. Here's a Vimeo demo video of the result:

DIY camera motion control from Martin Koch on Vimeo.

Pretty cool.

[Via @philontilt]

About J. Ott

John Ott is a writer, filmmaker and futurist. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.