CableCam - Failed Concept

thingiverse

I'm glad I could finally get this concept off the ground, even if I didn't quite reach my target - not even halfway! But I learned a lot and will reuse some of those parts for a brand new design. And who knows, maybe this can help someone else out there thinking about creating a similar tool. By the way, in the meantime I managed to create a camera slider using the leftover parts: the stepper motor, the driver, the Arduino board, the shield, and a battery - you can check it out on Thingiverse. My primary goal was to build a programmable cablecam with an Arduino brain and a stepper motor to do the heavy lifting. I wanted foldable arms for the rolls and a simple system of two rods to carry a small camera gimbal that I use with my copter, so the basics were already designed. Next, I experimented with various sketches to turn the motor forward and backward at different speeds. Then, I found some code that allowed me to read the PWM signals from the receiver and finally put those lines together to create a sketch that lets me move the thing forward and backward by pushing the stick on the remote control. You can check out the video of it in action - just keep in mind that the thing isn't leveled because there's no camera installed. That's where I got stuck: the motor was too weak, even though I tried bumping up the voltage (12V instead of 2S-Lipo) and adjusting the Vref. For faster speeds, I'd need a bigger wheel, which means a longer lever and less strength. Now I'm thinking about using a slow-running brushless motor (about 600KV) and a car ESC. That way, I can ditch the Arduino, but it'll be tough to make it programmable - at least, not in the same simple way that I had with the stepper motor. With the stepper motor, I was planning to count the steps while moving from A to B.