Article

Project Chronos, a DIY motion control platform for timelapse.
 

My name is Brian Burling and I am starting a new company called - eMotimo

The first product, eMotimo PT, a two axis motion control device that sits between your tripod and your DSLR or Video Camera. Right now, it does point A to Point B time lapse shots with a simple 3 minute setup. It will trigger DSLR shutters or move video cameras in smooth profiles.

eMotimo PT's design criteria were to be:

User Friendly - You use a Nunchuck and LCD screen for prompt driven setup. No computer is required.
Portable and Lightweight - Without a battery, the unit weighs in at around 5 lbs.

After you've selected the motor type appropriate for your project, it's time to move to the next stage of building your first motion control rig: gear selection.  Unless you've bought a motor with an attached gearbox (and even if you have, in some cases), it's time to figure out exactly how you intend transfer power from the motor into your final motion.  Just like the process of selecting a motor, you'll need to first examine your requirements, and how they might change over time.  In this article, we'll walk through the basic process of selecting the proper gear train, and the different factors that should affect your decision.

The basic factors to consider are: building vs. buying, complexity, gear ratio, precision, and braking requirements.

I've been out at SIGGRAPH 2010 for the past few days, and have had a lot of time to talk to a lot of great people about different technologies, open-source motion control, and to be honest, I've spent a lot of time on my feet!  I want to thank the all of the guys from xRez Studio for inviting me out and introducing me to lot of people, and introducing the OpenMoco project to a larger audience.  

The DollyShield is an adaptation of the Arduino Motor Shield v3 that provides directional PWM control of two DC motors, at up to 1A of current each.  In addition to the motor drivers, it also provides a stereo plug with dual opto-coupled outputs for direct camera control, a 2x16 LCD, five user input buttons, and four auxilliary inputs or outputs through two stereo jacks.  It is designed to provide an inexpensive and easy-to-use interface for two-axis motion control integrated with a camera.

This is a detailed article on installing OpenMoco-Slim on Mac OSX as well as installing OpenMoco TL Engine to the Arduino. I am not into code or scripting so most of this was foreign to me and I know there must be others who have the same lack of skills. This is meant to help those without those skills and in the process develop the skills needed for OpenMoco.

OK now onto the races. First step is to download and install Xcode Tools from Apple, this may seem unnecessary but it's needed by the following step. The URL to the Xcode download site is http://developer.apple.com/technologies/xcode.html.