If you’re heading off on a trip to Alaska, you need to make sure you have plenty of supplies on hand for the wilderness that awaits. If you’re [Bryce], that supply list includes some interesting photography equipment, including a camera dolly that he made to take time-lapse video of the fantastic scenery.
On the hardware side, the dolly carries the camera on a rail that is set up on a slant. The camera starts on one side and moves up and towards the otherside which creates a unique effect in the time-lapse. The rig is driven by a stepper motor, and rides on some pretty fancy bearings. The two cameras [Bryce] plans to use are a Canon T2i and a EOS-M which sit on the top from a tripod.
The software and electronics side is interesting as well. Instead of the usual Arduino, [Bryce] opted for controlling the rig through Android and a IOIO board. This gives the project a lot of options for communications, including Bluetooth. The whole thing is powered by a 19V battery pack. If you’re looking for something a little simpler, you might want to check out the egg timer for time lapse! Check out the video of [Bryce]’s rig in action after the break.
an ethernet breakout board.
now i truly have seen everything
Ethernet cable is also used in some building automation, that is where such boards are used.
I think that he should have used the DC/DC converter as close to the camera as possible. This would avoid the heavy loss through the thin ethernet cable (you are sending the same power at a higher voltage).
That certainly could have saved some losses. I am also using the DC/DC converter output to drive the IOIO (needs 5-15V). Also that cheap DC/DC converter is only probably 70% efficient, so I could make big gains there to help out.
In the end of the day, it is only a couple feet of cable so that loss won’t be too bad… and it already lasts easily overnight.