These days, Youtube is more competitive than ever. Creators put out videos of wildly expensive, complex projects with equally pricy camera gear. [Do It Whenever?] wanted to join the arms race, building his own camera rig for smooth, swooping shots.
The rig consists of a series of 3D printed axes all joined together into a 6-axis motion rig. Additionally, actuators attached to the lens of the camera allow zoom and focus to be be controlled programmatically too. An Arduino runs the show, interpreting G-code and running the various axes, with a Raspberry Pi acting as a gateway to allow the rig to be commanded from PCs or smartphones.
Currently, control is largely manual, by entering G-code commands to move the rig in various ways. The rig can also have its motors temporarily disengaged by a button, allowing the camera to be aimed by hand, before holding the position. In this way, it acts as a highly versatile tripod. Future plans involve more automation if suitable open-source software can be found.
It’s an impressive rig, even if it hasn’t quite found the perfect software to fully exploit its capabilities yet. We’ve seen similar builds before, too. Video after the break.
[Thanks to Zane Atkins for the tip]
Wow! I’d say it needs to have a free manual movement mode that records the movement and can play it back on command. Then you can single handedly frame the perfect shot and be in it at the same time without having to trial and error your way through some g-code.
+1
That’s possible, but the gcode method works pretty good. I have the second video coming soon to show how it works
I only 3D print at night, mostly.
I love it!
It does make me think Rube Goldberg when I see all that motorized automation on what I’d assume would be things that’re already motorized in (many?) cameras and exposed through a physical interface or API.
I would also direct those interested in this kind of project towards [Alexandre Chappel] on Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9e9ZWflCQU
This is a great project as well, but not even close in the same realm of awe