Camera sliders are a popular project for makers—especially those who document their projects on video. They’re fun and accessible to build, and they can really create some beautiful shots. [Lechnology] set about to follow in this fine tradition and built a rather capable example of his own. Check it out in the video below.
The slider relies on V-slot rails, perhaps most familiar for their heavy use in modern 3D printers. The rails are paired with a 3D-printed camera carriage, which runs on smooth rubber rollers. A chunky stepper motor provides drive via a toothed belt. Trinamic motor controllers were chosen for their step interpolation feature, making the motion much smoother.
The slider doesn’t just move linearly, either. It can rotate the camera, too, since it has an additional motor in the carriage itself. In a nice retro touch, the wires for this motor are run with an old coiled telephone cable. It’s perfect for the job since it easily extends and retracts with the slider’s motion. Controlling everything is an Arduino, with speed and rotational modes set via a tiny screen and a rotary encoder control.
It’s a very complete build, and it performs well too. The video it produces is deliciously smooth. We’ve featured some other great camera sliders over the years, too. If you want to dig into Trinamic drivers, we can get you started.
I feel like I’ve seen this before
Seems kind of silly to have two motors in two different places and have to run the cable between. I’d think it would be simpler to place both motors stationary at the end, akin to a corexy or hbot.
Where is your design and post?
No need. It’s already been done: https://hackaday.com/2020/12/18/a-camera-slider-with-a-twist/
Or if you don’t like so many belts: https://hackaday.com/2019/11/24/object-tracking-camera-slider-gets-the-nice-shots/
I needed an excuse to use my moms old telephone cable!
But forreal, I plan on adding another axis, how do you think I could do this without a coil or energy chain?
Well, I suppose it depends on your goals and constraints. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with a cable management solution. It’s just nice to reduce the mass of the stuff carried on the carriage if it’s not necessary (the reasoning behind the corexy strategy).
You could go autonomous, with batteries and control on the carriage for as many axes/degrees of freedom as you desire, optionally with RF or IR remote control. This is handy if you want to do any camera control too. It puts a lot of mass on the carriage and limits your operation to the lifetime of the batteries but adds a lot of flexibility in what you can do.
You can dispense with batteries by providing power through a single wire pair or even through the rails themselves, or with a “third rail”.
Or provide power and communication inductively: works well through rotary joints, but harder to do for long linear traverses.
You could drive additional axes with more belts and/or shafts and/or Bowden arrangements, but that gets complex pretty quickly.
Lots of solutions.
haven’t watched the video yet but from the pics, oh boy that looks like one wobbly mess. a heavy camera and lens (as pictured, this Nikon and its lens is close to half a kilo), twisting that 2020 alu extrusion through a long lever. the extrusion is also supported by the ends by more relatively long levers…
all I can think of is boioioioioing.
that said, it should be relatively easy to build a versión 2 using 4040, more wheels, threaded rod inside the extrusion to prevent flexing and steel end plates working together with the steel prestressed members to prevent twisting. the pan tilt head could also use some rework, mainly make it out of metal.
alternative: use a small camera such as a Sony zv-1, or even a phone.
Dear HJF
I havent’t read your comment yet, but from the size of it I guess it’s a negative mess of silly words perhaps not worth reading… so it’s best to stop here. But I won’t. I’m pretty sure that your comment can use a 555 or some stronger words, perhaps some exclamation marks, just to be safe, prevent the comment from being wobble and going all over the place. Chances are you are going to recommend a different camera altogether making the whole project worthless in an instant. But nehh…
Regarding the project, it seems to work for the person who made it, so who cares what could be different or how it could be improved, nothing is perfect, that makes life fun.
lol. too funny. The timelapse look great. No booiinnnng. They’re stills.
I love that I triggered you so hard that you pretended not to care.
let me trigger you further: merry Christmas.
Haha, Thanks Jan
Marcus Lechnology
While I’m not a huge fan of 2020 style extrusions for motion parts ever, even in the larger sizes as the extrusions are just so much floppier than they look, this should be fine. As in use as long as the slots are not mangled the wheels will roll smoothly and the worst you’ll get is the camera twisting slighting as it covers the length, so your lens is going to follow a shallow unintended curve that isn’t going to noticed – its not going to bounce or wobble like crazy as long as the carriage can move freely enough, which it should be able to. (Actually moving fast or jerky enough to build up a resonance is just not going to be done in practice for something like this).
It probably will take a while to stop bouncing around a bit if you bump the camera hard enough, especially with the camera in the worst spot on the rails for it, but that really isn’t a problem in use. And is equally a problem that would still apply to much beefier motion rigs, as until you get up to the the ride on railcart camera sort of scale the human bumping it is just too massive and powerful for it to shrug off as irrelevant.
Hello hjf,
I really recommend watching my video to clear up any concerns you may have! You’ll notice the shots are very still!
Although not as sturdy as stainless steel 2 inch pipe rigging on a movie set, for me it gets the job done!
For version 2 I plan on adding more stability to handle even the biggest cameras! I look forward to your comment on my next video!
Cheers,
Marcus