The Soonpho M7 Pan Tilt Head is a useful photography tool for remotely aiming a decently-sized camera. Only, [Kyle Housley] wanted a little more control than was available out of the box. Hence, he built a custom controller that could deliver just that.
The project is based around an ESP32-S3 paired with an NRF24L01 wireless module. The ESP32-S3 is hooked up to a computer to receive commands over serial on what movements to make. It then transmits over the NRF24L01 to another NRF24L01 module that has been hacked into the original M7’s controller. In doing so, it can command the M7 to move to a given specific pan and tilt position, or to make a smooth motion along a vector. It can also trigger shutter release in the attached camera as needed, to capture whatever is being looked at.
[Kyle] has used this rig to create a motion tracking system for aircraft photography. With a Yolo vision model running on a laptop, the pan-tilt head can be commanded to track aircraft passing by and photograph them when they’re in frame. It’s a pretty slick setup; we’d love to see similar done with the aid of ADS-B data, too—perhaps even with automatic image tagging and upload.
look like dangerous
Umm…where’s the motion tracking code? Interested, yet ultimately disappointed.
I can provide it, it’s not very sophisticated though. What’s more interesting is the model training pipeline which is like to polish a bit more and provide a write up for. Thanks for looking!
I’d be very interested to see how it all works, Kyle. Presentation isn’t an issue.
I was working on my own trackable camera mount (which went poorly and attracted no authorial interest). https://green.bug-eyed.monster/node-firmata-ptz-camera/
I’d love to see if your Yolo vision model could be adapted, as I have the very same application in mind.
Oh awesome, I’ll try to do a write up on the full vision pipeline this weekend and publish on codeberg. Generating the training data is I think the most interesting part of this project.
I haven’t gotten to the tracking mechanism yet, having wrangled much with my problematic head, so I’d be real interested to hear how you trained the tracker, Kyle.
The Soonpho M7 looks pretty schmick. How does it go with gear lash? It might be a more practical ‘in’ to the art, and allow more time for tracker development. I wonder if the M7’s remote protocol could be emulated, for a low hands-on solution. I image that you’ve explored that, Kyle?
So, please tell us about this yolo setup procedure then.
…yet ultimately disappointed.
Anyone using this for stacked astrophotography? Thinking of getting back into that. I don’t need tracking and I don’t need super accuracy, just need to reliably and non-wobbly point in the general direction of a constellation while I take and then stack like 100 frames. Hopefully it doesn’t have something stupid on it like a 10 billion lumen blue LED. I just need to point stable in the vague direction of Delta Cephei for an hour and then slew over to maybe around Algol for an hour what with this being in the autumn. Variable stars are cool and stacking software was cool and years later is probably cooler yet.
Interestingly, the sister model M6 has a camera and object tracking already built-in, for the same price as this M7.
Tell me you’ve never done something the hard way just to see if you could. :-) :-)