DIY Camera Dolly Costs More Time Than Money

July 19, 2021 by Donald Papp 14 Comments

A camera dolly can be fantastic filmmaking tool, and [Cornelius] was determined to create his own version: the “Dope” DIY Dolly. The result not only upped his production quality, but was also entirely in line with his DIY approach to filmmaking in general.

A basic dolly design is straightforward enough: a flat platform with wheels, and some aluminum tubing upon which to roll. But while dolly assemblies are easy to purchase or rent, [Cornelius] found that his DIY version — which used easily sourced parts and about 80 hours worth of 3D printing — provided perfectly acceptable results, while opening the door to remixing and sharing with like-minded filmmakers.

Interested? Download the STL files to get started on your own version. As for the track, smooth metal pipe is best, but sometimes track made from PVC can do the job. [Cornelius] has a few additional STL files for those planning to make a base from 1″ PVC pipe, and those are on a separate download link near the bottom of the project page (here’s that link again.) Watch the Dope Dolly in action in the brief video embedded below.

On the other hand, if you prefer your DIY camera equipment to be on the smaller and more complicated end of the spectrum, be sure to check out this multi-axis camera slider.

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Analog Camera Goes Digital

July 15, 2021 by Bryan Cockfield 33 Comments

The digital camera revolution swept through the world in the early 2000s, and aside from some unique situations and a handful of artists still using film, almost everyone has switched over to digital since then. Unfortunately that means that there’s a lot of high quality film cameras in the world that are gathering dust, but with a few pieces of equipment it’s possible to convert them to digital and get some more use out of them.

[befinitiv]’s latest project handles this conversion by swapping in a Raspberry Pi Zero where the film cartridge would otherwise be inserted into the camera. The Pi is attached to a 3D-printed case which mimics the shape of the film, and also houses a Pi camera right in front of the location where the film would be exposed. By removing the Pi camera’s lens, this new setup is able to take advantage of the analog camera’s optics instead and is able to capture images of relatively decent quality.

There are some perks of using this setup as well, namely that video can be broadcast to this phone over a wireless connection to a computer via the Raspberry Pi. It’s a pretty interesting build with excellent results for a remarkably low price tag, and it would be pretty straightforward to interface the camera’s shutter and other control dials into the Raspberry Pi to further replicate the action of an old film camera. And, if you enjoy [befinitiv]’s projects of bringing old tech into the modern world, be sure to check out his 80s-era DOS laptop which is able to run a modern Linux installation.

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Motorized Camera Slider Gives Your Shots Style

July 11, 2021 by Tom Nardi 1 Comment

We’ve all seen those smooth panning shots, which combined with some public domain beats, are a hallmark of the modern YouTube tech video. Recreating that style in your own productions is as easy as pointing your browser to Amazon and picking up a motorized camera slider, so long as you don’t mind parting with a few hundred bucks, anyway. But [Paweł Spychalski] had a better idea. He decided to build his own camera slider and make it an open source project so others could spin up their own versions.

His design uses many components that have become popular and affordable thanks to the desktop 3D printer explosion, such as 2020 aluminum extrusion, LM8UU linear bearings, an 8 mm lead screw, and a NEMA 17 stepper motor. In fact, if you’ve got a broken 3D printer that you don’t know what to do with, stripping it for parts would get you a long way towards completing the BOM for this project.

To control the slider, [Paweł] is using an ESP32 and TMC2209 “StepStick” driver connected to an OLED display and a few buttons. As designed, a smartphone connected to a simple web page hosted by the ESP32 is the primary method of controlling the camera, but the buttons and display on the slider itself gives you a physical backup should you need it.

If you need something a bit more advanced than a linear slider, we’ve seen some impressive DIY motion rigs that can spin the camera around the target and produce some very professional looking shots.

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Bringing The Game Boy Camera Into The 21st Century

July 8, 2021 by Jenny List 6 Comments

The Game Boy Camera is probably one of the most limited-specification digital cameras to have been mass-marketed, yet it occupies a special position in the hearts of many because despite being a toy with a paltry 128×128 monochrome sensor it was for many the first camera they owned. [Matt Grey] was among those people, and was always frustrated by the device’s inability to export pictures except to the Game Boy printer. So after having bodged together an interface a decade ago but not being happy with it, he returned to the project and made a wireless carrier for the camera that allows easy transfer through WiFi to his mobile phone.

Inside the slab-like 3D-printed enclosure lies a GBxCart RW Game Boy cartridge reader, whose USB port is wired to a Raspberry Pi Zero on which are a set of scripts to read the camera and make its photos available for download via a web browser. At last the camera is a stand-alone unit, allowing the easy snapping and retrieval of as many tiny black and white images as he likes. There’s a video showing the device in action, which we’ve placed for your enjoyment below the break.

This camera has appeared in so many projects on these pages over the years, but we’re guessing that the work on whose shoulders this one stands would be the moment its workings were reverse engineered.

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Hacking A Thermal Imager For Dual-use Of The Thermal Sensor

July 4, 2021 by Donald Papp 3 Comments

Sometimes a device doesn’t do quite what one needs, and in those cases a bit of tampering might do the trick. That’s what led to being able to record video from a HTI HT-A1 thermal imager despite the device not actually supporting that function, thanks to careful investigation and warranty violation.

Plugging in a custom USB cable allows a mobile phone app to access the thermal sensor, while the host device itself remains ignorant.

We’ve seen a teardown of the HT-A1 in the past, and it turns out that Seek — the manufacturer for the actual thermal sensor inside the device — released an OEM development kit and mobile phone app for their modules. Could this mean that the raw sensor module in the HT-A1 could be accessed via the developer kit app? One hacked together USB cable later showed that the answer is yes! Not only does the app allow viewing thermal imagery, but it makes it possible to do things like record video (a function the HT-A1 itself does not support.)

But even if the HT-A1 doesn’t allow recording, as a handheld thermal sensor with a screen it’s still pretty useful in its own way and it would be shame to gut the unit just for a raw sensor module. The best solution ended up being to put the sensor back into the HT-A1, and install some switching circuitry to disconnect the sensor from the HT-A1’s CPU and divert its data to the USB plug on demand. This means the HT-A1 can be used normally, but by plugging in a custom-made cable while the unit is off, the thermal sensor can be accessed by the mobile phone app instead. Best of both worlds. You can see a brief celebratory thermal cat video embedded below, proving it works.

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Optical Sensor Keeps Eye On Wandering Saw Blade

May 24, 2021 by Tom Nardi 17 Comments

Over the last year or so, we’ve been checking in on the progress [Andrew Consroe] has been making with his incredible CNC scroll saw project. While we were already impressed with his first prototype version, he somehow manages to keep pushing the envelope forward with each new upgrade, and we’re always excited when one of his progress reports hits the inbox.

Recently he’s been struggling with the fact that the considerable flexing of the scroll saw’s ultra-thin blade introduces positional errors while cutting. To combat this, he’s developed an ingenious sensor that can track the movement of the blade in two dimensions without actually touching it. Utilizing the Raspberry Pi HQ camera, a 3D printed framework, and some precisely placed mirrors, [Andrew] says his optical sensor is able to determine the blade’s position to within 10 microns.

In the video below [Andrew] goes over how his “Split Vision Periscope” works, complete with some ray traced simulations of what the Pi camera actually sees when it looks through the device. After experimenting with different lighting setups, the final optical configuration presents the camera with two different perspectives of the saw blade set on a black background. That makes it relatively easy to pick out the blade using computer vision, and turn that into positional information.

The periscope arrangement is particularly advantageous here as it allows the camera and lens to be placed under the work surface and well away from the actual cutting, though we’re interested in seeing how it fares against the dust and debris that will inevitably be produced as the saw cuts. While he hit all of his design goals, [Andrew] does note that his mirrors do leave some room for improvement; but considering he hand cut them out of old hard drive platters we think the results are more than acceptable.

An incredible amount of progress has been made since the first time we saw the CNC scroll saw, and we’re eager to see this new sensor fully integrated into the next version of [Andrew]’s impressive long-term project.

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Adding Remote Controls To A Blackmagic Studio Camera Without Breaking The Bank

May 22, 2021 by Maya Posch 2 Comments

What to do when one ends up in the possession of a 4K studio camera, but without the requisite hardware and software to remotely control it? When [Glen Akins] ended up in this situation, he took the reasonable option here and developed his own knob-based remote control to adjust exposure and focus on the Blackmagic Designs Micro Studio Camera 4K. Without a remote control option, the only adjustment options are via fiddly small buttons on the camera itself, which wouldn’t have been a fun experience during the webcam usage that this camera would be used for.

This camera is normally controlled via the control channel on the SDI input which also handles the video output from the camera. For larger installations the proprietary ATEM software is commonly used, and there’s a $99 Arduino expansion board as well that’s apparently rarely stocked. With SDI not an option, the second option was LANC, which runs into pretty much the same issue with proprietary protocols and very expensive hardware.

Behind door number three is the more curious control option of the Futaba S.BUS protocol. Originally created for remotely controlling radio-controlled aircraft and similar remotely controlled systems, the thought here appears to be that this studio camera can also be used with systems that already have an S.BUS receiver, such as large drones.

With this S.BUS protocol having been reverse-engineered for a while now, it was a fairly straightforward procedure from there to create an MCU-based board with a lot of encoder knobs on it that map to a specific adjustment on the camera. The result of [Glen]’s labor can be found on GitHub.

Main image: The finished knob-box with the Blackmagic Designs camera. (Credit: Glen Akins)