Differential camera slider is amazingly universal!

This video is about a concept for a camera slider, the videos shows you the prototype I made, how it works, how it can be used and some silly applications that have nothing to do with sliding a camera. Prepare to be surprised.

There are lot's of things that need to be fixed or have room for improvement. The carriage for example could be greatly simplified with the use of UHMW (a.k.a. friction-less) tape inside a printed slide-bearing. This because wheels are nice, but make the carriage bulky and overly complex. The belts require an additional tension system not incorporated in this design, but easily added in future designs. The solid base made from MDF is sturdy, but makes the whole device very bulky. So a new design would most likely be different on that point.

One major thing is the firmware, the routines that drive the motors do function BUT have issues with moving at extremely low speeds. Therefore operating it requires knowledge of these issues and although they can be worked around... it's better to fix them properly. So a firmware redesign is being worked at and I have plenty of ideas. And perhaps a GCODE or command interpreter to make it possible to control this device using a computer perhaps. This would allow to make more complex movements, movements otherwise to complex to enter in only 6-setpoints.

Regarding the build, in essence it's nothing more then some tubing, 3D printed parts, 3 stepper motors (of which two come from a 1980's diskdrive). Some MDF to give it a solid base. The wheels are also 3D printed, but were covered by rubber coming from an inner-tube of a bicycle tire. No PCB was designed, the whole thing was build on protoboard, the firmware runs on a Sparkfun Pro Micro.


For more info about my other projects, visit: https://janderogee.com