Tilt-Pan Low Cost MicroCamera

Introductory note

The idea working with a special kind of micro camera, full HD (1080x1920 pix) is to create a professional product that can be a good stop-motion system using a small, lightweight micro camera.

Why to do so? It is true, there are also other projects and most of them are working with DSLR cameras. In fact this is though to get shootings and videos in micro-environments and eventually merge a real-world scene with a small model scene.

What this document is for

This document aim to share the evolution and the progress of the project. All the elements will be created at a prototype level then the product can be distributed as a kit where the core is an Arduino Shield that control and automate the entire process of the shooting / filming.

First step: mechanical parts for the camera structure

Component design: technology and material

As the micro camera (it's micro, ok?) is very small and lightweigh - about 2 x 3.5 cm the structure can be done with a well manageable plastic material. I have used super-compact metacrylate foam 10 mm thick creating the parts for assembling the structure with a CNC mill machine.

Software

The design of every component has been created with  Artcam; there was not a so big complexity in any part involving more complex CAD-CAM programs, e.g. Solid Works. The following three images shows the 3D model of the parts as appear after the milling process.

Camera box

Structure components

FInished components ready for assembly

The image shows the entire set of components, finished and refined, black painted with the elements that will be used for the movement of the structure:

• Micro camera
• Micro servo for tilt movements
• 360Deg rotating servo for the base movements
• Plastic components ready for assembly

Second step: camera assembly

After a first fast test to check that all the milled parts were designed correctly only two components was modified: The top and bottom supports for the camera group has been redesigned with 5 mm thick material instead of 10. The images below shows the prototype result.

Next step: the electronic design

The image below shows the block diagram of the electronic design. This design has been though to be applicable also to another kind of camera, I mean a normal size DSLR camera with very few changes. Few notes about the functional blocks:

• In the adopted micro camera model the operations are controlled manually by two switches while in the normal DSLR - especially the Canon EOS seris - the remote control buttons (e.g. flash or autofocus or shooting etc.) are cotrolled trhough a jack. In both cases I have experienced that, despite what many circuits shows, to generate the button click it is not sufficient a simple transistor. As a matter of fact, something it works but in some other cases don't. So to be sure that the automated action is exactly the same as the manual action I will use a digital switch.
• In this case - to be used to make stop-motion sequences the movements of the camera are controlled by a couple of servos. The tilt micro servo has a max angle variation of about 160-170 DEG, sufficient for the azimut inclination while the base pan servo is a full rotation servo. Both devices works at +5V. As the servos need a discrete amount of power a separate regulated power line is used to power them.

The schematics

The following image is the finished schematics of the shield board. Every single block has been tested separately, so hopefully this will work.

Thanks to lokkytron and clem57 for the advices.

Conclusions: prototyping

I close this document with an image. The state-of-the-art of this project has reached the prototype circuit that until the actual tests done, seems perfectly working as expected. The following is the image of the Arduino Shield prototype on an Arduino UNO R2 running a simple program to test the parts.

Referencing the image to the schematics

Just to understand the circuit parts shown in the image above:

• The left side of the circuit is the 4.7 Vcc regulated power supply for the external devices
• The red LED is the external power active
• The white finder relay deliver the external regulated power source to the external devices (camera and servos)
• The green led indicates when the external devices are powered
• The bottom-right button is the external power on/off touch switch
• The 16/2 pins integrated on top-right is the digital switch simulating the camera control buttons (power, shooting mode, start shooting etc.)

All is controlled by the micro controller software.