Planet Arduino

[Ivan] likes to take time lapse videos. Using his 3D printer and a stepper motor he fashioned a rig that allows him to control the camera moving any direction on a smooth floor.

The dolly has a tripod-compatible mounting plate and scooter wheels. An Arduino runs the thing and a cell phone battery provides power. A pot sets the speed and [Ivan] provides code for both a linear pot, which he suggests, and for a logarithmic pot, which he had on hand. You can see a video of the results below.

The device looks good thanks to the 3D printed body; [Ivan] provides the STL files if you want to reproduce his work. You have to print several of the parts multiple times.

We’ve seen good looking dolly rigs made of wood, if you are better at woodworking than 3D printing. We also saw a less-polished looking set up using Makeblock.

We’d call it a robot, but [Eric Buijs] calls it a dolly. [Eric] bought a Makeblock starter robot kit last year, but never did anything with it. He recently wanted a camera dolly to help shoot project videos and the Makeblock hardware fit the bill.

[Eric] found that one of Makeblock’s example videos showed off a camera dolly but had no construction details. He cracked open the kit and got to work replicating what he had seen. Two 6V motors combined with a reduction gear, a belt, and some wheels, and the dolly now moves under computer control!

Speaking of the computer, the Makeblock kit came with an Arduino-compatible board called a Baseshield. [Eric] didn’t like the telephone-style connector used to interface the board with the outside world, so he junked the Baeshield and replaced it with an Arduino Leonardo. The only thing left was to make a camera mount, which [Eric] fabricated with plywood.

There’s still work to do. The dolly drifts a little to the left and the lack of suspension sometimes makes the video unusable. However, we are confident version two will be even better.

Judging by the number of past projects we’ve seen on dolly’s this is something a lot of people want to build. It is interesting to see just how many different ways people approach the same problem. If you haven’t seen Makeblock, there is a video about the starter kit [Eric] used below.