[Konvas] off-topic -- motorized heads

[Sean McVeigh]

Thanks H.W. I'm more concerned with the mechanical resolution right now, 
if you have any insight on that front.
The controller has plenty of processing power, and I know he doesn't 
want to lug a laptop around all the time, so I'm thinking something on 
the order of 10 pre-programmed moves, plus a manual setting. It'll have 
a tiny LCD and a keypad or dial or something similar for manual setup. 
ie. set it to 5 degrees-per-minute speed and just let it go. I should 
reiterate of course, that he's more interested in very slow moves rather 
than snappy ones :) Like doing a panning coastal sunset in timelapse, or 
similar.

Cheers,
Sean


H. W. Stone wrote:
> The people I have talked to recommend running it via a laptop-- not 
> directly. They also recommend MAC over PC, and that you use Firewire 
> to connect it instead of USB2, but USB2 "will normally" work fairly 
> well. That apparently keeps the problems to a minimum, and allows you 
> to upgrade joysticks, controllers, and store moves to use in different 
> locations weeks later, too.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sean McVeigh <konvas at smallpony.ca>
> To: Konvas Discussion List <cinema at konvas.org>
> Sent: Thu, 11 Dec 2008 2:49 pm
> Subject: [Konvas] off-topic -- motorized heads
>
> I'm building a motorized pan head for a friend for xmas... was 
> wondering if anyone has any experience with such equipment. I'm using 
> a stepper motor coupled through a worm gear to drive the plate... does 
> anyone see any problem with a 0.025 degree/step (90as/step) final 
> resolution on the output plate? He mainly wants to use it for very 
> slow pans and timelapse type work, so I think it'll probably be fine.
> I'm probably needlessly concerned, as I've maybe been paying too much 
> attention to astrophotography-related websites while trying to spec it 
> out, where the requirements are more like single-digit arc-seconds per 
> step.
>
> Anyone want to recommend some features for such a head? Since it's 
> going to have a microcontroller brain, I can probably do things like 
> re-play moves for green-screen matching. Going to make it programmable 
> off-line so that you could draw curves for it to follow.. heck could 
> probably even take a dump from a tracker so you could match-move new 
> shots for compositing.
>
> I guess next, he'll want a tilt head so he can stick the two together 
> and plug a joystick into it :) oh.. there's another feature!! DB-15 
> connector :)
>
> Cheers,
> Sean
>
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