Monday, September 20, 2010

Pan-tilt camera

This is fairly straightforward. One servo controls horizontal movement (pan) of the rest of the structure, and the tilt servo controls vertical movement. I put it on the roof of the vehicle.


Hole for the pan servo to hold the structure on top.


I didn't want to cut a huge hole for the big servo, nor have the mechanism mounted high. But the servo's mounting holes were too low. So I built up the rest of the space with polymorph. This stuff is awesome! You grab some of the pellets, throw them in hot water, when they turn transparent they are ready. Fish them out with a spoon and mould it as you like. It cools back to solid white and is a relatively hard plastic. If you mess up or want to change it, and chuck it back in hot water to soften it and you can use it again! If it's stuck to something that might be damaged by hot water, either cut it off or maybe you could use steam.

Polymorph to build up some space, with screw thread


I screwed screws into it while it was still somewhat soft, to give it a thread. I am able to screw and unscrew it quite securely :) It wasn't quite flat on top, but you can file or cut it down and even retain the leftovers! 


Wireless camera and pan/tilt mount, roughly attached with polymorph and blutack.

I stuck the first one together with blutack and polymorph.


The pan servo is unneccessarily huge and slow. Soon to be replaced.

At this time I used separate power for the car, onboard controller, and camera. 9V batteries don't last very long.
Rear and batteries.

I'll get some photos of the new mount. Or maybe skip that entirely and get a better one. 

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