AlanH87

wow im glad you managed to follow my guide and even create your own light painting design for your robot to paint. you look like you have the foundation of programming the moves so adapting my code for the nema 17 steppers and associated drivers shouldn't be too much of a challenge. this video should give you an idea of the difference between the two types of motors, control requirements and arduino code. changing the code once you understand the principals should be fairly simple give it a go and if you need assistance give me a poke ill be happy to help. i would be interested in seeing an image of your completed robot this one and the nema 17 one.RegardsAlan

no you only see where the light is in that moment as the light moves through the scene, however the camera sees the history of the lights path through the scene, you have to remember where the light has been as you build the image over 30 seconds or so and hope that you have the image you imagined. there is often a bit of trial and error involved.

thank you

Thank you Yoruk, much appreciated.

awesome i have thought about up scaling it a bit as well as altering the design to create full orbs as well my idea was to use it to create multiple half orbs like bubbles sitting on the ground and connecting them with light "wires" just need a location to play

i hope so, thank you

than you very much

thank you, im glad you enjoyed them.

yes im sorry in the first image I was trying to demonstrate my motivation for creating the robot. the 6 foot sphere was hand drawn by a guy called Stephen Elliott and i was operating the camera. On one of the other shots you can see my hand drawn sphere (im not a good dancer either). at the moment the robot is able to draw a sphere about a half mitre diameter but the project could be easily scaled up and i am looking at making it possible to do a full circle instead of the half circle.

Images are now added and i will be adding a video shortly

i will be uploading images and hopefully a video of the robot in action this weekend this will give you a better idea of how the process works.

I went with 4 neopixels for a couple of reasons the first being that i wanted there to be some light visible from all angles as the arm rotated and was concerned that no matter what face of the arm I mounted a single LED it would be obscured by the arm at some point during the rotation. secondly and with this first issue in mind i thought about using cheaper RGB led's but driving four directly from the arduino pin would have been more current than the arduino could sink directly and would have required a separate transistor for each colour greatly increasing the complexity of the project. however it would be simple to modify my design to suit this arrangement if you wanted to give it a try. thank you for taking the time to ask the question, regards Alan.

i have improved the design using a more powerful motor did you check my other instructables? what camera are you intending to use with the rail?

follow this guide to install library's into the Arduino IDE you may have some or all of them in a standard install of the Arduino IDE. https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Librariesthe broken link is to photos of my finished rail ill see if i can get that fixed.

Link fixed...https://app.keenai.com/s/30532839-2-rxd7BT7kYluWonpw

this was my initial design and tbh i found it did not have the required power to move my dslr up an incline this stepper is rated for 5v only and as such does not have a lot of torque having said that if you are using a small camera then this would be fine and very easy to build. take a look at my other instructables to see how this project progressed to a 12v nema 17 stepper motor with enough torque to lift to dslr's at the same time. im also working on a pan / tilt module to give a 3 axis time lapse rail.

latest firmware is on the last page of this projectmany thanks for your interest, let me know if you need any assistanceAlan

this is awesome work Tzeleru it was fun helping you on the way to your finished product i like the shots counter add on as well

i have replied to you via your pm

add me on facebook i need to chat in real time it will speed things up no end https://www.facebook.com/alan.hinchcliffe.1

i can help with the programming. what stepper motor are you intending to use? i would recommend a Nema 17 stepper. if you let me know what stepper you are using i may be able to modify my code from this or my other project to work for you.

sure you can do this project without IR you would need 5 button inputs to setup interval and distance of travel between each shot. are you intending to use the same stepper motor as per my instrucatable above? did you have a look at my new time lapse projects which are easier to implement? but sure im happy to help you with your project let me know a few more details about the hardware you intend to use. you can buy the IR receiver and remote control from the link in my list of materials above for very little.

the IR sensor is used with the remote control as a user interface to set step size and interval i chose this as an interface as it allowed much flexibility with very little wiring. you may want to take a look at my other projects because i have developed this idea further

the IR receiver has 3 connections vcc (5v), gnd, and data. in my example i used pin 6 on the arduino pro mini for the IR data pin connection.

Thank you Droxz, i intend to try :D

so i created a Firmware update im about to post to this instructable this will change the display output to indicate mm step distance instead of an arbitrary number, and some specs: the rail is 1100mm long it has 880mm of free travel and can lift 1.3kg vertically. it has an adjustable step increment of 0.5mm to 10mm in 0.5mm increments and a intervalometer capable of 1 second to 30 seconds in 250ms increments (i could allow a longer interval with a quick change if required)

Thank you, I really appreciate you taking the time to look and comment.

Thank you Alex

thanks for the heads up i think ill give that a go

thank you tomatoskins

further examples of my time lapse videos created with this device can be found on my youtube channel here.https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0PNkO5dvbCi3uXtkR_f3kw