How-To

Project Chronos, a DIY motion control platform for timelapse.
Project Chronos 1.0 is no longer supported and replaced by Project Chronos 2.0

Please check my project page on sourceforge.net for more information on this DIY full featured timelapse system
https://sourceforge.net/p/projectchronos/home/Project%20Chronos%20Home/
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/ProjectChronos2/photos_stream
Website
http://thechronosproject.com/

After you've selected the motor type appropriate for your project, it's time to move to the next stage of building your first motion control rig: gear selection.  Unless you've bought a motor with an attached gearbox (and even if you have, in some cases), it's time to figure out exactly how you intend transfer power from the motor into your final motion.  Just like the process of selecting a motor, you'll need to first examine your requirements, and how they might change over time.  In this article, we'll walk through the basic process of selecting the proper gear train, and the different factors that should affect your decision.

The basic factors to consider are: building vs. buying, complexity, gear ratio, precision, and braking requirements.

This is a detailed article on installing OpenMoco-Slim on Mac OSX as well as installing OpenMoco TL Engine to the Arduino. I am not into code or scripting so most of this was foreign to me and I know there must be others who have the same lack of skills. This is meant to help those without those skills and in the process develop the skills needed for OpenMoco.

OK now onto the races. First step is to download and install Xcode Tools from Apple, this may seem unnecessary but it's needed by the following step. The URL to the Xcode download site is http://developer.apple.com/technologies/xcode.html.

One of the more daunting tasks for your first motion control project is to decide on which kind of motor you need.  The right choice in motor can save you money and effort in the long run, not to mention increase your chances of getting the shots you're looking for.  Before selecting your motor, you need to first examine what your requirements are, and how they might change over time.  In this article we'll walk you through the process of selecting a motor for a motion control rig and the different factors that should play into the decision.

The basic principles you'll need to consider in motor selection, outside of cost, are: timeframe (how long your shoots will run for), power requirements, and repeatability.

Introduction

While we spend a lot of our time focusing on stepper motors, we'd rather not leave out brushed DC motors!  It's hard to beat them for their simplicity and low cost.  When it comes to drivers for DC motors, there are a lot of options - from cheap $15 PWM drivers that can be found on eBay, to professional units that can cost up to several thousand dollars.  I've been using the Pololu JRK 21v3 driver with great success.  It offers rarely found in drivers several times its cost.  At approximately $50 USD it might seem a little pricey until you explore the options it gives you. In this article, we'll cover how to make an easy-to-use carrier board for the JRK 21v3 that will let you hook it right up into an OpenMoco system, and especially the dedicated hand-held engine model, while still retaining all of the features and flexibility of the driver.

While the Timelapse Engine provides all the functionality needed to perform the motion control for your time-lapse video, you'll still need a way to interface with the engine. The engine can communicate with any computer that has a USB port, so we'll just need some software to tell it what to do. OpenMoco Slim is the first, and most basic interface to the time-lapse engine. It's a simple application that provides a low-profile way to interact with the engine and script complex sequences of motion in Windows, Linux, and OSX.

We'll cover how to get Slim up and running, and walk through the basics of using it.