News

I've been out at SIGGRAPH 2010 for the past few days, and have had a lot of time to talk to a lot of great people about different technologies, open-source motion control, and to be honest, I've spent a lot of time on my feet!  I want to thank the all of the guys from xRez Studio for inviting me out and introducing me to lot of people, and introducing the OpenMoco project to a larger audience.  

The DollyShield is an adaptation of the Arduino Motor Shield v3 that provides directional PWM control of two DC motors, at up to 1A of current each.  In addition to the motor drivers, it also provides a stereo plug with dual opto-coupled outputs for direct camera control, a 2x16 LCD, five user input buttons, and four auxilliary inputs or outputs through two stereo jacks.  It is designed to provide an inexpensive and easy-to-use interface for two-axis motion control integrated with a camera.

After several months of experimentation and hard work, we are proud to announce the release of version 0.82 of the OpenMoco TimeLapse Engine. Of course, the engine still runs on the inexpensive and easy-to-buy Arduino platform, but we've expanded all of the existing capabilities and added new features to the engine that set it apart from any other open-source moco sketch you'll find, while making it more stable and useful for the timelapse experimenter.

All tests on Vimeo in HD: http://vimeo.com/9626538

We're working hard behind the scenes to get some tangible results from the openmoco engine and get you all some looks at hardware solutions. Finally pulled all the pieces together on our first dolly concept and found the results to be very encouraging (to say the least). Here's a sample video on youtube and the source file for close inspection.  I'm running the system using the windows pearl slim interface. From what I'm seeing the youtube compression is causing a little studdering but check out the source file to inspect the super smooth operation): Enjoy and look forward to more info as we continue to move forward! Not cool enough for you? Okay, okay how about verticle moves...

OpenMoco.org now has a twitter-presence. Follow @OpenMoco to get live updates to the site. When writing new articles or forum posts, make sure to look at the "Post to twitter.com" option below and make sure it's checked so that your update goes out!

We're constantly working on adding new content and value to the site. Stay tuned as we start porting all of the GUI development discussion from Google Wave to the forums here!

We got the forums working here on OpenMoco again, they're still not perfect but highly improved. Feel free to Register and join in the discussion! We'll be quickly working to populate many of the off-line discussions we've been having about UI and system design, and look forward to hearing from all of those we haven't yet.

You can access the forums from the links at the top and on the left of this page.

We're making progress with hardware kits that will soon (maybe early Q2 2010?) be available for purchase. The idea is to use laser-cut acrylic panels and mostly off-the-shelf hardware (there will only be a couple of custom circuit boards, and one gear has to be custom-bored) to provide simple kits for the DIY motion control enthusiast to build their own systems without heavy investment in tooling and without having to focus on all of the fundamentals. In such a world, you could create new software, or just get out and shoot without first buying expensive CNC machines, or have to figure out yet one more way to come up with that right gear ratio.

The idea is that these kits would trade a little sweat equity from the end-user for cost, providing a system capable of just about anything you can imagine at a fraction of some of the pre-built systems' cost.

Version 0.81 of the OpenMoco Timelapse Engine is now available for download.

Changes in this release:

The PERL API is ready for download, and is fully documented.  It provides easy scripting capabilities when attaching a time-lapse engine to any windows or linux computer's serial/usb port.   All capabilities of the engine are exposed through easy-to-use methods.

Source, documentation and a package may be downloaded at the Software Download Page

The first publicly available release of the OpenMoco time-lapse engine is now available.  Download it at the Software Download Page.

Documentation is incomplete, and there may be bugs, but stop on in, sign up for an account, and let us know what you think!

What's not done?

• Further code optimization - several flags need to be rolled into single bytes
• Complete documentation
• ... and probably another hundred things I can't remember!