Pan tilt controlled by joystick - Need place to start

Robotics and electronics discussion Miscellaneous
1

I would like to build a pan tilt video camera mount that can handle a 8-10 lbs video camera. I wish to mount it on a 24’ pole to video my sons football games. I own a welding and fabrication business and have a 3 axis Haas mill to cut custom parts, laser etc. the mechanics side I have covered. I just lack the electronics knowledge to set up two stepper motors controlled by a simple wired joy stick. I need to set it up so the steppers accelerate smoothly with the movement of the joystick.

I do quite a bit of R/C cars and helicopters and first thought giant scale r/c servos, but realize they will produce either too slow of a response OR jerky as they will not accelerate with the gimbals movement. However I was looking at the i00800 Torxis servo and was thinking using a moment arm I could control the ratio of movement to get a sweet spot for an best scenario of motion for a fixed speed.

Is this possible with the Pololu products?

Thank you,

Mark

2

Hello, Mark.

It is possible that the Torxis might work for you, but figuring out exactly how/if it would work in your system would mostly be up to you. You might also consider our Maestro servo controllers, which have a feature for acceleration control, but your joysticks would have to be connected to it directly as it does not support RC input.

- Ryan

3

Ryan,

Thank you. I will look into that more.

Mark