Pan Tilt stepper motors

[skywatch]

Hi :)

I was wondering if mysensors would support the operation of remotely controlling pan/tilt stepper motors for CCTV camera.

I was thinking that it would be nice to make a hardware controller with joystick to control this via mysensors and mycontroller setup.

Has anyone done this? Would it be the wrong way to go on this?

I will need to be able to control multiple cameras so a way to switch between which camera to control would be nice. That way I can have one portable controller for all cameras wherever I am.

Any thoughts out there on the practicality of this?

[mfalkvidd]

Cool idea @skywatch

It should be feasible. After all, my Tetris game works smoothly enough, and I imagine Tetris has more severe real-time requirements than pan/tilt. One note though: I let my Gateway run the "screen", so there was only 1 hop between the gamepad and the screen. And I did not use signing. With signing, the control became so slow it was useless.

[alowhum]

I've ordered a pan-tilt kit as well. Perhaps you can share some code once you're done?

[kimot]

And what kit with stepper motors? Or you mean servo motors ?

[skywatch]

@kimot Servos require permanent power to keep position (afaik).

Therefore stepper motors would be preffered as they can 'step' to position the then power off without moving back to a cent
ral point.

The 'kit' can be commercial or preferably 3D printed.

@alowhum

It's only in the 'thinking about it' stage right now - so don't hold your breath on this but be assured that I will post if/when it works..... ;)

[Fanfan]

@skywatch The issue I can see with steppers is that your camera might move when you poweroff the motors. As you said, when you poweroff them, they wont go back to center, but they also wont keep the position. If your camera is not perfectly balanced, it will "fall down". As well as your 3D printer : as long as you power the steppers, you can not move the axis, but as soon as you poweroff them (unlock) , you can move your axis.

[kimot]

When you switch off power for servos, they will stay in last position. And they have got a gear so not too easy self moving like single steppers.
And pan tilt kits are very cheap.

[skywatch]

@Fanfan @kimot Thank you both for the info - I learn something new yet again! :)

[AWI]

@skywatch Take a look at my pan tilt project. A stepper i.s.o. servo can easily be achieved. I would recommend to use the AccelStepper lib to have a smooth movement.