Slow Down That Hot Rod Camera Dolly

[Eric Strebel]  uses a small homemade vehicle with his camera mounted on it to get great tracking shots for the intros to his videos. If the movement is slow enough then the effect is quite professional looking. But he wanted it eight times slower. We not only like the simple way he did it, along with how he machined parts for it, but the result makes it look like a hot rod, hence his name for it, the dolly hot rod. He also has an elegant mechanism for disengaging the motor while he repositions the dolly.

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Motorized Camera Dolly Rolls With the Changes

Over the last semester, Cornell student [Ope Oladipo] had the chance to combine two of his passions: engineering and photography. He and teammates [Sacheth Hegde] and [Jason Zhang] used their time in [Bruce Land]’s class to build a motorized camera dolly for shooting time-lapse sequences.

The camera, in this case the one from an iPhone 6, is mounted to an off-the-shelf robot chassis that tools around on a pair of DC motors. The camera mount uses a stepper motor to get just the right shot. A PIC32 on board the ‘bot takes Bluetooth commands from an iOS app that the …read more

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Hello 3D Printed Dolly

[Ivan] likes to take time lapse videos. Using his 3D printer and a stepper motor he fashioned a rig that allows him to control the camera moving any direction on a smooth floor.

The dolly has a tripod-compatible mounting plate and scooter wheels. An Arduino runs the thing and a cell phone battery provides power. A pot sets the speed and [Ivan] provides code for both a linear pot, which he suggests, and for a logarithmic pot, which he had on hand. You can see a video of the results below.

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