This interface was already quite tricky to program with my limited coding skills as the screen I’m using is rather slow with the Arduino and just having the total runtime update as quickly as possible to make rotating the encoder responsive enough required the use of, let’s say, a few tricks. Touching the touchscreen only sets the movement direction right now, but there is obviously room for adding more functionality there. As much as an all-touchscreen interface would be super slick and all, having that haptic control element plus the click for stop and go just feels so much more direct. Start of the show here is the Arduino with a touchscreen and a clickwheel encoder.

I specifically picked the stepper motor instead of a geared DC motor since the stepper first of all is much more consistent in its move speed, but also allows those super-slow moves that would require an insane amount of gearing with a DC motor. For electronics, I went with a stepper motor, plus a driver et cetera. In my case, this is 20x40mm Openbuilds-compatible Vslot with regular-sized wheels and the big plate for maximum flexibility later on, I do want to add something like a motorized pan at some point. I settled on the Openbuilds system, since linear ball bearings are quite sensitive to dust and dirt and will always have a bit of sticky lube on their guides, while sliding blocks don’t care about dirt at all, but do have a bit of stick-slip friction, which isn’t the greatest thing for those super slow slides. Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages for smoothness, robustness and price. Now, there are a few different options of making a slider like this, both when it comes the mechanical parts and how you control it – you could go with a true sliding setup, like with IGUS bushing or even just some felt pads on a pair of pipes, or with a roller-style axis like i have here, or even do a full-on linear ball bearing rail setup. The results are pretty fantastic, I’d say, and you, too, can build this exact same slider for less than 60 bucks. So I designed and built one from scratch using some electronics from a 3D printer and, of course, 3D printed parts. In my case, a one meter length sounded about right. And it’s pretty hard to find one that does the things I wanted: It should be really smooth, it should be useable for both short video clips and timelapses over multiple hours or days and it should be reasonably large. expensive to buy if you want them motorized. But unless you’re happy with pushing the camera around by hand, they are really. Making is always better than buying 💙 Here’s my design of a 1m (over 3ft) long motorized camera slider that does both fast and super-slow slides!Ĭamera sliders.

3d print t slot track glide