Timelapse camera by jerome_k

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

This is third iteration of a camera for time-lapse based on a Raspberry-pi.
The base is made of a framework of 9x9mm oak sticks which provide a good rigidity. The bottom part of the base contains 2 places for magnets to fix the camera on metallic surfaces like the roof of the car. There is also room for a nut to mount the camera on a photo-tripod. You will need a 1/2" nut, not that easy to find in Europe.
Above this is a place for a USB-power bank. I took the largest available 44000mAH from Amazon. It hold 24h for the time-lapse which is comfortable
Then is the stage for the Raspberry Pi. Initially it was a RPi v2 with a wifi dongle but it has been upgraded to a RPi v3 at the second iteration. It is under-clocked for more battery lifetime. A usb stick is used for photo storage. On the Raspberry pi board is mounted a PWM controller for the servo-motors and a RTC clock. Everything is interfaced in I2C
On the top of the base is the servo-motor for panoramic movement.
For the movement:
There is a panorama servo-motor which provides a rotation to the right or to the left, a DSS-M15S from DFRobot with a rotation over 270° on the top of the base. The tilt movement (up and down) is provided by a MG92s from TowerPro, but cheaper SG90 and MG90 also fit.
You will need in addition a 608 ball-bearing facing the tilt-servo for ensuring a proper movement of the head.
For the camera:
I use a raspberry-pi camera (version 1) with a CS-mount a 4mm lens.http://www.uctronics.com/ov5647-camera-board-w-cs-mount-lens-fully-compatible-with-raspberry-pi.html
Additional feature: there is room for a MMA8451 accelerator (from Adafruit) to measure the orientation of the photography in the head of the camera.https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-mma8451-accelerometer-breakout/overview
This information is important for assembling the time-lapse video to keep the horizon at the horizontal :)