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Apr. 23rd, 2019 09:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unicornduke I had a breakthrough for the laser scarecrow project. Everyone involved has been fighting with the problem of spinning the laser and also making it go up and down while not completely murdering the wiring. PVC pipes, gears, stepper motors, all this jazz we've been trying.
I was laying in bed sunday night and I thought, someone has wanted to spin something and also tilt it. And it turns out that there are a bunch of people out there attaching cameras to drones and taking footage and they have things that are pan and tilt mechanisms so they can remotely control or program cameras to take footage. That pan on the horizontal and tilt. So I solved every issue because the servos run the mechanisms entirely, so no other motors needed, and the wiring runs from the servos through the base and I can attach them right into the motor shield/arduino board instead of having the stepper motor run the pan and all the associated fiddling with that.
I ordered a 360 pan model for this and it was only 60 dollars. Fingers crossed that it works the way I'm hoping because then I can set up a laser scarecrow for like, maybe $150 or $200? That way I could build a couple really easily and cheap and keep one for my own grain production.
I'm not sure on the lasers though. The one used for the official project is a green one inch diameter laser that is out of stock. So I don't know if I should buy one around the same size or just do two small ones or what. I've got one itty bitty one right now. The biggest issue is that 99% of lasers ship from China and that's going to take too long for my liking. Adafruit has tiny ones and they ship to me within a day. So maybe I just buy like four and attach all those in slightly different directions. That'll scare the birds.
I was laying in bed sunday night and I thought, someone has wanted to spin something and also tilt it. And it turns out that there are a bunch of people out there attaching cameras to drones and taking footage and they have things that are pan and tilt mechanisms so they can remotely control or program cameras to take footage. That pan on the horizontal and tilt. So I solved every issue because the servos run the mechanisms entirely, so no other motors needed, and the wiring runs from the servos through the base and I can attach them right into the motor shield/arduino board instead of having the stepper motor run the pan and all the associated fiddling with that.
I ordered a 360 pan model for this and it was only 60 dollars. Fingers crossed that it works the way I'm hoping because then I can set up a laser scarecrow for like, maybe $150 or $200? That way I could build a couple really easily and cheap and keep one for my own grain production.
I'm not sure on the lasers though. The one used for the official project is a green one inch diameter laser that is out of stock. So I don't know if I should buy one around the same size or just do two small ones or what. I've got one itty bitty one right now. The biggest issue is that 99% of lasers ship from China and that's going to take too long for my liking. Adafruit has tiny ones and they ship to me within a day. So maybe I just buy like four and attach all those in slightly different directions. That'll scare the birds.
