Creating a portfolio can be tedious.
Being a maker doesn't just end at inventing awesome hardware projects, one also has to figure out how to show them off professionally to impress employers. On one hand, initially designing a project using CAD software like SolidWorks allows you to take impressive graphical renderings of the model, like the ones used in this report. However, a model is only able to depict so much about the final physical product. Taking standard photos using a phone in bad lighting is far less than ideal. The conventional way of fixing this problem is using a Studio Box, but they tend to be super expensive for the amount of functionality they provide.
I created Project Studio to solve this problem for myself. I realized the need for a device that would enable me to take professional photos, videos, and 3D scans of my hardware projects when creating my portfolio. The result (figure 1) of a semester long design process is a device that incorporates a rotating base and an extending selfie stick arm with two extra degrees of freedom, to allow any camera orientation around the object.
List of Components
- OLED display
- Rotary encoder
- H-bridge motor driver Arduino shield
- WS2182 LED strip
- 10K Potentiometer
- Variable buck converter
- Arduino Uno
- Power Switch
- 9.6V rechargeable NiCad battery
- 12V worm drive dc motor gearbox
- NEMA 17 stepper motor
- AS5048A motor driver
- 5V geared dc motor
- Hitec HS-322HD servo motor
- Lead screw
- Ball bearings
- Plywood
- M5 threaded inserts and screws
- 3D printed Parts
Lets talk cost, and motors:
An important criteria set during the ideation stage was to keep cost of parts at a minimum and ideally have a finalized device within a month's timeframe. This meant only incorporating motors and drivers I already had available to me as miscellaneous parts. The rotating platform uses a NEMA 17 stepper motor geared down to a ratio of 1:2 using Solidworks toolbox generated spur gears, and is controlled using the popular AS5048 stepper motor driver. The pivoting arm is driven by a powerful 12V worm gear dc motor gearbox sourced from Waterloo Engineering scrap, while the phone mount tilt axis is powered by a standard Hitec servo.
Provided that I already had access to a powerful dual motor H-bridge shield compatible with the Arduino Uno / Mega, it proved to be the perfect application for this project. For actuating the linearly extending axis of the arm, I faced the choice of using a slow but robust unipolar stepper motor against the 5V dc motor gearbox used in toy cars. The key difference between these two choices was the method of monitoring the arm's extension in code - steps vs time based respectively. With the lack of enough GPIO pins on the Arduino Uno and a desire to keep things compact, I chose to forgo the precise control of the stepper motor for a simpler design.
Another important criteria set was to create a self sufficient studio device that wouldn't require any external lighting to function. With this goal in mind an addressable neo pixel array was used to illuminate around the platform that is electrically extended through the arm to act as a spotlight behind the phone holder.
Figure 2: Front view
