DIY crane with pan/tilt remote head and full remote camera controls...

hoarp001

hoarp001

Veteran
Hi,

I have nearly finished my camera crane, just finished the electronics for the LANC controller today.

Its five meters long, 4 meters effective length. Can get about 16-17feet high. Its made of 50mm square aluminium tubing and other various bits and peices.

Here are the photos:

http://www.whogivesatoss.com/crane1.jpg
http://www.whogivesatoss.com/crane2.jpg
http://www.whogivesatoss.com/crane3.jpg
http://www.whogivesatoss.com/crane4.jpg
http://www.whogivesatoss.com/crane5.jpg
http://www.whogivesatoss.com/crane6.jpg

The controller now has a Manfrotto 521 Lanc controller mounted on one side, and the 2.5mm jack plugs into the control box. The signal to the camera is taken up an 8 core cable, same cable that carries the power and signal to the motors. Keeps it nice and neat.

Heres a video of the crane working.... http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=rbn_EgOq1jc
see my channel for more videos.

Its been used at a music video shoot, a live event and is doing a short film on Monday.

Works well, has all the functionality of a full size jimmyjib but much cheaper...

Let me know what you think,

Pete.
( pete<dot>hoare<at>gmail<dot>com )
 
that's pretty bad ass. Nice work Man. Can you take a picture of the full crane? I'd like to see the base & all the other parts as well.
 
Thanks for the pictures. I think you've done a great Job here, but the Base seems like the weak link in the equation. Never the less, if it works and its getting used in commercial applications then awesome!!!!

Congrats!!!
 
The stand is really the weak point, but it is rated for 80kg so I suppose it will be ok... The bike fork was from a local bike shop, was £5, and since its designed for jumping about on, the stresses its designed for well exceed 80kg.

the joystick is an apem 5000 series analogue joystick from rs components. Unfortunately it wont work on its own, it needs something to take its signals and turn it into power for the motor. I used a Roboteq AX500 robot control board. It takes a while to get it all working but once you worked it out its much easier.

I didnt do it from blueprints but I was considering doing a walkaround video that pointed out all the bits etc etc. Would that be helpful?

I do have a massive word document that has pretty detailed instructions of how I built it. Email me if you want it....
 
Im doing a shoot with the crane on monday so I will take some video of it then.

Its pretty straightforward, my word document explains how the head works, and the crane is pretty simple its just a long thing with some weights on one end....
 
It can be pretty fast, but you cant go full speed when the camera is recording caus when you stop it rocks about a little bit. The cable tangles sometimes and I spin round as fast as I can to untangle it and it does one full revolution on the pan in about 2 seconds. The tilt is about the same.

Look on my youtube channel theres Looooads of videos on there....

www.youtube.com/hoarp001
 
As slow as you like, the gearing is such that if the motor is going relatively fast, the output is going pretty slow. I can tilt slow enough to do a really gentle rise up keeping the frame roughly the same. It takes some practice but i'm getting there....

It can probably go as slow as one revolution in half an hour, as stupid as it sounds. The slowest I would go is about one revolution in 1min or so.
 
Im doing a feature film with it in a few weeks shooting with two sony EX1s... Im trying to think of ways to make the motors quieter now....
 
It sdefinatly the gears. The cover is packed out with lithium grease and I have taped kitchen towel al round the gearbox to kind of dampen the sound....


Today I started to design the remote head V2.

This head is three axis, with dutch roll. It is also only single sided and my favorite feature so far:

ITS MADE OF CARBON FIBRE :-D Ultrasexy.

It might also have gyro stabilization, assuming that gyro stabilization isn't more complicated than I think it is...

As far as I am aware all there is to gyro stabalasation is two spinning flywheels, one in the horizontal plane, one vertical, which produces a gyroscopic...er... energy? well whatever it is, im sure you have played with a gyroscope and understand what they do. The head is then hung with a flexible joint so any wobbling in the arm can be taken out by the flexible joint and the gyros will stop the head wobbling.


Just out of interest, would anyone be interested in buying one of these?

Thanks.
 
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