OK. I’m an absolute beginner with anything electronic but I’d like to have a go so I thought the best way to learn is to pick a simple project.
I’ve been working on making a little mechanical cart that runs on rails and I’m almost finished but there is something that would greatly improve it. I have a camera mounted on board my cart and I’d like to be able to operate it remotely. It’s wired but the cable is a couple of meters long. So I’d like to make a little device whereby I can turn a knob and it turns a spur gear mimicking exactly the movement of the wheel I turn by hand. It needs to be very precise so I can make very small adjustments and it needs to be silent on the gear end as I might put a little microphone there as well, not decided yet. If it works well I might also make more knobs and gears to control other things on my cart.
I thought this sounded like a reasonably simple project for me to learn some stuff but before I go ahead and order random parts I thought I’d come here and ask folk who know better what they think is the best way to solve this problem.
Sounds like a very doable project. There a three types of motors realy available that could serve your needs. Each has costs, speeds, accuracy, power, and electrical drive requirements. In addition you can find hybrid versions of all.
Stepper - good if there is a half or less turn required
Servo - accurate in steps of 1.8 degrees.
Gear head - multple gear ratios available. May need external encoder.
Supply a few more details such as speedd, torque, size, controller and perhaps a better fit can be found. In addition you will need a radio link which may tend to favor
Thanks for the reply. I’m not sure how to measure torque? It’s to move the weight of about 4 kg. But it’s mounted on bearings so it would not be too much work. Imagine 4 kg sitting on a record player and you need to turn the turn table with a little gear.
The speed is slow compared to a normal motor use I’m I would think. It’d be nice to be able to turn the camera quickly if I wanted too but we are not talking about much speed.
It needs to be able to turn 360 degrees, maybe twice that to be sure.
I don’t need a radio just a cable between the two devices. So I turn the knob on one end and the gear turns on the other. I was looking at little servo motors from the hobby shop but they all made such an awful noise.
What about the little motors on camera gimbals, they are silent and strong? And small! which would be very nice for this project.
