360 Degree Camera Mount

This project is called the 360 Degree Camera Mount, and I made it during my Senior Engineering class. This mount is able to attach a lightweight camera, and can move the camera around in any direction, controlled from your smartphone. With this tutorial, you should be able to build your own 360 camera mount. Enjoy!

- 3D printer and filament

- 2 L shaped dc gearmotors

- 1 Arduino Uno

- 1 Small protoboard or breadboard

- 1 L293D Motor Driver Chip

- 1 HC-10 Module

- Smartphone with Dabble App and bluetooth compatibility

- Lithium Polymer battery to power motors

- 9v battery or 5v wall plug barrel jack

- Soldering iron with solder

- Male to male wires

- 4 Female to male wires

One of the longest processes in this project will be to print out the three 3D printed pieces required. One of the pieces will serve as a base, the second will serve as a top cover, and the last is a way to connect the motor to a shaft, which will have a 1/4 screw in order to be able to screw in the camera. I have linked the stl file for both pieces, and you should download these files, and upload them to your 3D printers software. I personally used the Prusa slicer, but any software that goes along with your specific printer should work. Once the pieces are done printing, they should look like the pictures that I have attatched to this step. While you are waiting for the prints to finish, we will proceed with the other steps.

While the prints are running, you will begin to configure the electronics. Grab the small breadboard or the small protoboard, a handful of male to male wires, a soldering iron, solder, L293D motor driver board, HC-10 bluetooth module, the Arduino Uno, and the L shaped dc gearmotors. Once you have all of these materials, you will begin by placing or soldering components onto the breadboard/ protoboard. You will place the L293D chip in the middle as shown in the picture, and then you will plug in/ solder all the male to male wires in their designated location, as shown in the diagram, EXCEPT for the ports that the motors plug into. Once this is done, you will solder one end of the male to male wire to the positive and negative side of the gearmotors. Then, you will plug in/ solder the connections from the breadboard/protoboard to the Arduino Uno in the following order.

ENB ---> 6

IN4 ---> 4

IN3 ---> 5

ENA ---> 9

IN1 ---> 7

IN2 ---> 8

After this is complete, grab the 4 female to male wires, and stick the HC-10 pins to each of the female sides. Once this is done, you will want to stick the TXD of the HC-10 in the RXD on the Arduino, and the RXD of the HC-10 in the TXD of the Arduino. Plug the GND in the GND and the VCC into the 5V. Now we will move on to the program.

Now that we have all of the hardware set up, we will need to configuire the code to run all of the hardware. I have included the Arduino file with the code on it, which connects to the HC-10 bluetooth module and sends motor control commands in correspondance to the click of the buttons on the Dabble Joystick. Plug your Arduino into your computer and open the code that I have included. Select the correct port, then upload the code. Once the code is done uploading, you can disconnect the Arduino from your computer. Your Arduino is now ready, so we will now move on to grabbing our 3D printed parts and assembling everything together.

Now that you have programmed the board, we will connect the power source for the Arduino and the motors. I personally used a 9V battery with a barrel jack attatchment on it, and connected that to my Arduino. You will need to grab a lithium polymer battery, which you should connect directly into the VCC2. You should solder this on right now, as we have everything else set up. Once that is complete, you should see everything turned on, and you will want to temporarily disconnect everything. You will know if everything works if you see your HC-10 bluetooth module blinking. Now, once your 3D prints are ready, you will want to place one motor in the base so that it points up, and sticks in the hole on the bottom of the top piece. You will stick the other motor on the top, and slide it in the section like I did in my picture. Once the motors are in place, you can plug in/ solder the motor wires into the breadboard/ protoboard. Then once that is done, you will want to put all the components at the bottom of the base, and put the top over it, with the power on.

Once this is done, you will want to open Dabble, and open the gamepad. Then you will want to connect to the HC-10 bluetooth module. You will click the button that looks like the plug in socket, and then you will want to find the HC-10 module and click and connect. Once you are connected, press the arrows, and your camera mount should be working!