Build a camera slider lesson plan
A motorized camera slider on a Nano in three short lessons: homing a stepper, an eased video move, and a timelapse that settles before every shot.
Objectives and materials
By the end, students can
- Home to a switch, then glide the whole rail with an even ease.
- Move, settle and shoot, frame by frame.
Materials for the whole unit
- Arduino Nano
- Full-size breadboard
- LED
- Limit switch, lever microswitch
- Potentiometer x 2
- Pushbutton
- Resistor
- Slide switch
- Stepper driver, A4988
- Stepper motor, NEMA 17
Every part is already on the simulator’s bench, so there is nothing to buy or hand out. The counts are the most any one lesson uses, if you build it on real breadboards too.
Motion
Home to a switch, then glide the whole rail with an even ease.
| Lesson | Time | What students do |
|---|---|---|
| A stepper that knows where it isSTEP and DIR into an A4988, steps per millimeter from the belt and pulley, and homing to an end switch so every move starts from a known place. | 20 min |
|
| The eased moveA trapezoid of speed: accelerate evenly, cruise, slow evenly, worked out from time in whole numbers, and why the top speed has a limit. | 20 min |
|
Materials
- Arduino Nano
- Full-size breadboard
- LED
- Limit switch, lever microswitch
- Potentiometer x 2
- Pushbutton
- Resistor
- Slide switch
- Stepper driver, A4988
- Stepper motor, NEMA 17
Check for understanding
Each student finishes "The eased move" on their own, without opening the hints. The simulator checks 4 of its 4 steps as they go.
Then ask each one to explain, in a sentence or two, the last thing it asked of them: "The top speed".
Timelapse
Move, settle and shoot, frame by frame.
| Lesson | Time | What students do |
|---|---|---|
| Timelapse: move, settle, shootDivide the rail into equal moves, let the rig stop shaking before every frame, and fire the shutter through an optocoupler on a real camera. | 20 min |
|
Materials
- Arduino Nano
- Full-size breadboard
- LED
- Limit switch, lever microswitch
- Potentiometer x 2
- Pushbutton
- Resistor
- Slide switch
- Stepper driver, A4988
- Stepper motor, NEMA 17
Check for understanding
Each student finishes "Timelapse: move, settle, shoot" on their own, without opening the hints. The simulator checks 4 of its 4 steps as they go.
Then ask each one to explain, in a sentence or two, the last thing it asked of them: "Make it your rig".
Teach this unit as a class
Start a class from this course and its 3 lessons are assigned in one go, in order. Students join with a six-character code or printed login cards, and each one’s work comes back to you.
The class tools are free for 30 days for one class of up to 20 students, with no card. The lessons themselves are free either way.