A year or so ago, I got myself a camera slider that allows me to get easily get nice, smooth panning shots. When I bought it, I wasn’t sure how much use it was actually going to get, but I find myself using it all the time and loving (most of) it!

But I have it mounted up on top of a standard video tripod, so to adjust the height, I’m awkwardly moving the tripod, slider, and camera (unless I’m responsible enough to remove the latter before adjusting the tripod legs…but let’s face it, I don’t most of the time.

So, when I found myself with a pile of big, beefy linear bearings from a GovDeals auction, I couldn’t help but think they’d make for a hell of an improved slider that could get me motorized Z-axis control.

But if the camera is now moving around in X and Z, I’m going to need a way to pan and tilt my camera if I want to track something on my work table….so this thing is now a full-on 4-axis motion system, and I’m callin it CamBot.

As much as I’d love to have my fancy new camera moving capabilities now, I’m expecting this project to take me quite a while. The linear bearings I’m planning to use at the base of this thing are 1.2 meters long, and they’re going to be moving around camera gear that I very much can’t afford to replace. So, unlike most of the builds I share online, I’m actually going to be doing the math on this one.

But, one aspect of the design that I really don’t want to have to wait on is the software development. Coming up with a controller for this thing that will be easy to use, and provide nice, smooth motion is going to be non-trivial. Unfortunately, it’s also one of those things where you really need the finished hardware before you can actually tune and test it.

So I’ve decided to do something that’s going to make the full system take even longer, but hopefully result in the full FUNCTIONAL system be done sooner. I’m building a ‘quick-and-dirty’, smaller scale version first, aka µCamBot.