As a follow-up to my previous article, here’s what I did today. First the theory: I designed a base that will hold my stepper motor and gear train. Nothing too complicated.

I cut the shape on the cnc, but drilled the small holes manually, because it is easier and faster.

The gears fit perfectly. I also lasercut a piece of plexi to act as shroud. Not that I fear for my safety, but it looks good imo and it was a first test cutting plexi on my lasercutter.

And below is a video of my rig in action. You can see the lazy susan turn 10° for every full rotation of the motor. There’s an arduino script running in a loop that rotates the stepper motor 360° and then waits for 2 seconds.

The next thing to do is activate the shutter release of either my GoPro or my smartphone and include it in the arduino script. I could just set my camera in timelapse mode and set the arduino waiting loop to match it, but I foresee a lot of fidgeting around to get the timing just right, so I prefer having the arduino activate my camera shutter. Much more elegant. But that is for another day.