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I’m a bit stuck working on #Cambot. It should be able to perform programmed camera moves, and mechanically it works.  I figured now would be a good time to do a video, showing what’s going on. I’m particularly fond of the gearing on the pan tilt head. I’m just stuck on the electronics.

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Cleaned the wiring and set the motor drivers up on stand-offs the whole enclosure looks orderly and ready to rock. It's amazing how much progress I could make in an afternoon without actually testing the components, maybe procrastinating a tad. #stewardesshowfarexactlyisatad? #art #arduino #dragonframe

A post shared by Brad Isdrab (@bradisdrab) on Jun 19, 2017 at 10:04pm PDT

I’d been wiring the arduino directly to some easy drivers, but that wasn’t working out so well. The wires were a spaghetti mess, and I never got more than one axis moving at a time. Ended up letting the magic smoke out of like four steppers.

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Three projects on the work bench today, all involving soldering! Setting up #arduino controlled lights for the spaceship model, repairs to my #3dprinter, and a major upgrade to #cambot @biolapse hooked me up with an awesome etched shield to hold motor drivers #art #moco #motioncontrol

A post shared by Brad Isdrab (@bradisdrab) on Aug 17, 2017 at 2:52pm PDT

I got this awesome board kit from Biolapse, so spent awhile soldering it up. I happened to have a bunch of smaller stepperdrivers from my  burnt out #3Dprinter ramps board and got it all together wired up to power and the nema17 stepper motors of the rig and looking good to me.

When I power it up the most I’m getting now is a slight vibration from one axis, not much torque, or rotation. The rest of the axis; nothing.

Lots of things I think it could be just not sure where to begin. I’m really reluctant to tear it all apart looking for the problem. That rearrange plugs, then test trial and error is exactly how I burned up so many drivers before. Just don’t know where to begin #troubleshootinghell

Bad soldering; there were a lot of points, and as much as I thought it went well, it’s always possible it didn’t flow/connect or something. But it seems unlikely I missed so much that all but one don’t work at all. I’d expect more mixed results.

Crossed wiring; the stepper motors might be plugged in the wrong order. I tried to be aware of which were the a/b coils of them but could easily have misread the diagram, and these are mismatched anyway so colors may not be reliable. It could even be a short in the leads to the motors.

The stepper drivers might need to be tuned, or could be bad. Only one of the stepper drivers I hooked up was new. The rest came from my old ramps board, which had been put out of commission when he heated bed power terminal burned up. It’s possible they don’t work now,  But the rest of the board had been alright at the time.