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CRW_1696.jpg

CRW_1696.jpg by AntonOlsen.
A time-lapse camera rig made of LEGO.

Nathan Sawaya is going to be at Rackspace tomorrow to build a six foot tall sculpture of our mascot out of LEGO. I plan to get plenty of pictures and hope to use this device to capture a frame every 12 seconds.

I bought the little micro motors off the LEGO Dacta site many years ago. I haven't seen them for sale anywhere in a while. They turn at about 35 rpm so to substitute the newer motors would require more gears.

Under the bottom rubber band are 3 9V battery boxes in parallel. I got the rubber bands at SXSW, thanks for the SWAG!

The button pusher was the hardest part to engineer. I tried every combination of gear and cam until I came up with this. I can tune it so it presses just hard enough to take a picture, but not so hard as to wiggle the camera or stall the motor.

I'm hoping that three fresh 9V batteries will last for 4-5 hours. 

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mozartpickle says:

Interesting. I should build one of these myself.
Posted 33 months ago. ( permalink )

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AntonOlsen  Pro User  says:

Thanks!

I had thought of using the RCX brick and triggering the motors with a timer, but decided the simpler solution would be less prone to failure (and easier to build).
Posted 33 months ago. ( permalink )

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dwstucke  Pro User  says:

add a hanging suspension and a kite and you could easily re-purpose this rig... www.flickr.com/groups/kaprigs/
Posted 33 months ago. ( permalink )

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AntonOlsen  Pro User  says:

This rig weighs about 1.5 lbs, but it wouldn't be hard to cut that down to 10-11 oz. I intended this one to run for 4-5 hours straight so it has three 9V battery boxes.

After tomorrow I'll strip it down to one battery and one motor and see how light I can make it.
Posted 33 months ago. ( permalink )

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TheThiers  Pro User  says:

Wow, that is so inventive!! I want to hear how it turns out! -Angie
Posted 33 months ago. ( permalink )

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view photos Uploaded on April 10, 2007
by AntonOlsen

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