How To Convert A Time-lapse Intervalometer To A Slider Controller

Andy Pearson wanted to introduce some sliding motion into his Parkour time-lapse footage with Parkour Generations. He already had a Varavon slider and only needed a way to consistently and remotely move the camera on the slider. (So the drill trick ain’t gonna work).

Andy took a different direction, using the output of an intervalometer to control the starting and stopping of the slider. While the video quality is not all that great, it packs a huge amount of info on building this type of motion control.

Andy was kind enough to allow us to place the video and tutorial on DIYP. If you have any questions, hit the comments.

First to understand the motivation for this, here is sample footage using the hack for a quick time lapse. Then there is a video showing how it works, and lastly a video and instructions on how to build the device.

And here are the build instructions:

The Servo system

First, thanks goes out to Jason Werowinski and his video for pointing me the right direction. I bought my Servo, controller and battery pack off ebay.co.uk but similar items can be found on amazon.

• Servo
• Controller
• Battery Pack

I
used an few old lens caps, filter adjustment rings and cogs I used out of an old printer to connect to the servo and make a free-flowing rotating spindle on the other end of the slider.

I housed these all in a plastic box and used elastic string to go around the cogs on the servo, latched onto the slider head and the around the far end spindle.
With a bit of playing around and getting the string tight enough, it all works perfectly. (This is explained in the video, but it is pretty much a one off. so you will need to hack your own)

The Intervalometer Delay and Trigger

A lot of help and information came from this webpage.

Basically the Intervalometer is a simple switch (one for focus, one for shutter)
that will turn on for a period of time and switch off when the timers say so. Using the shutter switch on the intervalometer you can use it to interrupt the motor on the slider and then control it however you wish.

You
don’t want current and voltages going through the intervalometer, so blocking the power wires from the batteries to the controller on the motor would not be advisable. The only other solution is to use the intervalometer to switch on and off the SIGNAL wire to the motor from the controller. This way, you can pre-set how fast and what direction you want the slider to move using the controller and then set the intervalometer to delay and pulse this signal on and off however and
whenever you wish.

So. With all this said, I bought a:

• small stripboard:
• A 2.5mm jack-plug socket
• And some male/female plugs for the servo/controller to plug into.

The + and – wires of the controller to servo just run as normal. The ‘S’ (signal) wire becomes broken using the 2.5mm jack plug socket.

Finally, the Intervalometer will reconnect the broken Signal (‘S’) wire whenever the shutter switch is made.

Good luck with your own project and I’ll try to answer any comments below!