GigaPanBot Controller & Motorized Panorama Head

The GigaPanBot is an automatic rotating pan and tilt head designed to rotate and trigger a digital DSLR camera.
It can be used in combination with fish eye lenses to shoot fast 360° panoramas or with tele lenses up to 600mm to shoot multi-row, high resolution, so called gigapixel panoramas.
Shooting panoramas with the GigaPanBot is really fast and reliable as the frequency of shoots can be much faster and accurate as using any manual device.
The GigaPanBot has 2 main parts; the controller and the motorized head. There is a simple head using one pan motor and a motorized head using 2 motors (pan and tilt)

The GigaPanBot controller has been designed to control a motorized panorama head with one or two motors. Software parameters are used to setup the gear type and ratio.
A new hardware board was developed for this purpose. It includes all the electronic components needed to control two stepper motors, microcontroller, camera release, clock, RS232/USB interface, Lithium Battery and the user interface (color display and keys) .

This are the current features:
Supporting powerful geared pan & tilt motors
Large 2.1' LCD color display
GigaPanBot Software
- Software parameters to define gear ratio and motor steps. So I can attach basically any combination of motor/gear ratio. Right now I'm using a gearhead with a resolution of 80000 micro steps per 360°, or 0.0045° per step)
- Supporting all kind of camera types and lenses (pre-defined sensor types and user defined sensor size).
- Build in lens and FOV calculator.
- Many user parameters like: Panorama FOV, start delay, delay after each move, recording time per picture, automatic or semiautomatic mode, bracketing up to 10 pictures, mirror lock-up time, picture overlap%, tilt and pan direction, motor speed, record in row or column mode ...
- Define, save or recall multiple individual programmable sequences (Panorama Memory, see picture below)
- The panorama sequence can be paused and the user can choose to repeat one to n pictures or the entire row.
- Manual mode allows to position the head manually step by step from one row to the next and pan from one picture to the next (within predefined FOV)
- Optional remote control is possible so the contoller can be activated via cable or a wireless switch.
- Firmware (GigaPanBot Software) can be updated at any time by the end user via the RS232/USB interface
- Logging head position for each single picture. The data is sent via cable or Bluetooth to the PC. A PTGui template is created during recording time which can be used to automatically allign the images in the panorama. This step could be done offline so I don't need to carry any PC or laptop with me.
- Bluetooth link to other BT devices is possible and this option will soon enable new functinallity.
- The number of pictures per row is adapted depending on the tilt angle. This option can save up to 40% time and pictures
- Update February 2010: The last firmware was updated to support remote control via Papywizard. This enables new remote capabilities like this
- In the meantime the camera is able to report back to the controller if the last picture was taken successfully. This features allows minimal recording times and avoids loss of pictures as the head will move only if the camera was triggered successfully.

GigaPanBot Controller

The up/down keys are used to navigate to the parameter you want to change. The <> keys changes the value of the parameter and the Enter key will confirm the modified value.
The cursor color and the value will change from white to yellow to highlight any changed value.

Exit key returns to the main menu or is used to stop the head.
The parameter values are saved automatically when you exit the menu.

The size of the GigaPanBot Controller is 110x110x60 mm including a very large battery! The controller board including 2 modules has a size of 90x50x25 mm only.

	Panorama Memory 10 different panorama programs can be saved and recalled by the user: (In this case program 1 has been selected) Sensor Type (there are 8 predefined types plus one user type) Init. Pos. Pan and tilt the head manually using the 4 <> keys. This field does also display the current head position (degree of both tilt and pan axis) Lens - this value is calculated based on the sensor type, camera orientation and selected overlap % between pictures Number of pictures - (up to 999 possible) Number of rows - (up to 99 possible) Panorama horizonatal and vertical FOV. H-FOV can be changed in 5° steps, V-FOV is calculated based on the picture overlap and number of selected rows. BKT/Braketing - (no braketing in this case) up to 10 are possible Delay time Pano - (delay panorama by n seconds, no delay in this case) Pict -0.8 (0.8s delay after turning the head and taking next picture) Rec Time 0.4 (0.4s delay to release and record the picture) TEST allows to manually position the head within the selected range of 360/160° START to initiate the program After pressing the start button, all timers are decreasing in the order of sequence, so you can always see on the display what is happening next. On the right corner you can see the status of the battery , right now the battery is 100% full
	Camera Parameters Sensor width and height can be defined by the user for 'non-standard' sensor types. (this values are used by the lens calculator) As I have implemented several predefined sensor types in the software I will remove this 2 parameters, as they are not needed anymore. Shutter Mode - Sequential or single Lock-up time - Mirror lock up time (up to 3 seconds) Picture overlap % - 5% to 50% (this value is used by the lens calculator)
	GigaPanBot Preferences Direction - prefered turn direction (left or right) and biderectional or single directional ( fastest method is biderectional, means the head is not returning to the beginning of the row) There are 6 modes availabe to allow different recording patterns (by row or by column) Tilt start - preference to define the starting point for the first row. Pano Mode - Automatic or semi automatic per row or picture (the head stops and continues after user confirmation either on each picture or on each row) Optimize - Undocumented feature, but this option saves you > 40% time and pictures.
	LCD Display and power save options Backlight - 125 (any value from 0 to 255 to select the default display backlight intensity) Time delay - 40 (time in seconds after the display will be turned down) Dim value - 10 (any value from 0 to 255 to select the display backlight intensity after time delay above) Power down delay - The controller will power down if the keys are not touched by the user for a predefined number of minutes Number of pictures since last battery charge
	Motor & Gear Parameters This parameters are used to define the gear ratio of the attached gears. Turn on/off the motor brake. Set maximum motor speed (The speed is adjusting dynamically based on the pan/tilt distance, but with this paramter you can control the maximum motor speed from Slow - Medium - Fast) There is also a fast 360° mode which turns the head without stops to be used with fish eye lenses to take action panoramas. Dual Cam - guess what it is ...
	Time-lapse function In the latest firmware version I have implemented the time-lapse function to wakeup the controller at a certain time to perform his job. This option has been replaced by Papywizard!
Motorized pan and tilt head	Motorized pan head
The GigaPanBot controller is used primarily with the dual motor head. See details by following the link on the left side.	The GigaPanBot controller can also be used with the single motor head. See details by following the link on the left side.
Note that this is a private project and not availabe on the market. I do not sell the GigaPanBot! Feel free to contact me if you have any other questions. Before you start to build such a device, be aware the price will easily exceed 1000€	Email: