PanoBot - Motorized Panorama Head

The purpose of this project was to design a motorized panorama head that will automate the process of taking a defined numbers of pictures to create 360°x180° panoramas. The Motorized Panorama Head is allowing the user to choose step sizes from 1 degree to 90 degrees, so that virtually any camera and lens combination can be accommodated.

The controller is based on the Atmel's AVR® microcontroller ATMega168. The board is operated by software which can be updated at any time without the need to disassemble the device. Setup parameters are selected by the user and can be saved for future use.

The following parameters can be selected by the user:
Number of pictures per row, number of rows, exposure time, direction of rotation, time delay between each picture, time delay before first shot.

The camera could be released by a servo, infrared transmitter, wireless transmitter or cable.

PanoBot V1 Video

This was the first test of the motorized panorama head using the Panasonic Lumix FX30 camera.

Testing the first version

The first version of the PanoBot was designed to gain some experience in programming the software needed to control the stepper motor and also to find out what components I will need in the end to make the device work for bigger cameras.

NPP adapter for Panasonic FX30

As you can see on the left picture I made an adapter for the FX30 and attached it directly on the stepper motor. The camera was released by a small servo as I'm using for model airplanes. Even the camera has no manual control for aperture or shooter time, the resulting image was pretty ok.

First panorama taken with the Panasonic FX-30:

NPP adapter for Konica-Minolta A200

The second version was designed to accommodate the Konica-Minolta A200 camera and therefore I had to build a new adapter. The adapter is made up from 30x10 mm and 30x5 mm aluminium. The upper arm can be turned in 45° steps. The cable with the IR transmitter is used to control and release the A200 camera.
With this set-up positioning the camera functioned perfectly and it became very easy and fast to take 3 rows x 10 pictures to create a 360° panorama. But the large housing of the panorama head was a disadvantage as it was always visible on the bottom of the stitched panorama.

PanoBot V2 Video

This was the second version of the PanoBot with the attached A200 camera. At the beginning I'm changing the parameters and then starting the process to take 10 pictures per row.

PanoBot V3 Video

The last video of the PanoBot ...

PanoBot V3 with Konica Minolta A-200

In order to make the head as small as possible I used a new geared stepper motor and attached this directly on the tripod. The controller is mounted on the other side of the tripod and connected via plugable connections to the motor.

The new motor has a diameter of 42mm and the attached gear has a transmission of 1:14. This has some advantages in the resulting higher torque at less power consumption.

PanoBot V3 with Olympus E-510 and 8mm Zuiko lens

As I got totally infected by the panorama virus I had to buy a new camera with a wide angle lens. For various reasons I decided to go for the 4/3 system made by Olympus and ended up with a E-510 kit and an additional Zuiko 8mm lens.

This is the latest update of the PanoBot to accommodate the Olympus E-510 with the 8mm Zuiko lens. 6 pictures at -15°, one zenith and one nadir shoot turned out as the best solution for me. With this set-up even a missing nadir shoot can be retouched easily. In order to have a better selection of pictures, I'm using the braketing function of the camera and saving the pictures as RAW format.

Here you can see the attached remote cable to control the shooter release of the camera. The cable is used as plug and play and no modification was needed on the original remote cable. I prefer to use the camera with auto focus ON, as long light is available. Therefore I have added an additional parameter to set a delay time needed to auto focus the camera. A little delay is needed anyway to make sure the head is not shaking anymore right after the turn.

PanoBot V3 with wireless shutter

To get rid of the release cable between controller and camera I found a wireless solution based on a wireless door bell. The wireless door bell uses a simple 433Mhz transmitter and receiver so it can be used with little modifications for other applications like a remote swich. The wireless door bell was modified accordingly to be used as remote wireless shutter. This solution is plug and play, it can be replaced at any time by the initial remote cable.

The NPP adapter was anodised black to look more professional. The wireless receiver is attached to the adapter and connected to the camera. On the other end the wireless transmitter is connected with the PanoBot controller. With this solution I'm very flexible even when thinking about pole heads as I have to extend only one cable between the motor and the motor driver board.

Video: PanoBot with wireless shutter

Check the video below to watch the last version of the PanoBot.

360° Panoramas made with the PanoBot can be found here: Panoramagalerie. On top left of the page you can switch between plain Equirectangular and Quicktime player.

Take a look at this panorama: I managed to take a panorama by pressing one button, while driving on the Autobahn at a speed of 170 km/h.

Parts used and cost to build the PanoBot

• I have used the following industrial parts:
• Stepper motor ST4118M1206 and gear GPLL 40-14 from Nanotec
• RN-MiniControl, Stepper driver and ISP-cable from robotikhardware.de
• LCD-Display Parallax PXLCD16X2B from Elektronikladen
• Case from Conrad
• Bascom AVR Compiler. The software to contol the PanoBot was programmed by my self.

Total Cost (€ Euro) :

What next?

• Designing and developing a new controller
• Writing a user friendly software to controll a two motor head
• The Project is called GigaPanBot and it's being tested right now

GigaPanBot