After fixing everything for the Arduino / stepper motor driven turntable to a board and tidying up the wiring I experimented taking a few videos. The first batch were again with the Panasonic but although I got it to the best I could with the manual focus I was constantly disappointed with the results. Then I got out the Canon XL2 not really expecting it to be able to focus close up. Was I wrong? I was really surprised just how close I could get to things so I set up a few bits gathered last Autumn. The result being:
Much better and with some more care over lighting and background I could grow to like this form of presenting some items.
Sunday, 21 October 2012
Dewy Morning
A very heavy dew this morning so all the spiders' webs were showing up a treat. Interesting to see different styles depending on where they are built. On some trellis nearly every section was filled with an orb web:
Down at grass level the style of web looks much more haphazard. On my lawn this morning I gave up counting the number of small webs just like this one when I reached fifty:
You wouldn't think there was enough insect life about to feed all those spiders every day. Just shows how many tiny creatures live under our noses (or feet) without our noticing.
Down at grass level the style of web looks much more haphazard. On my lawn this morning I gave up counting the number of small webs just like this one when I reached fifty:
You wouldn't think there was enough insect life about to feed all those spiders every day. Just shows how many tiny creatures live under our noses (or feet) without our noticing.
Saturday, 20 October 2012
Heath Robinson Meets Arduino
For a while I have wanted a slow rotating platform to film small objects. The one I built at least a year ago had the disadvantage that the stepper motor made large jumps for each step and was only suitable for taking a series of stills which then had to be put together to make a video.
Recently I spotted some very cheap 5V stepper motors which are often sold complete with the driver board. These motors are small and have a step angle of only 5.625 degrees. That means it will take 64 steps to rotate a full circle. All it needed was wiring to an Arduino Nano (any model of Arduino will work) and loading the sketch (program instructions) which was freely available on the web.
Here is the setup:
Left to right: 5V power regulator - driver board - Arduino Nano
Upturned turntable cut from a spare piece of uPVC window ledge showing the stepper motor:
A hastily rigged up Heath Robinson set up to test whether it was any use for making videos:
The first results filmed using a Panasonic SDR-H80. The most difficult part was having to use manual focus which is hard to judge on the small LCD screen.
Now it needs tidying up and mounting in a framework.
As for the other project - rain gauge - I've been giving the latest real time clock a 'soak' test and am pleased to see that it seems to be keeping good time. When I programmed it it was 1 second fast (hard to get it exact as you have to guess how long it takes for the program to compile on the computer and download to the Nano) and it is still only 1 second fast.
Recently I spotted some very cheap 5V stepper motors which are often sold complete with the driver board. These motors are small and have a step angle of only 5.625 degrees. That means it will take 64 steps to rotate a full circle. All it needed was wiring to an Arduino Nano (any model of Arduino will work) and loading the sketch (program instructions) which was freely available on the web.
Here is the setup:
Left to right: 5V power regulator - driver board - Arduino Nano
Upturned turntable cut from a spare piece of uPVC window ledge showing the stepper motor:
A hastily rigged up Heath Robinson set up to test whether it was any use for making videos:
The first results filmed using a Panasonic SDR-H80. The most difficult part was having to use manual focus which is hard to judge on the small LCD screen.
Now it needs tidying up and mounting in a framework.
As for the other project - rain gauge - I've been giving the latest real time clock a 'soak' test and am pleased to see that it seems to be keeping good time. When I programmed it it was 1 second fast (hard to get it exact as you have to guess how long it takes for the program to compile on the computer and download to the Nano) and it is still only 1 second fast.
Friday, 19 October 2012
Friday at the Flicks - Garden Bird Visitors
Video clips taken yesterday when some of the regular garden bird visitors came to the Birdy Bistro.
Soundtrack:
Anna's Theme
from the Pulse CD
by Positively Dark
a free download from
http://www.entropymusic.com/
Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.
Raingauge Project:
Very slow progress really. Mainly caused by trying to get accurate timing. As I want to store the previous day's reading and update weekly, monthly and yearly totals at midnight each night good time keeping is needed.
The two different cheap real time clock modules I bought which use the DS1307 chip work but their timekeeping is very lax. One gained 5 seconds a day the other lost 10 seconds a day.
After further research I found one supplied by Love Electronics using the DS3231 chip which has an accuracy of +-2 ppm. (+- 1 second in 23 days) Relatively much more expensive but it works with the same code as the cheap ones and seems to live up to its reputation.
Also I now have an SD card reader and got the code working to read from the card. Next will be testing writing information to it
.
Soundtrack:
Anna's Theme
from the Pulse CD
by Positively Dark
a free download from
http://www.entropymusic.com/
Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.
Raingauge Project:
Very slow progress really. Mainly caused by trying to get accurate timing. As I want to store the previous day's reading and update weekly, monthly and yearly totals at midnight each night good time keeping is needed.
The two different cheap real time clock modules I bought which use the DS1307 chip work but their timekeeping is very lax. One gained 5 seconds a day the other lost 10 seconds a day.
After further research I found one supplied by Love Electronics using the DS3231 chip which has an accuracy of +-2 ppm. (+- 1 second in 23 days) Relatively much more expensive but it works with the same code as the cheap ones and seems to live up to its reputation.
Also I now have an SD card reader and got the code working to read from the card. Next will be testing writing information to it
.
Monday, 15 October 2012
Macro on Monday
It looks as though the Gold Star goes back in the safe for another week as most opted for the wrong creature, apart from John who hedged his bets. Most latched on to the old rhyme which was alluded to in the clue:
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice and all things nice.
What are little boys made of?
Slugs and snails and puppy dog tails.
The close up was part of a small slug I caught climbing up a wheelie bin one night.
My thanks to all who gave it a whirl and had a guess.
On to this week's Guess What.
I will admit I was struggling to think of something new:
If you have been reading the blog recently then you should be able to guess what this is part of.
No prizes. Just for fun.
Amazing Jump
I wonder how many of you watched Felix Baumgartner jump from 24 miles up above the Earth. I happened across a link to the live broadcast just as the balloon and capsule were about 20 miles up and was transfixed. Fascinating to listen to them go through the series of checks as he prepared to leap. Waiting patiently as the air pressure was released from the capsule to equal the near vacuum outside. See the door open as the pressures equalized. Watch Felix slide his seat to the opening and stand outside. Final checks and then the big leap. The live broadcast was able to watch him all the way down to a safe landing.
Can you imagine travelling at over 800mph without the aid of a vehicle? That special suit had to stand up to a lot to keep Felix safe.
Here is a bit of video from German TV showing the view from an on suit camera on the way down.
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice and all things nice.
What are little boys made of?
Slugs and snails and puppy dog tails.
The close up was part of a small slug I caught climbing up a wheelie bin one night.
My thanks to all who gave it a whirl and had a guess.
On to this week's Guess What.
I will admit I was struggling to think of something new:
If you have been reading the blog recently then you should be able to guess what this is part of.
No prizes. Just for fun.
Amazing Jump
I wonder how many of you watched Felix Baumgartner jump from 24 miles up above the Earth. I happened across a link to the live broadcast just as the balloon and capsule were about 20 miles up and was transfixed. Fascinating to listen to them go through the series of checks as he prepared to leap. Waiting patiently as the air pressure was released from the capsule to equal the near vacuum outside. See the door open as the pressures equalized. Watch Felix slide his seat to the opening and stand outside. Final checks and then the big leap. The live broadcast was able to watch him all the way down to a safe landing.
Can you imagine travelling at over 800mph without the aid of a vehicle? That special suit had to stand up to a lot to keep Felix safe.
Here is a bit of video from German TV showing the view from an on suit camera on the way down.
Sunday, 14 October 2012
Then There Were Two
I only check the night video captures every now and then. A couple of nights ago was the first time for quite a while that the camera captured two Hedgehogs visiting at the same time.
Soundtrack is Dawn by Positively Dark. They have two CDs of electronic and ambient music which is free to download as individual tracks for personal use including use on YouTube videos. The only provision is a mention of their website which I am only happy to do. The music can be found HERE. It looks to be a good way for them to get some free publicity. There are several tracks which seem suitable for my use anyway.
Soundtrack is Dawn by Positively Dark. They have two CDs of electronic and ambient music which is free to download as individual tracks for personal use including use on YouTube videos. The only provision is a mention of their website which I am only happy to do. The music can be found HERE. It looks to be a good way for them to get some free publicity. There are several tracks which seem suitable for my use anyway.
Saturday, 13 October 2012
Woe, Woe and Thrice Woe
So said the soothsayer in "Up Pompeii". Most of this week has been spent battling with my Arduino rainfall gauge project. First I had decided I needed a four line LCD display. Once that arrived it took a while to get it addressed properly so that filled a morning before it was fully working
To be able to store past records so as to display daily, weekly and monthly rainfall meant installing a real time clock in the circuit. I had a couple of part built kits bought over a year ago. I chose one and soldered in the resistors and connector, wired it up and spent ages finding and downloading different test sketches. Why do Arduino programmers call their programs sketches?
None of them worked. The display always showed the same gibberish. That had taken up a whole day with just an hour break while I installed a new outdoor LED floodlight which had arrived. The following day I decided to build the second real time clock. It is the same make but the one thing I noticed was that the back up battery holder was soldered in the opposite way round. Not my mistake as these came part built! Once the extra bits were soldered on and the thing plugged in everything soon sprang in to life.
No doubt having the back up battery reversed will have killed the first one. I did try unsoldering the holder and replacing it the correct way round - no joy there.
The only thing I have noticed is that the clock gains about five seconds a day and there is no way that I know of to adjust its internal oscillator to fix that. I have ordered another, different make, to see if it is a common fault.
After much research I found a way to calibrate the mechanical part of the Rain gauge and it turned out that two tips of the sea-saw buckets equated to one mm of rainfall.
Now on order is an SD card module to store the rainfall data. It should be fun getting that to work (not).
To be able to store past records so as to display daily, weekly and monthly rainfall meant installing a real time clock in the circuit. I had a couple of part built kits bought over a year ago. I chose one and soldered in the resistors and connector, wired it up and spent ages finding and downloading different test sketches. Why do Arduino programmers call their programs sketches?
None of them worked. The display always showed the same gibberish. That had taken up a whole day with just an hour break while I installed a new outdoor LED floodlight which had arrived. The following day I decided to build the second real time clock. It is the same make but the one thing I noticed was that the back up battery holder was soldered in the opposite way round. Not my mistake as these came part built! Once the extra bits were soldered on and the thing plugged in everything soon sprang in to life.
No doubt having the back up battery reversed will have killed the first one. I did try unsoldering the holder and replacing it the correct way round - no joy there.
The only thing I have noticed is that the clock gains about five seconds a day and there is no way that I know of to adjust its internal oscillator to fix that. I have ordered another, different make, to see if it is a common fault.
After much research I found a way to calibrate the mechanical part of the Rain gauge and it turned out that two tips of the sea-saw buckets equated to one mm of rainfall.
Now on order is an SD card module to store the rainfall data. It should be fun getting that to work (not).
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