about building a timelapse/motorshield for a GoPro

Core components:

-Arduino UNO
-Stripboard
-280 class motor with a gearbox (mine is 1:380)
-cheap RC ESC
-mounting material of choice.

I slaughtered a trex450 clone recently, so i got small distance shims and a motormount.

The final shield will be able to turn the gopro for infinite turns with steps as small as 0.3degree.

Thats made possible with the gearbox motor, thats 380:1, plus the rubberband is 2:1.
So all in all its 760:1, and gets pulses as small as 90ms where it gets full power.

I chose full power because DC motors are not linear over the powerspectrum, that makes them pretty unpredictible in lower rates.

I will expand the project with a programmable dolly i built, but thats not quite “Instructable ready”

It will be a trike with an endless servo powered and servo steerable rear-wheel.

Next step will be hacking the gopro 20pin connector to see if it outputs anything after taking a photo, if so i will use that to trigger the arduino instead of the reverse technique where the arduino tells the camera when it should take a phot.

My approach would enable me to use tha GoPros Timelapse functions, as setting up intervall etc.

Therefore i could use any camera that has an Intervall timer and at least a flash sync on board, to sync my arduino to

The shield is made out of two stripboard layers, that are beeing held together with different parts of a TREX450 helicopter-clone.

The most essential beeing the motor mount, and the axle mount/bearing.

If someone requests it i calook up the part numbers of those two.

On the photos you can see the opened cars ESC.
The output of the ESC is onnecd to the motor.
The input (battery in) is conneced to whatever power source you want to use.
Read the ESCs manual to know the exact tolerances, mine are between 4.5V and 12V.

I resoldered the powerswitch to a toggle-style type.

The servo signal for the ESC is split like that:

GROUND -> Arduino GND
POWER -> Arduino VIN
SIGNAL -> Arduino PIN 6 (or any other PWM-PIN)