Revenki's photos with the keyword: machine

The "production" version of the Arduino shield stack used to run the camera dolly. In order to fit in a reasonable sized box, I combined five functions into one: the limit switches from the dolly, the camera interface, the button interface for controlling the electronics, the interface for the display, and a piezo beeper. After taking this picture, I ended up having to rewire the optoisolators (middle top) and troubleshoot a crossed wire in the display header (lower left), and added the headers in the upper right for the lines to the camera remote and limit switch panel jacks. Not bad. I was expecting more than two screwups, and it was really only one (the display header) when you consider all the inexplicable trouble I've had with optoisolators - I figured those would turn out to be wired wrong no matter what I did, and I was right. Now to build the box, and finish the software.

The "production" version of the Arduino shield stack used to run the camera dolly. On the bottom of the stack is an Arduino Mega 2650. Then comes the hand-made card with five different circuits: a resistor ladder and socket for the controller's input buttons, the breakout and socket for the display harness, the OR-gate and resistor network for the limit switches, the opto-isolators for driving the camera via wired remote, and a little piezo beeper. Finally comes the Rugged stepper motor controller card. 12V input power drives the dolly via the green connector on the right (the stepper card helpfully feeds power to everything else). The little pot on the left side of the middle card controls the contrast on the display, whose harness plugs into the adjacent black header. Everything is connectorized, due to lessons learned from the lightning trigger project - every switch, plug, etc. can be dismantled from it's associated board either by pulling a connector out or loosening a screw post. This came in handy when I got the first copy of the faceplate together and discovered it wouldn't fit in the box I'd bought - had everything not been connectorized, I'd have had to tediously de-solder everything, breaking the tested configuration and requiring it all to be tested again after it was reassembled on the new faceplate. (A trick I learned working on rockets. Don't ever say your defense procurement dollars are totally wasted.)

In front of a building near my friends' apartment in Uster. It was unclear whether it was some sort of sculpture or an early Terminator prototype.