Servo Swivel Camera Arm

I am new to working with Raspberry Pi so I went with a relatively simple project. I am making a two-axis arm actuated by servo motors controlled by the Pi. At the end of this arm is a RPi camera.

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Inspiration

I was inspired by my friend who was talking about an idea for a desk lamp which always gives you the perfect lighting angle.

What it does

It is a two-axis arm which can move a camera. Ideally it would have automated movement but I ran into a lot of difficulties.

How we built it

I designed the arm in Solidworks and created an assembly to make sure everything would fir together. Then I 3D printed the components and used screws to connect everything together. Some light electronics are on a breadboard, which also serves as the base.

Challenges we ran into

I didn't have a microHDMI or spare monitor, so I decided to install Raspberry Pi OS and run everything "headless" without a monitor through VNC. This worked great but took a while to set up. I also had difficulties getting my controller to interface with the Pi, but eventually figured out a library which worked. The biggest difficulty is that for some reason, the Pi camera will not work unless "Legacy" mode is enabled, but somehow when I enable Legacy mode, the VNC breaks. I have no idea why this happens and there are no applicable instructions online since this seems to be a new problem.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I have established manual control using the game controller so it's at least partially functional, and I think the 3D-printed components turned out well.

What we learned

I learned how to interface with a Raspberry Pi 4 without peripherals, how to get inputs from a USB game controller, how to control servo motors using the PWM GPIO pins, and how to get extremely frustrated debugging camera issues.

What's next for Servo Swivel Camera Arm

Actually get camera inputs so I can incorporate CV and track objects.

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