Astrophotography can be challenging, in a large part because your subject matter — or your base, the Earth rather — is constantly moving. In order to take excellent long exposures of far-off objects, Redditor intercipere came up with a beautiful 3D-printable, star-following mount that holds and rotates a DSLR camera.

Now intercipere can simply input the RA/DEC coordinates and the device will automatically move to a desired target in the sky.

Motion is handled by an Arduino Uno and two small stepper motors, with a 16×2 LCD shield user interface. The rig is capable of tracking for at least four minutes, producing this photo of the Andromeda galaxy with a cheapo lens from a heavy light polluted area.

We so often hack for hacking’s sake, undertaking projects as a solitary pursuit simply for the challenge. So it’s nice to see hacking skills going to good use and helping someone out. Such was the case with this low-cost two-axis handheld camera gimbal intended to help a budding photographer with a motion disorder.

When [Tadej Strah] joined his school photography club, a fellow member who happens to have cerebral palsy needed help steadying cameras for clean shots. So rather than shell out a lot of money for a commercial gimbal, [Tadej] decided to build one for his friend. A few scraps of aluminum bar stock were bent into the gimbal frames and camera mount. Two hobby servos take care of the pitch and roll axes, controlled by an Arduino talking to an MPU-6050. Mounted to a handle from an angle grinder with the battery and electronics mounted below, the gimbal looks well-balanced and does a good job of keeping the camera level.

Hats off to [Tadej] for pitching in and solving a real world problem with his skills. We like to see people helping others directly, whether it’s building a gyroscopic spoon for Parkinson’s sufferers or vision enhancement for a nearly blind adventurer.

[via r/arduino]

If you’ve ever watched MotoGP (motorcycle) racing, you might have wondered how the camera appears to stay level even while the bike turns left and right, nearly becoming horizontal. Saftari was curious about this himself and, rather than simply answering the question, he built a gyroscopic camera rig that allows the camera […]

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The post Motorcycle Gyromount Always Delivers Perfect Video appeared first on Make:.

If you’ve ever watched MotoGP (motorcycle) racing, you might have wondered how the camera appears to stay level even while the bike turns left and right, nearly becoming horizontal. Saftari was curious about this himself and, rather than simply answering the question, he built a gyroscopic camera rig that allows the camera […]

Read more on MAKE

The post Motorcycle Gyromount Always Delivers Perfect Video appeared first on Make:.