Under $40 DIY Motorized Wifi Camera Slider with esp8266. So while in the search for cheap camera slider, to my surprise I was not able to find any that will support the weight of a dslr that was under $200. thus leaving me no options but to build one myself. This guide will show you how to use a nodemcu to control stepper motors for your camera slider.

 Equipment list

Nema17 Stepper amazon | ebay

Nodemcu amazon | ebay

A4988 amazon | ebay

LM8UU Bearing amazon | ebay

Timing Belt (6mm) and Gear(20t) amazon | ebay

5/8 rails lowes

Frame thingiverse

 

 

 Assembly Process

The assembly process is pretty straight forward, one requirement is to have the tear drop that hold the belt on the dolly be facing downwards if the stepper motor is on the left side.

I started by installing the stepper motor on the frame first.

Camera Slider Assembly pt1

Then i would slide the rails into the frame with the stepper motor installed.

Camera Slider Assembly pt2

Now we inert the dolly with the tear drops facing downward

Camera Slider Assembly pt3Camera Slider Assembly pt3-a

once that is done, we can install the other side of the frame, be sure to leave some slack to tension up the belt later on.

Camera Slider Assembly pt4

now you can install the belt and tighten everything up.

Camera Slider Assembly pt5

 Wiring Diagram

This is the wiring diagram to hook up the nodemcu to the a4988 and stepper motor, I am currently using a 9 volt battery to power the stepper motor and the a4988 is powered by the 3v3 rail from nodemcu.

Camera Slider PCB Layout

 

 Code

This is the point where it depends on the ESP board you have got. I can not walk you through the process of what driver version you need to install for each board being that there are so many different versions, so your kind of on your own on this. But once the drivers are installed we can continue on to uploading the code to our boards.

The code is posted up on github

github link