Using servos over a 100ft cable to pan camera underwater

[videorov 0]

I wonder if a servo would be the thing to use for panning a camera in my waterproof housing for underwater

use 100ft down the cable. Can it go 100ft over the cabe? Is the servo better to use and smother then a stepper motor?

I would like to be able to pan left and right up to 180 degrees from center. Have a manual mode and a auto pan mode.

Can I do it with servos and the right contoller curcuit. Is there software out there so I can make my own

sequences.. I would like to run it from a contol box, not a computer. The power would be 12 volts on the boat.

Thanks

Edited April 25, 2008 by videorov

[dalbert02 0]

One carefuly controlled experiment is often times worth more than a thousand expert opinions. Get 100 feet of cable and try it out. I bet you could find 100 foot run of CAT5 cable anywhere and try it. Make a servo to RJ-45 adapter and you are good to go.

-dave

I wonder if a servo would be the thing to use for panning a camera in my waterproof housing for underwater

use 100ft down the cable. Can it go 100ft over the cabe? Is the servo better to use and smother then a stepper motor?

I would like to be able to pan left and right up to 180 degrees from center. Have a manual mode and a auto pan mode.

Can I do it with servos and the right contoller curcuit. Is there software out there so I can make my own

sequences.. I would like to run it from a contol box, not a computer. The power would be 12 volts on the boat.

Thanks

[eickst 0]

As long as the power is local it should work. You could use a 2 conductor cable (with a shield) and send both signals down the same cable. If you want to send the power over 100 ft I would re-think your approach. Even PoE equipment uses a much higher voltage (than a servos 5v) in order to reduce losses. So use a BEC or regulator of some sort to power the servos locally.......

*EDIT* for what it's worth...

http://www.fly-imaa.org/imaa/hfarticles/electro/v6-4-43.html

Edited June 3, 2008 by eickst

[ThomasScherrer 0]

what I would do:

take a 24V to 5V switcher BEC

mount it near the servo end, modulate the servo pulse on the input voltage 24V,

use a filtered smithtrigger to get your pulse back,

use a DC block coil on both ends, so you can DC and pulse at the same time on one wire,

use RG58 cable it is cheap and easy to get.

[Neptune769 0]

I wonder if a servo would be the thing to use for panning a camera in my waterproof housing for underwater

use 100ft down the cable. Can it go 100ft over the cabe? Is the servo better to use and smother then a stepper motor?

I would like to be able to pan left and right up to 180 degrees from center. Have a manual mode and a auto pan mode.

Can I do it with servos and the right contoller curcuit. Is there software out there so I can make my own

sequences.. I would like to run it from a contol box, not a computer. The power would be 12 volts on the boat.

Thanks

Hello Videorov,

I am also working on a ROV. My camera is a Hitachi VK-S234. It has a built in 12x optical zoom. It is controlled by RS-232. You can control the Zoom, Iris, Focus, Shutter speed among other things. I am trying to find a way to hook up a Radio Controlled transmitter without the RF module (the wireless portion) to a microcontroller. That way I can control the motors and camera over wire since radio waves don't go far underwater. You can see a couple photos of the camera on the Yahoo ROV Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/robotrov/ under Nemo1 in the photos section. If your not a member of the group check it out.

Regards,

Dennis

[W3FJW-Ron 0]

They look like great cameras but are if I remember correctly 68 grams in weight or so, no RF deck, & cost quite a lot. Would be great on an airplane though if one had a RS232 uplink... Might take a co-pilot and a second transmitter & receiver for FPV but would be great for the UAV guys....