Uploaded December 2012 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago

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This is a video of our last minute senior design project after our company backed out of our sponsored project. It uses extruded aluminum rails, a small motor, and a cart built from the scrap pile. The motor turns a screw drive which moves the cart. The movement and camera shutter are controlled by an Arduino. The timing for the motor can be adjusted to change the detail of the time lapse... i.e. clouds can be less pictures to get a smooth time lapse but cars or people would need more pictures to get a smooth video. The panning effect just adds an extra dimension to the possibilities of time lapse photography.

If you would like more details on how this was made or the controls used, please leave comments.

Our tolerances were too loose between the cart and the rail, along with a couple other issues related to the short time we had to build this (week and a half before graduation) so there is some undesired movement between frames, but some completed sample videos from this set up are here: youtube.com/watch?v=95onn0RTgfg