While we worked our tails off making sure the cameras were all working, I would also handle the ‘panning’ camera. I designed a panning system that would rotate one of our webcam cameras over a 180° field. Then I interfaced it to the camera so, with a script, I could command the camera to rotate while I was sitting in the comfort of the webcam office. The first couple weeks it was mounted next to the stage and dance floor so I could sweep from a dance over to the ice phone booth, then to the stage. The camera also had Zoom so I could zoom in and out of a scene. Here’s a couple pictures of the camera and it’s associated parts:
That box wrapped in white is the control circuitry for the panning motor, inside is my interface circuit that tells the control circuit where to turn to, that green box is the panning motor, and the device on top is the camera:
This camera was taken down yesterday (to prevent theft) so I can’t give you a link to it and since it existed on the web as a server, we didn’t capture any shots from it during the event. It was pointed at the large ice slides we had and also covered the ice cannon competition during the last couple weeks of the event. I was happy it worked so well, even when it was down to -20° F it rotated nicely. It did have a little problem when we had snow fall and because it’s warm inside the box, some water got into the circuitry and it acted strangely for a while but after it was dried out and a new wrapper added it finished the event without problems.
Here’s a few shots of some of the ice carvings, one has collapsed:
Such a pretty blue sky! We’ve got blue sky here, but it’s 70+ not freezing! *lol*