Working follow focus test setup!

Yes! It works!

It works a little better than the video shows, but it's a little too noisy right now, and still has some kinks to be ironed out.

Video with the Canon M500

LEDs

The LEDs came, and they work great! The cold white one is exactly that, it would work well for bluish mood lighting, and the warm one is a nice warm white.

--Working on the new stepper motor interface. This should make for a much tidier layout.

-- Update! --

This is just for the cold white one, the other one is a little harder to mount.

The new stepper motor came!

I have the new stepper motor, and now I have to go to swim practice... Ho hum. Update coming later.

More LED lights

Turns out that Mouser has many more LED lights, and cheaper.
http://www.mouser.com/Optoelectronics/LED-Lighting/LED-Emitters/High-Power-LEDs-White/_/N-8usfj?P=1yzvd86Z1yzxcydZ1yzvr9p&Ns=Pricing|0

I hadn't looked there for a while, prices have dropped.
Also, note to self, this looks promising: http://www.mouser.com/ds/2/256/MAX16834-97839.pdf

With LED's about 30 cents apiece, you could get 

100 36 lumen LED's for $30 ... 100 X 36 = 3600 lumens = bright!

LED lights

While I was at it I ordered two LED lights from MPJA as well (saves on shipping)
Warm white: http://www.mpja.com/90lm-Warm-White-SMD-LED/productinfo/19567%20OP/
(3600K)

And cold white: http://www.mpja.com/90-lm-1-Watt-White-Star-LED/productinfo/19585%20OP/
(6000K-6500K)

These are both 90 lumen SMT LED's, and my thinking here is that you could build a 900 lumen light for $20 + about $10 for case and circuit board. You could have 10 of each, and switches to set it to various color temperatures from 3600K to 6500K! (though luminence across the spectrum would be uneven)
I'll be trying out these soon, and seeing if they are feasible for set lighting. Also, while I can build one of these rather cheaply, I'm planning to run it on 12 VDC or so. Not everyone has 12 V power on set. I have more power supplies than I know what to do with (Just kidding), at least 12V ones. Also, most of mine are set for the standard 13.8 VDC, so I may need to put some sort of regulation in there... things get complicated... This might also be worth looking at too, but is a lot more expensive and not as bright: http://www.mpja.com/LED-High-Lumen-12V-Module-White/productinfo/18875%20OP/

That's all for now!

Stepper motor coming soon...

O.K. so the first stepper motor I got from MPJA worked, but didn't have enough torque for what I needed. I measured the coil resistance, and found it to be about (I forget now, I think it was about 70 Ohms). I ordered a new motor, and it should get here in two days (Wednesday).

There are no particular torque specs I found on it, but comparing it to similar motors, it looks like it has about 4 times the power that the old motor had. This is the new motor:

http://www.mpja.com/Stepper-Motor-NEMA-17-12V/productinfo/18734%20MS/

It has a specified holding torque of 3.2 kg/cm, which I think is still rather on the low side, but we'll see.

Also, that's holding torque, which is usually somewhat more than rotational torque.

I also ordered a driver IC (actually a few, I'll probably burn out at least one...) so I'll have a nice neat driver circuit instead of the big mess of transistors I had on the breadboard before.

http://www.mpja.com/ULN2003A-Darlington-Driver-IC/productinfo/19604%20IC/

This does have a nice data sheet, very helpful!

New post about LED lights coming soon.