Dirt Cheap Time Lapse Dolly

I’d seen a few time-lapse dollies on the ‘net  and decided to make one.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Time-Lapse-Dolly/

http://www.designedandmade.com/2010/08/30/time-lapse-dolly/

http://www.diyphotography.net/build-an-amazing-super-versatile-diy-time-lapse-dolly

Most of the designs I’d seen looked fairly elaborate, and some of them were costly. I figure if I’m going somewhere and hauling some equipment, a few extra pounds might not matter – especially if I can shave a good $200 off the project. So I set out to make a cheaper motorized dolly, even if it would be a tad heavier.

Unfortunately, I lost interest in my project before I completed it, but my prototype was taking good shape and certainly conceivable. Take a look at the aforementioned links, since my design resembles theirs in many ways.

1. Instead of aluminum, use steel Unistrut for rails. Heavy, but only $15/rail and 10′ long. Saw to taste. Separate the rails with 4 pieces of 10″ long 1/2″ PVC “rungs” using a 12″ long piece of allthread (and washers and nuts) to bolt them together. The finished product looks like a 10′ long ladder with rails spaced 10 inches wide and 4 rungs made of 1/2″ PVC pipe. VERY STURDY, and virtually no wiggle.
2. Use skateboard wheels on the platform following common designs on many of these DIYs. (I used my son’s old rollerblades and a scrap piece of 1/2″ plywood in the garage. Worked fine.) Some of these designs use steel bearings for wheels. I’m not sure how metal-on-metal is better than rubber-on-steel.
3. Instead of a toothed belt, use a 1/4″ 10′ long piece of allthread ($4) running the full length of the rail system.
4. Have the platform attach to the allthread by using 3 pieces of 1″ allthread that clamp around the 10′ long allthread. I totally fabricated this by making a small “L” bracket that held 2 JBWelded pieces of the allthread, and a spring-loaded clamp to apply tension on the third piece, squeezing the 10′ long inbetween the 3. All 3 pieces surrounded the 10′ long allthread and made for an excellent fit with nil tolerance. (This actually ended up being easier than I thought it would be, and was easy to remove as needed.)
5. Turn the 10′ long allthread with a battery-powered drill. Even a cheap battery-powered screwdriver ($19) will work. If the allthread is reasonably taunt and lying on the 1/2″ plastic PVC rungs, you’ll get minimum wiggle and excellent stability.
6. For super-fine motion control, hack a $20 eBay Canon intervalometer (Canon has a simple connector!) to trigger the drill to run in discrete time intervals. With this combination, you can get a system that can do a 10′ time lapse in 5 minutes or 15 hours … or longer!
7. I control my Nikon’s shutter using a $20 eBay intervalometer. I haven’t done anything about changing the pitch/yaw/rotation of the camera on the dolly, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for others

Too bad life is too busy to complete the project

If you end up making one of these babies, let me know.