You just got a raspberry pi and are in the mood for some hacking.
Let’s try a “simple” project to take a panoramic photo.
You’ll need additional parts:
Pi camera board: https://www.adafruit.com/products/1367
Camera mount (optional): https://www.adafruit.com/products/1434
Some software to combine the photos:
Some code to control servos and take photos:
https://github.com/fraxedas/pinorama. It’s mostly bash and python. Feel free to submit any pull request for improvements.
The camera module is able to take 5 megapixels still photos, which is not a lot nowadays. By taking multiple photos and moving the camera around with the servos you’ll create a panorama or a photosphere.
You can use the GPIO pins to control and power the servos. Pins 7 and 18 will work for PWM. Use a couple of 5V pins for power.
After the wiring is done ssh into the Rpi and run the following:
$ git clone https://github.com/fraxedas/pinorama.git
$ cd pinorama/scripts
$ source panorama.sh
The script will run on a loop, taking photos and moving the camera to a different angle as shown in the video:
After all the photos are taken, use hugin to combine them.
If you do the whole project, please add the link to the final photo to the comments.
This is a nice hack project, but if you want to get serious about controlling servos with the RPi please review https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-16-channel-pwm-servo-hat-for-raspberry-pi/powering-servos