Several of you know that for the last year or so, I've been toying with building a camera crane, or 'jib'.  I've been putting it off for technical reasons until recently.

The main thing that was deterring me was building a pan/tilt head.  I have one pretty much designed, but I really don't have the equipment to be able to do a proper job of testing it as I go.  I even have a microcontroller programmed with my assembly program for controlling the stepper motors with a standard computer joystick.  Anyway, it was too big a job for a simple hobby.

I went as far as designing a crane with no pan/tilt head, attempting to acheive it all through pulleys and cables.  It wasn't capable or portable enough to be much use for my projects.

So, I'm going back to my original design, but I'm purchasing an off-the-shelf solution for a pan/tilt head.  I managed to find a full solution for around $100, and it's simple enough to be easily stuck on the end of a very long jib arm.

Hopefully by Friday I'll have a crane to use at the CD release party for Three Nails Short, a band that one of my former Sunday School students is in. I've talked about them before.

No one but Webdell seems interested in my Wiki.  I've got a few projects up there.  I'll give it a few more weeks to catch on.  I really find it useful for quickly cross-referencing my thoughts on stuff.