We are aiming to build an open-source automated bird-tracking tripod. For this we are building a motion platform which will add stable and smooth 2-axis rotation to a tripod containing a DLSR camera + zoom lens. This motion platform is controlled by an arduino. Since the tripod will need to operate for several hours at a time to get a good shot, low power usage is prime. Therefore object tracking will be implemented and executed on a powerful yet low-power ARM based platform (beagleboard). Object-tracking is ideally done by using live-view functionality of the DLSR camera, but will first be implemented using a simple webcam next to the DLSR.

This project is divided in Arduino scripts (communication library, stepper motor control) and JAVA code for running on the linux based ARM device (communication, user interface, OMAP DSP based object tracking).