Squirrelf

Hi all and Jim ! This is a little story about how I got back into lego thanks to a photo gig, and most importantly the 360 turntable setup using EV3 minstorm set I'm a web-developper and a freelance photographer (mostly portraiture and a few product photography ) Last year I had a small gig, a client wanted picture of about 40 pairs of sunglasses, a small website and brochure. Not knowing their budget, I offered different options, one of them was 360 sliders on the website to have a better view at the sunglasses ( exactly like what Jim did in the 42069 review ). They had a smallish budget for what they wanted. I definitely wasn't paid enough to spend my time doing 24pictures of 40 pair of sunglasses, that's 960pictures, and making sure I'm rotating exactly 15degrees each time to have a very smooth rotation, that would be a lot of boring work. As a programmer, we learn to be lazy but efficient, and avoiding boring, and that would be the opposite of that. So I looked into a programable turntable, found one for over 1200USD, out of my budget especially for something I might not use often, and just seems overpriced for what it is. So I thought of lego Mindstorm, saw how NXT and EV3 were many step better than the RCX I had as a kid. And a lot cheaper than that turntable, especially for something more versatile like lego (I eventually want to build a mouse toy launcher for my cat), so I had decided it was going to happen. I bought the Education EV3 Set with the expansion set. Enough lego pieces for what I needed. Main reason I bought the edu version is that it comes with a battery and a cable to charge it (which are otherwise pretty expensive if bought separately ), so that it would not die on the job. once the whole thing was setup the EV3 was not accessible (sitting in the middle of a homemade lightbox ) I was excited when I saw how much lego technic had evolved with cool useful pieces since the early 2000s. Building the turntable Step one get reacquainted with Lego, didn't plan anything and just started building it without any planning, and failed multiple times but each iteration would get better and better, took me about 5 tries from scratch to get something very usable. I used both larger motor on the same axle, but one motor may be enough. screw gear on that axle, to gear down and get as much power and smoothness at very low speed. I wanted to use the least amount of gear as possible to avoid play/gear backlash. Forgot exactly the gearing setup, but I remember that was an issue I tried to solve, my last iteration was pretty good. Used the large turntable (from the ev3 set) lego piece in the center of it all. the main platform is made of the rectangle frame as you can see in the picture,/video and used the rubber grommet to add friction the wooden platform set on top, which was a simple thin 12in/30cm disk of wood bought at hobby lobby for a few dollars, on which I glues white paper. so if you have questions don't hesitate, and I'll try to answer to the best of my recollection. The trigger mechanism I was given a Triggertrap dongle for a birthday or christmas, didn't use often but came in very handy with this setup, basically its a small wired device that connects to your iphone and to your DSLR camera. and among different option, there is one to trigger the camera when a vibration happens on your phone, so I used that to my advantage, used that smaller lego motor to built a side cart that would hold my phone, and that I could shake thanks to the EV3 code and motor, thus triggering the camera. I also have a remote trigger for my flashes that sits in the hot shoe of my camera that triggers the flash when the camera takes a picture. something I do in all my photoshoot. And finally a usb cable from my camera to my computer that uploads directly to Adobe Lightroom (where I had setup a preset that did some preliminary editing, making the background pure white out of the box, since the product would be in a brochure and white background website, and making it blend perfectly) So if there was any issue I would see it right away. (like my flashes battery going down) The EV3 Code I don't have it anymore, but it was pretty strait forward. Basically as soon as the start button was pressed on the computer (I could have used one of the lego pressure sensor, but wanted least amount of cable as possible, and was controlling the EV3 through bluetooth) Set number of step wanted in a variable (24 for pretty smooth 360 rotation ) Rotate the big motor at low speed for a set number of degrees (360/number of steps wanted) Wait a quarter second or so to be sure nothing is moving. Give a shake to the small motor to trigger the camera (shakes the iphone which triggers the camera thanks to the Triggertrap dongle, and flashes goes off automatically thanks to the flash remote sitting in the camera hot shoe, and finally picture is sent to my computer automatically, setup with Lightroom or Canon software) wait a second or two, so that the camera takes the picture repeat until number of step wanted are over. switch products and start again Once everything worked flawlessly, I built a giant white box out of large paper I had, lots of tape involved... setup 5 flashes inside and outside the box to make the white background as white as possible (and then made it flawless in lightroom) This is a quick video before the lightbox was built, and the side card was improved after I build the Lightbox, as it wasn't perfect yet. Sorry I didn't document it better, because I simply didn't know there was a big community of AFOL I could share this project with

ok I'll post in that photo Tips topic

of course !

That sounds amazing !

the 360 works great now !! Thanks for the warm welcome, best friend it is !!

First of all, since I discovered this site a few months ago I have greatly enjoyed your technic set reviews, they are by far the best, most detailed and to the point lego reviews on the internet, and such beautiful pictures to go along. So thank you for that !! This is definitely a very nice set. I got back into lego recently (all started last year with a small photography gig needing a 360 turntable for multiple product photography, and as an excuse bought an EV3 mindstorm set to have a full 360 auto rotate turntable and have the legos trigger the flash and camera at every set angle, and auto sending it to Lightroom, all without lifting a finger, besides starting the mindstorm code), and this year thanks to your reviews, bought the 42054 CLAAS set. Lastly as a web developer I couldn't resist figuring out why the 360 rotation in your review didn't work, so I investigated, the weird part is that it sometime worked and sometime didn't. And during my small investigation discovered that other people had the same issue when the height wasn't set and noticed your <img> element in the reel is missing t at height="...". Hopefully that should fix it.