Applied Procrastination has designed an open source PCB-design for controlling a motorized photography macro rail. Designed for photographers with electronics skills rather than engineers with photography skills.

Main features:

  • Zero surface mount components, and should therefore be possible to hand solder – even for people with novice soldering skills.
  • Flexible solution for connecting to most types of camera via 2.5mm stereo jack, pin header, or solder joints.
  • Simple design for driving a single motor via a BTT TMC2209 V1.2 motor driver.
  • Based on the WiFi-enabled NodeMCU 32S V2 DevKit.
  • Has broken out headers for connecting limit switches and rotary encoders (neither of which are used in the intended application the board was designed for).
  • Total cost of around $30 (Camera, optics, motor, slider, and tools not included)

The OpenMacroRail Firmware provides a web-interface for accurately moving a camera in small increments in order to do focus stacking.

ALl the details and design files are on GitHub. Software is also on GitHub.