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how do I make this?

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freddy1

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What is the simplest way to make a lens move up, down, left, and right? I'm looking to build something mounted in plastic. The lens doesn't need to turn around, or twist. If I were to hold a piece of paper in front of it, it should be able to point at/trace the outline of the paper.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks :)
 
I should add that I would like this to be relatively small. Something that would fit within a 2-3" (squared).
 
well, what are you going to control it with? I'm guessing you want some kind of computer or remote or wire control or you would just move it by hand.
 
Do you know what you want to program them in to? If you want to use a microcontroller you have a few ways to go about doing this:
-use a chip with an array of darlington transistors and control a pair of stepper motors, this is fairly difficult but would give you precise control over position and motion
-use two H-bridges each consisting of 2 pnp and 2 npn transistors and control a pair of DC motors, this would give you control over speed of motion but poor control of position without reading the position back to the controller with an encoder. These would need to be very geared down to get slow steady motion.
-use a servo, power it with the red and black wires and give it a signal with a pwm output from the microcontroller on the white/yellow/purple wire. This would give you good positional control but only a little control over the speed of motion.

Obviously i haven't given you all you need on any of these options, and it may not be what you want, but if these are what you are looking for I've given you enough to find some of the many tutorials available on the subject. And if its not what you were looking for just add some more detail and I or someone else will probably help you out more.
 
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Indeed, you have given me plenty to work with. Thank you very much. :)
This answered my question, and then some.
 
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