Wireless XBee Pan/Tilt System

           Standard pan and tilt systems have been used with different systems the world over. Electronics like still cameras and video cameras are most commonly associated with these types of systems, but if you think about it even motion simulators like Star Tours at Disneyland is just a gigantic pan and tilt system. However, we're not building a motion simulator in this tutorial, we're going to stick with building a quick and easy system that provides us with the basics for pan and tilt control.
           In this article we will use a pair of XBee modules to build a simple wireless interface which will be used to wirelessly control a servo based pan and tilt system which can move my camera 45 degrees in any direction, left-right-forward-backwards.

Wireless XBee Pan/Tilt System - Demonstration

Wireless XBee Pan/Tilt System - Setup

Purpose & Overview of this project
           The purpose of this project is actually to answer a question from the forums about how to make a pan and tilt system using servos and xbee modules. We'll place a camera atop the pan/tilt system and using some additional circuitry we will add a trigger for transmitting button presses wirlessly as well.
           To accomplish this large task, we will use standard 1mW XBee Modules on breadboards, one as the transmitter, one as the receiver. Two HS-485 servos will be used in the pan and tilt system. Two PIC 18LF4520's will be used to add intelligence to the transmitter and receiver circuits telling the servos what to do and when receiver buttons have been pressed.