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Invention, Intellectual Property and Income

This weeks task was to:

  • Develop a plan for dissemination of your final project.
  • Complete your final project, tracking your progress

Dissemination Plan

Target Audience

The main hope of this is to inspire people with parts of it, like showing that you can make your own bearings, 3d printing is for more then just a toy, and you can do advanced electronics without advanced tools and design your own boards for that.

Communication Channels

I've been working to make a public presence on the internet, and have accounts on X, Youtube, Instagram, and Tiktok, all under the name LRNABLES. Now that summers starting, im hoping to startup some content about engineering, and the first series/videos/shorts will be on fabacademy and my final project, followed by hopefully a big focus on PCB design/electronics tutorials

Outreach Strategy

Im hoping the algorithm blesses me and gets my content to those interested. Im also going to try and post this on the making websites, like hackaday and reddit once I have a good writeup on it on my personal website, which is currently under construction.

Business and Sustainability Opportunities

The main point of this is cheapness and accessbility. The drivers could potentially be sold, but since im just a student, and dont have the ability to order large quantities of chips and circuits or get them soldered for me, the a4988 boards are only slightly more expensive and feature microstepping. mine fits the niche of a low voltage radio controlled stepper, which doesn't seem to have any dedicated module already. I think in general a wireless motor controller, only needing a 18650 is untapped, so im hoping to work on a v2 of the motor driver post fab (using the stspin220 low voltage driver). I will note that this is all theory, as I like open source stuff and generally dont have any plans to monitize anything related to this in the future, but maybe once I have a good motor driver I'll sell assembled boards to other makers on somewhere like Tindie.

Project Status

At this point (6/16/2026, after final presentations), this project is basically done, and just needs minor tweaks for visiblity to pass

What is Working

All the motors work*, the networking has worked flawlessly, and generally everything is working as intended. It can be controlled over the network, and can be panned and tilted around as planned.

What is Still Pending

Due to the slightly larger friction from using 3d printed bearings, the head is only able to spin when the battery is fully charged (when higher voltage is availble), and slowly dies out. In order to overcome this, a new motor can be put in that better works at lower voltages and higher amps, with a roughly 1.5 ohm coil resistance, versus the current motor with a 3.5 ohm resistance.
I also hope to edit the code a bit to add a low power mode (which the ch572s) have a specific power mode for, in order to increase the battery life when its idle

Unresolved Technical Questions

I've not done a full battery life test on it, so finding out its runtime would be useful. Also, generally finding the torque of the motors powered by just a 18650 would be nice to know for future goals (Do I need a higher amperage driver, high voltage, generally what can I improve on it?)

Timeline for Completing Final Project

Different colored parts are currently printing right now, so once they print (Tomorrow), I will update the video with a clearer example of it working with increased contrast, and also play around with the code to have it, when not receiving packets, only periodically come out of deep sleep to check for packets.

Future Development

Possible Applications

This has a very wide range of possible applications, the 3d printed bearings can be in any size, the motor driver can also drive 2 individual motors, so it could be used for anything cheap robotics, and hopefully getting out awareness of the glory that is the ch572 chip will increase its use.

Long-Term Evolution

I think the longterm goal is to stop worrying about any 3d stuff, and focus on making the best motor driver PCB I can. I found in fab generally that my favorite part was the electronics of everything, im applying in the fall to be an Electrical Engineer, and maybe a baller stepper driver could even help me land a job in the future.