Building a motorized turn table for 3D photography

In a previous post I built a camera controller to take pictures of lightening.  This was based on an arduino controller which still has many pins free to use in another project.  I am going to multi purpose the camera controller so that it can also control a stepper motor controlled turn table.

In order to do this I will need to

1. develop a menu controlled selection to switch between the two modes of the controller.
2. add a connector to control a stepper motor.
3. Build the stepper motor into a device that controls the rotation of a turntable.

I may just build the controller into the base of the device with a dial to set the amount of rotation before snapping a new picture.  Doing this will keep the software simpler with no need for a menu to select between modes.

Doing this will allow me to place a small object onto the turntable, and then take pictures of that object from a wide variety of angles.  I plan on taking dozens of pictures from a low angle, resetting the camera to a higher position and taking another set of pictures from that angle.

Then I will have to manually upload the photos to a service that will stitch them into a single 3D model.  Such as autocad's 123D service.  Hopefully someone will develop a package possibly based on hugin in order for we open source people to build our own 3D models in house without depending on a service that could someday start charging serious money.