If you or your friend is not a dedicated DIY fanatic you should consider buying the things off the shelve. The security (CCTV) industry have it covered quite well.

You could use 2 steppers on each camera (one for tilt and one for pan) A 3rd may be required for focus and a 4th for aperture control. The steppers can be controlled with a controller board bought as a unit or made on a PCB with chips.

Some of these boards work with G code commands which simplifies movement control.

A stepper driver is controlled by 2 wires and the signals can be generated in the computer and exported via the printer port.

An alternative is to use the steppers (2) and diver found in pen plotters. This plotters are scraped quite often these days. People know that I use them and donate it to me whenever they do not want them any more.

Servo motors fitted to inexpensive telescope tripods. The telescopes can be bought for $50 US or so (discount mega-mart). The trippods fitted to servo using the triangular shelf within the leg spread as a base for batteries and surplus equip.

After the recital kids can at least look at the pot-marked surface of the moon.

cr3

Visit www.X10.com .

Thanx guys. I had my eyes on the Ninja pad for quite a while.

The site was also a big help. Thanx Rick . The pad comes in $100 and seems to have support for several camera makes.

It allows pc or remote control. Unfortunately no zoom . Luckily sony has a remote to control zoom so I can figure that part out.

You're welcome..