So I decided that enough was enough, stood pressing my camera button with my watch in my hand. A plan was needed. To start with, I needed to externalise my camera's shutter trigger. Luckily I managed to find a service manual for my camera, which contained disassembily instructions (very useful when your as inpatient as me!) - Incedently, if anyone else feels like doing this, you might wanna discharge the flash capacitor with a resistor, and not a screwdriver... a 330 Volt instant electrical discharge can be a bit of a shock first thing on a Sunday morning :).
My camera has a mini jack socket on the side labeled "AV Output". I've never used this, so instead of drilling a hole is the side of my camera I though I'd use it to route the trigger through. The service manual contained circuit diagram and schematics, allowing me to find a couple of test points on the PCB for the shutter and the auto focus. I removed the AV socket, insulated it with kapton tape, soldered the wired from the test points on it, and superglue it back on. Re-assembling the camera, I found, to my astonishment that it had worked!!!
My new improved camera can now be controlled (by a little Adruino app I wrote) to generate timelapse photography on it's own! - This isn't quite as easy as it seems, beleive it or not. You have to think about the macro scale of what you are filming, which isn't anything I was thinking about when I built the damn thing, now I have to spend the next few weeks trying to learn how to use it! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment