jjswee... feel free to use this thread for your build stuff too.

My basic plan was to build a DIY intervalometer controller for my camera so I can do time lapse shots. The G3 will do it, but is very limited (max of 100 shots, min delay of 1 min). So after looking at arduino boards for a while and wondering what possible reason I could figure out to buy one... I FOUND MY REASON!!!!!!!

I'm basing the design on the intervaluino I found on sporez.com: Intervaluino: A DIY Intervalometer for your Canon SLR | The Honey Jar I'm using reed relays as opposed to an optocoupler because... oh yeah... Radio Shack doesn't sell optocouplers

Right now I've taken the stuff out of the box, built the first few tutorials from ladyada.net... and have built a basic prototype to figure out how reed relays work. Unfortunately I've hit a snag in that I can't find a cable to hook it up to my camera... and even if I could I'm going to have to find a way to wire this stupid headphone jack since it won't fit on my breadboard.

So tomorrow I'm going to head back to Radio Shack to buy a project box and see if I can't get some things hooked up and soldered in place for real. I'll try to get some photos up this weekend and see if I can't shoot a time lapse before the rain moves in Sunday. Mostly I wanted to just make this thread to get jjswee into gear and ready to build something too!

FOUND IT!!!! I had a 3.5mm to 2.5mm cable that came with my wife's Creative Zen MP3 player. The mini end that hooks into the recording port is exactly the same as the control pin on the Canon 300D. w00t!

Ooohhh.... I've heard of the Arduino before, but I didn't realize it was that easy to program. I might have to pick one up and start dicking around with it at some point. I wonder how much power it can handle. Could I run a huge chain of LEDs off of one?

Would I be able to use this to build and control something like a sunlight alarm clock? I obviously wouldn't want to run 100W through the board, but I'm not quite sure how I'd slowly turn a light bulb on otherwise.

Yeah, I want an alarm clock that slowly turns on a bright light bulb in the morning. I only have a smallish window in my basement bedroom, and it's impossible for me to wake up some days...

Yeah, I'd rather not be jolted awake like that.

I'm also usually still very much not awake after my morning piss.

Sunlight solves everything.

Originally Posted by chkltcow

I'm using reed relays as opposed to an optocoupler because... oh yeah... Radio Shack doesn't sell optocouplers

You can always get some free samples of optocouplers from Fairchild.

Also, for others who want to start a project like this, the RBBB Arduino clone is smaller and cheaper than the duemilanove.

Originally Posted by Blazin

A sunlight alarm clock?

The sensing portion is pretty straight forward..

Photodiode -> Amp -> ADC -> uController

The dimming isn't as easy when you are talking AC..

Modern dimmers "truncate" the sine wave to dim the light, you'd need to build this circuit, not too difficult, but you'd need a DAC to vary the output to the circuit to dim the light.

Definitely do-able.. but you'd need to do some research

I wouldn't need to sense anything... I'd just need to tell it to start turning on a lightbulb at, say, 6AM, and go from fully off to fully on over the course of 30 minutes. I'd use an incandescent bulb, so I could probably get away with using a thyristor-based dimmer, or I could go all digital and make a PWM system.

Yeah, I need to do a lot more research... haha.

You don't need an arduino setup.. you just need one of these: X10 Lamp Module LM465 PLM03 - Smarthome

Originally Posted by jjswee

Arduino's have PWM outputs. Set that to control voltage via a relay? Variable transformer? do they make them? Haha.

SCR Power Controls -- Zero fired & Phase Angle Fired

The first one is what you need, but I have no idea how much it is and where to buy it.

Oooh... okay, so life just got a little easier, since now I won't have to figure out how to wire up a PWM circuit... haha. PWM is great because it's basically digital control over the output waveform. To ramp up the voltage, you set it to turn it on for 1ms, then off for 9ms, then on for 2, then off for 8, 3 on, 7 off, etc., until you hit solid on (only you generally do it much faster than every millisecond).

Originally Posted by Angelo

I just ordered a Duemilanove: Arduino - ArduinoBoardDuemilanove

What the heck, it'll be fun to play with.


-A

Arduino Dual man love?

Originally Posted by Angelo

I just ordered a Duemilanove: Arduino - ArduinoBoardDuemilanove

What the heck, it'll be fun to play with.

-A

SWEET! We shall have a cult of Arduino on here!

Kilonad: As best I remember, there was a little serial port thing needed to control those from a computer. I can't find it on the smarthome website, but if you're brave... you can try x10.com. Their site was and probably will always be a total mess. They were one of those horrible advertisers a few years back where everything blinked, and they always used scantily clad girls in bikinis to try to sell their security cameras. Regardless, they make what you're looking for I think when I bought mine, it was a starter kit with the controller and 2 receivers for $25.

Originally Posted by chkltcow

SWEET! We shall have a cult of Arduino on here!

Kilonad: As best I remember, there was a little serial port thing needed to control those from a computer. I can't find it on the smarthome website, but if you're brave... you can try x10.com. Their site was and probably will always be a total mess. They were one of those horrible advertisers a few years back where everything blinked, and they always used scantily clad girls in bikinis to try to sell their security cameras. Regardless, they make what you're looking for I think when I bought mine, it was a starter kit with the controller and 2 receivers for $25.

Aha, they have some sort of starter kit for $50 now. I might have to look into that, since you can easily program macros and set timers.

Their website is still stuck in 2002 though.

You're going FAR more complicated than I am with mine. I want to be able to program it so that when I press a button, it starts taking pictures on some delay... maybe 30 seconds... for 10 hours.

Code:

if(pressed=1) {
  for(i=0;i<1200;i++) {
    focus(); // to wake
    delay(100);
    shoot();
    delay(3000);
 }
}

That's pretty much all mine is going to do, at first. Later on I want to work on some triggers, like a light trigger for shooting lightning.

Another plan I have is to set up a box with some type of external connector, probably RJ-45, for sensors... and another external connector that's just a relay to close a circuit to either fire a flash or trigger the shutter on a camera. It would be nice to be able to swap out the various triggers for whatever you need at the time... laser trip, audio trip, etc.

Alright boys and... well... let's be honest, it's mostly just guys in here Version 1 is done on my breadboard, and about as simple as it gets. There are two reed relays... one for the focus and one for the shutter. Pin 8 is hooked to the relay coil for focus, and pin 9 for fire. Both relays are connected on one end to the camera ground and on the other end to the focus ring and shoot ring respectively.

Since I eventually want to put the breadboard in a project box that I don't currently have, I needed SOMETHING to attach the headphone jack to... so I put it in a film canister. Hey.. what's more appropriate for a camera controller than being in a film canister? It's hooked up to the breadboard with some old Cat3 I had lying around (none of that fancy Cat5 stuff here!)



And the code is braindead too.

Code:

int focusPin = 8;
int firePin = 9;
int led = 13;

void setup() {
  pinMode(focusPin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(firePin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(led, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
  digitalWrite(led,HIGH);
  digitalWrite(focusPin,HIGH);
  delay(500);  // focus for half second to wake up camera if asleep
  digitalWrite(firePin,HIGH);
  delay(500);  // hold the shutter button for half a second
  digitalWrite(led,LOW);
  digitalWrite(focusPin,LOW);
  digitalWrite(firePin,LOW);
  delay(119000);  // wait 119 more seconds
}

It's astonishing how easy it is to make stuff with this thing. Last week, I didn't know crap about working with bare electronics... and today I've built an intervalometer. WOW!

No, I haven't actually tried it out by taking pictures yet. I had to build the 9v battery holder so I can get it away from my PC and USB cable to find something to take pictures of (believe me, you don't want a time lapse of me sitting here in my boxers playing Forza 3). I did check everything out with a multimeter last night to make sure the relays were clicking on correctly and were actually isolated so no errant voltage is leaking over to the camera side. Everything is working fine with that, at least.

I got bored a little bit ago and decided to see what else I could make with the arduino... play around a bit more with programming. I hooked up 8 LEDs to pins 2-9 and made a binary counter. It counts from 0-255, then starts over again

Code:

int leds[] = { 
  2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 };
int bytes[] = { 
  1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256 };
int pinCount = 8;
int inByte = 0;
int i;
int j;

void setup() {
  for(i=0;i<pinCount;i++) {
    pinMode(leds[i], OUTPUT);
    digitalWrite(leds[i],LOW);
  }
}

void loop() {
  for(j=0;j<255;j++) {
    for(i=0;i<8;i++) {
      if(j & bytes[i]) {
        digitalWrite(leds[i], HIGH);
      }
      else {
        digitalWrite(leds[i], LOW);
      }
    }
    delay(50);
  }
}

I LOVE this thing!

HONG KONG!? Dude, I had it in 2 days from adafruit You'd probably get it overnight since they're in NYC.

Of course, the last thing I ordered from Hong Kong made it from HK to LA in negative time, then LA to NYC in a few hours, then NYC to Charlotte in a few more hours. Basically, Hong Kong to Charlotte overnight. Then it sat on the dock in Charlotte for a week and a half because Airborne Express claimed they couldn't find my address.

Okay, it's now taking pictures I finally got the 9v adapter soldered together, put everything on the board and sort of taped it in place, and threw it in my backpack to take to work tomorrow. The code above is wrong... it takes close to 3 seconds just to wake that damn 300D... so here's the new code (in case I need to adjust it once I get to work tomorrow )

Code:

int focusPin = 8;
int firePin = 9;
int led = 13;
int shots = 300;

void setup() {
  pinMode(focusPin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(firePin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(led, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
  while(shots > 0) {
    digitalWrite(led,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(focusPin,HIGH);
    delay(3000);  // focus for three seconds to wake up camera if asleep
    digitalWrite(firePin,HIGH);
    delay(500);  // hold the shutter button for half a second
    digitalWrite(led,LOW);
    digitalWrite(focusPin,LOW);
    digitalWrite(firePin,LOW);
    delay(116500);  // wait 118 more seconds
    shots--;
  }
}

Originally Posted by jjswee

Why shutter for 500ms and why focus high when taking the shot?

I could probably turn the shutter time down, but really it doesn't matter. The focus time has to be so long because the camera goes to sleep after 1 minute, so it has to wake it up by pressing a button before it can actually take the shot. The camera wakes up so slow that I had to keep upping that number more and more to get it to a point that it WOULD wake up.

My 40D wakes up rather instantly. The old 300D Digital Rebel.... not so much.

You can use something like this: Amazon.com: AC-1 Canon E3 to Canon N3 adapter: Camera & Photo
That will let you plug your mini headphone connector into an N3 like the higher end cameras use. That's exactly what I'd use to make this thing work with my 40D. I just don't feel like leaving my 40D sitting in an attic overnight