Control Your Camera Remotely With A DS

Using a custom built cable connected to the lower GBA slot and a copy of Canon’s SDK, [Steve Chapman] has come up with a very clever way of taking pictures remotely with a Nintendo DS Lite.

Currently the software supports bracket shooting as well as bulb mode. [Steve] points out that he is currently testing an audio based trigger system using the mic built into the DS and the software is still a work in progress.

While the weight saving benefits of using a DS instead of a notebook are obvious, there are things you do give up going this route. Traditionally, when you tether a camera to a computer the photos are saved directly to the computer where you can view the image on a much larger monitor. With the DS, it seems all you can do is remotely trigger the camera. Given the size and resolution of the screens maybe that’s all it can do.

[via Boing Boing Gadgets]

9 thoughts on “Control Your Camera Remotely With A DS

  1. @biozz

    You don’t need a fast succession of shots for HDR, you need to bracket your exposures. AFAIK the D40 doesn’t have AEB(odd), so you’d need to either bracket yourself, which is easy, or put something together that will bracket for you.

  2. From the looks of it, the DS just seems like an overweight wired remote. It’s connected to the Canon’s N3 plug, which is only good for anything you can do with the shutter button.

    In order to do “tethered shooting” you’d have to connect to the USB port of the camera and either use Canon’s protocols for remote shooting or a PTP compatible application like gphoto on Linux.

    The only thing cooler about this than using a simple DIY wired trigger is that you can have it time your shots and, as you mention, a possible audio trigger in the future.

    It would be cool if someone came up with a remote capture solution for, say, a PDA with USB host functionality or an UMPC.

    Dave

  3. This might be useful if it would support time-lapse on a point and shoot (aka something you would leave outdoors remotely and doesn’t have time lapse).

    Time lapse is important for many things, excellent hack (although I would rather see support on a GBA because I am sure it has the power to do it :P )

  4. @Jesse
    my problem is both that when i change the exposure it moves the camera a bit and that i need to take 5 shots adjusting the exposure in each one manually takes awhile and things like clouds dear and debris move fast if wind picks up and i need all of the objects to be all the same in every photo so i need it done in less than a second

  5. @nubie
    For Canon point & shoot cameras, you can use CHDK (http://chdk.wikia.com/) to upgrade them to do HDR bracketing and timelapse photography plus more. CHDK is a firmware hack that boots off the SD card (no change to firmware flash is done).

    Unfortunately if you have an DSLR then the porting is still in progress (looks like 40D will be first to be ported) – for more info see
    http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php/board,33.0.html

    You can hack your own features onto your camera by building it yourself (gcc) or writing your own scripts (using either lua, or a retarded basic).

    It is a great community of developers hacking on a bunch of different features for their cameras!

  6. I have found that the settings in Photomatix are quite useful in fixing any issues with moving objects, along with some Photoshop touchups, they come out pretty well. Unfortunately, I have been a little lacking in the “Upload to my website” category of life…. Perhaps tonight, a Red Bull and an all nighter of HTML… The girlfriend is not going to be happy tomorrow…

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