The Camera Axe

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The Camera Axe is an open source system for doing high speed camera triggering. You know all those pictures people get of balloons popping or drops of water in mid splash? This is how they do it. The system has light sensors and sound sensors to help get the timing just right. It can trigger your camera and the flash to capture images at just the right moment. There are a lot of picture examples on the site as well as a full schematic and parts list. Not too bad for roughly $100.

17 thoughts on “The Camera Axe

  1. hmm do u think it is possible to attach an flash sensitive optical sensor to it as well as a flash module? thus u trigger the flash of european speed cams while speeding on the highway. the module will then flash them back and render the picture useless. just a thought.

  2. flashing back is already used in special license tag holders but does not work at all – after scanning the chemical photography they can enhance the contrast easily and reveal the number.

  3. Thanks to everyone for your comments.

    robocat, chdk is a very slick piece of software. Chdk works on mostly point and shoot cameras like Canon’s powershot series. I really wish someone could get it working on higher end SLR cameras, but to the best of my knowledge nobody has. Even if it did work on SLR cameras it would not be solving the same problem. There is some overlap like timelapse. In general Camera Axe is more about extending your camera with new hardware which allows things to be very quick. Chdk modifies software and for things like motion detection is very slow in comparison. That said I really think chdk is nice software and would highly recommend anyone at all interested in trying it to do so.

  4. This is because the buttons are soldered to the opposite side of the board. This means you need to mirror the button positions because the board is getting flipped. The pictures on the blog show this and if you think about it works.

  5. Thanks concino, the 580ex used to produce good results. Then I dropped it and I damaged it. I know what’s wrong, but I can’t fix it at a reasonable price so I need a new flash. If you have a canon flash (or something similar) you should put it into manual mode and it’s lowest power setting (1/128th for the 580ex). This will normally cause a 1/40,000th second burst of light which is more than fast enough to freeze the motion of things I’m doing.

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