Time-lapse courtesy of Arduino

arduino-time-lapse

[Ross] put together a small package for use with time-lapse photography. The Nikon camera he’s using can snap a picture when it receives an IR command. [Ross'] solution connects an IR LED to an Arduino to generate this signal. The delay between frames is set with a potentiometer that is read in through the ADC. This is quite a bit less involved than the last solution we saw.

The unit consisting of an Arduino clone, a 9v battery, and the IR LED on a cable is easy to fit into a camera bag. He’s posted the code and we’ve embedded an example of his work after the break. An enclosure as well as time references around the potentiometer would complete this handy tool.

Comments [11]

tagged: arduino, intervelometer, ir, nikon, time-lapse

Reader Comments

Typical Arudino Envy post here…

Posted at 12:20 pm on Oct 30th, 2009 by sean

Hmm… cool idea. To suggest a possible future improvement, perhaps an LCD or simple LED display to show what the interval is set to.
Good hack!

Posted at 12:42 pm on Oct 30th, 2009 by Kaj

@Kaj
Ross notes that as a future improvement on his site…

Posted at 12:44 pm on Oct 30th, 2009 by asdf

@Kaj: I disagree… the other controller that was linked in the story has an LCD for this purpose. I like this solution for its simplicity… chances are (even if you don’t have an Arduino) that you have the components on hand to make something akin to this. Really, just putting a piece of paper around the POT and marking times at different points on the dial would be good enough for me.

Posted at 12:47 pm on Oct 30th, 2009 by Mike Szczys

I wonder if the purple-looking LED in that pic is actually IR viewed by a CCD, or if he meant UV?

Posted at 1:23 pm on Oct 30th, 2009 by M4CGYV3R

M4CGYV3R: yep, that’s the way the camera picked up the IR LED. It wasn’t triggered by the intervalometer for that shot, and the timing must have been just right to pick it up.

Posted at 1:47 pm on Oct 30th, 2009 by ross

If you’re going for simple I’d slap a pot on this thing instead:
http://users.tkk.fi/~jwagner/electr/d70remote/

Easy to make and works perfectly. I slapped one together the night of the yearly Perseid fireworks. Sadly my camera was ALWAYS pointed just to the side of the shooting stars. Missed one in particular that was absolutely stunning, came straight over my head and “into the water” in front of me and stayed on the sky for a few seconds. But I’m not bitter…

Posted at 1:50 pm on Oct 30th, 2009 by sneakypoo

http://www.nycresistor.com/2009/06/07/time-lapse-video-how-to/

That’s the one I did for the Canon 10D

Posted at 6:33 pm on Oct 30th, 2009 by Matt Joyce

@asdf , @Mike Szczys – Ah, then I concede with a “My Bad” for not catching that he noted that improvement :) . Good day all.

Posted at 12:43 am on Oct 31st, 2009 by Kaj

That looks like it was shot in automatic mode. Manual mode would really smooth it out.

Posted at 2:44 pm on Oct 31st, 2009 by Tuckie

Cool! I made one too! http://etharooni.polorix.net/NikonRemote.html

/selfpromotion

Posted at 9:33 pm on Nov 3rd, 2009 by etharooni