Samsung makes some nice cameras, but they have fallen into the trap of building proprietary controllers. Their NX models, for instance, have a micro USB port rather than the more usual 2.5mm socket for triggering the camera remotely. What’s a hacker to do?

[Niels] did some poking around, and found that it is pretty easy to trigger these cameras remotely, because Samsung simply moved the standard connections for half-press and full press of the shutter onto the USB socket: ground D+ (pin 3) and the camera focuses, then ground D- (pin 2) and the shutter is triggered. In his Instructable, he covers how to build a simple remote from a micro USB cable and a couple of switches.

Don’t feel left out if you have another type of digital camera: there are plenty of ways to build a simple shutter release switch with a few simple parts, or ways to put a microcontroller in control for more sophisticated shoots.