Sense & Spray Air Freshener Says Cheese

May 28, 2014 by James Hobson 4 Comments

manual-release

What happens when you take a remote controlled tarantula, an automatic air freshener, some PVC tube and a mechanical trigger release for a camera? Well, it’s definitely a hack, that’s for sure — you get a remote camera shutter release!

[Michael] loves his Panasonic LX7, but unfortunately, it doesn’t have a trigger release! It does however except a hot shoe adapter to use with a manual release. All [Michael] had to do now was make it remote controlled.

If you’ve ever taken apart an automatic air freshener you know that they are a treasure trove of parts, ripe for the hacking. Specifically, they have a very nice linear actuator which can be used for all kinds of fun things. In this case, it works great for pressing the manual shutter release cable. The next step is controlling it. To do this, [Michael] found a cheap RC toy, a $10 stuffed tarantula oddly enough — By taking it apart he was able to make use of its controller to turn on the air freshener, effectively turning his contraption into a remote controlled shutter release.

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Hackaday Links: Sunday, May 12th, 2013

May 12, 2013 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

[Johnathan Crawford] isn’t bashful about tearing the insides of his truck apart. He’s built his own remote starter using a Raspberry Pi.

We vaguely remember hearing about a startup that planned to deliver tacos using quadcopters instead of people. We assume that company was a bust but here’s the concept in action at the 2013 RoboGames [thanks Don].

On the topic of food: pizza and joysticks… do they go together? Perhaps. Here’s a joystick made out of an empty pizza box (note the remains of grease stains inside).

[Jonathan] brings to our attention the problem of running out of fingers to press all the buttons on your Monome at just the right moment. No worries, just add some solenoids to act as extra fingers.

Apparently some Samsung cameras (NX20, NX210 and NX1000) can use their USB port as a shutter release. The trick is finding the right resistor values for the ID pin [thanks Janne].

Plagued with a tablet dock that wasn’t weighty enough to prevent the device from tipping over [John] filled base with lead to keep the thing upright.

[Helmut’s] bathroom had no windows. He faked one using an Arduino and an RGB led.

And finally, as a reward for all the readers that made it to the bottom of the article, here’s a gem of a project. [Charlie] was inspired by the recent logic combo lock post to send in his own plans for a lock he made years ago. Unfortunately he can’t find the pictures from the build but the theory behind it is quite engaging.

Building A Remote Control For A Cable Release Camera

March 3, 2013 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

wireless-shutter-for-mechanical-camera

A lot of the remote shutter and intervalometer hacks we see are simplified by the camera’s built-in Infrared or other shutter techniques. But this camera doesn’t have a simple way to electronically trigger the shutter. The Fuji x100 is a digital camera, but it uses a cable release mechanism. The box you see on top is [Andy’s] method of making a remote shutter release for it.

The solution for “remote” triggering is that black cable which physically attaches to the shutter button. Just depress the plunger at the opposite end and a picture will be snapped. This process is automated with the use of a hobby servo hidden inside the box. It’s driven by an Arduino which is also monitoring the receiver. You could use just about any remote thanks to the Arduino’s flexibility in interfacing with hardware (we would have gone with a Bluetooth module and our smartphone). [Andy] chose to use an RF remote and receiver for a different camera.

A DSLR Shutter Cable For Android

May 21, 2012 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

Here’s a very easy way to trigger your DSLR camera using an Android device. It’s a similar method used with IR triggered cameras, in that all you need to do is assemble some simple hardware to plug into the headphone jack. The app that triggers the camera simply plays back a well crafted audio file to do so. The thing that this cable adds is the ability to use the focus feature, since the cable has two data lines.

The hardware is dead-simple. A pair of NPN transistors and a pair of resistors are hosted by this small chunk of strip board. The audio jack for Android uses left and right audio channels to drive the base of these transistors. On the camera side of things the transistors are pulling the focus, and shutter contacts to ground. Once this is covered with shrink tubing it’ll be pretty rugged, and ready to be thrown in your camera bag for use on short notice.

[Thanks Hannes]

Knockoff Game Controller Makes A Fine Remote Shutter Release

December 29, 2011 by Mike Nathan 3 Comments

remote-shutter-release

[Duncan Murdock] received a Canon DSLR camera for Christmas and wanted a remote shutter release to go along with it. Since nary a store was open on Christmas, he was pretty much out of luck. Scrounging around in his parts drawer, he found all sorts of goodies waiting to be reused, including a knockoff Wii nunchuck.

He pulled the original cable from the nunchuck and replaced it with an old telephone wire, attaching a 2.5mm plug to the end. The plug goes directly into his camera’s control port, allowing him to trigger the auto focus and shutter mechanisms with the push of a button.

We like the idea of a junk controller being recycled for use in a camera, though we think it has far more potential than being used as a simple wired trigger. If both the nunchuck and camera were fitted with some sort of wireless interface (Bluetooth, IR, etc), we think it would make a great addition to any hobby photographer’s kit.

Shutter Trigger Remote With Some Nice Design Considerations

November 4, 2011 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

Here are the guts of [Lukasz’s] infrared camera remote control. He based it off of an existing design, but looked for places where improvements could be made. He felt the ATtiny2313 was a bit wasteful in this case. But further investigation led him to see why it was chosen. If you were to drop down to an ATtiny13 the ability to connect a crystal oscillator is lost (that chip only offers a 1-pin clock signal input) and the internal RC oscillator isn’t quite up to his standards for reliable IR communications.

Instead of driving the IR LED directly from an AVR pin he used a transistor in hopes that it will allow the maximum current to flow through the diode when in use. We’re not sure if it’s necessary, but we can see how it makes sense. Power is received from an unregulated 3 volt coin cell, so maybe as that voltage drops over time this will come into play.

Speaking of that coin cell, battery life is a concern here. [Lukasz] is using the sleep functions of the AVR after three seconds of use. This should keep the cell alive for quite a long time. But his 0 volt measurement is an anomaly with the multimeter he’s using. To get a precise measurement for tiny current flow you need extra equipment, like [Dave Jones’] uCurrent adapter.

The schematic for this Canon camera compatible project is only provided in Eagle format so we’ve embedded an image of it after the break for your convenience. You should have no problem making this work with a Nikon if you swap out some of the code from the TV-B-Gone shutter release we saw on Thursday.

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TV-B-Gone Can Double As A Camera Remote Control

November 3, 2011 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

[Christopher] found a way to get a bit more mileage out of his TV-B-Gone kit. The little device is intended to turn off every television in range with the push of a button. But at its core it’s really just a microcontroller connected to some infrared LEDs. Instead of sending codes to shut of televisions, you can rewrite the firmware to send a camera remote shutter release code.

It doesn’t take too much to pull this off. You need a way to flash new firmware to the device, and you need to know the new code timing that you want to send. Since the firmware is open source it’s easy enough to make code changes, and there are several easy methods of flashing AVR devices (like the tiny85 used here), including using an Arduino as an ISP.

But [Christopher] did more than just add the Nikon code for his camera. He realized that there’s a jumper to select between European or American television codes. Since he wasn’t using the foreign option, he replace that pin header with a switch that selects between normal TV-B-Gone operation and camera shutter release modes. Nice.