Skip to main content

Remote Control an Off-the-Shelf Digital Still camera

How to add Remote control (click/download) to an Off the Shelf Camera


  1. Digital Still Cameras (DSC) have good lenses and large image sensors. They take good pictures in varied lighting conditions
  2. There are many DSCs that are super cheap say like Rs 5000 to Rs 10000. 
  3. DSCs that provide WIFI and Remote Control option are also available, but they are expensive and of the range of Rs 20000 or more and also limited in exposing their APIs/control, etc. This was in 2019. Things might be different now.
  4. So modding/hacking a DSC to take pictures into its SD CARD and then download it remotely would be beneficial.
  5. This is simply done by using a servo as a picture taking plunger that is operated by an SBC say like an RPI and either by WIFI or via the internet, access a web server control mechanism that allows a remote user to click pictures or take videos.
  6. And then use a relay to switch the camera to download the pictures on the SD card and via the same web server mechanism enable pictures to be downloaded.
  7. Below is such an implementation. A Web Browser is used to click the picture and then after the picture is clicked another URL is invoked to put the camera into download mode and the picture downloaded.
  8. This was just a PoC and could be improved immensely.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Game for the blind

Have been thinking about writing a game for the blind since a long time Got an opportunity when a couple of High School Kids came up with the requirement Many options were experimented on: Scratch, Unity, etc It was decided to Keep it Simple and modding an existing game What other better than to implement in python and use python games Used an example from here  PyGame Pythonprogramming.net example   This is a car game where one has to avoid blocks in its path or falling on it To make it suitable for blind playing, visual representation of a block falling on the car or not and the speed of it falling were alerted to the user by means of different sounds; one tone for block not being in line with the car, one tone for slow rate of drop on the car and one tone for rapid rate of drop on the car. So hearing these sound clues, one can use the cursor keys to escape the falling blocks. This can be seen in the video. One can also play comfortably with their eyes closed. It can be impr...
2 comments
Read more

Leg Brake for a Bicycle

Leg Brake on a Bicycle  Growing up, there was a need to learn how to drive a geared motor cycle and also get a driver's license. There are two categories of two wheeler licenses: one for geared vehicles usually with leg brakes and one for auto/non-geared vehicles where the braking happens by hand and are simpler to operate. Driving license had already been acquired for the non-geared vehicle but due to lack of availability of a geared vehicle for practice, the acquiring of this license was taking quite some time. The main problem was adapting to braking a vehicle using the leg where one to respond differently and the conditioning takes some time. Unfortunately could not manage to get anybody/s vehicle for learning after many attempts. And at that time (1995 or so) bicycles were rather common and used for transport. So an idea was: why not add such a feature to a bicycle. A Hercules Town and Trek was also available. After some visits to the local bicycle shop and a used vehicle part...
Post a Comment
Read more

RGB Dot Matrix Display as Multi-Function Panel Display

PxMatrix on ESP8266 connected to an 32x16 RGB DOT MATRIX 1/8 SCAN Panel It was always wonderful to see the numerous colour displays that display messages and animations on Dot Matrix Displays (DMD) in the commercial places. One useful thing would be to take an Off-the-Shelf Display and run fully controllable custom software rather than rely on some external products to do. Luckily found a display vendor who offered to give me some DMD as samples for experimentation. I was given a P10 32x16 pixel color DMD panel. I have experimented with Monochrome DMDs (maybe blog about this later) but the RGB display is another world all together. The Monochrome world does not have lot of open source software, the RGB world has PxMatrix, RGBMatrix and SmartMatrix. As I wanted the controlling entity to be super cheap which meant use of an 8266 I had to start with PxMatrix. Though there are better options than PxMatrix, the others use a more expensive controller. Its better to start with the lowest cost...
Post a Comment
Read more