Wednesday, 16 July 2014

Ghetto Remote camera shutter

So, I got myself a point & shoot camera on Gumtree from an emo kid in Stockport for the princely sum of £10 (he originally wanted £15 but lost the charger by the time I arrived to collect)



Anyway, I messed about with it and it works fine even though it looks quite rough. What I was hoping to do with it in time, was to install chdk on it so that I could get more useful features out of it. I plan to strap it to my quadcopter and use it for aerial photography. Anyway, I'm digressing.

I was a bit bored last night. Think it was a full moon. And I decided to make a remote shutter for the camera so I can take photos in various scenarios that a normal point & shoot can't do. And I thought about it for a while and looked around my house for bits & bobs, and decided I could make a wireless shutter using my android phone and bluetooth to control the shutter up to a distance of 20-30 metres. Not a bad 3 hours of night time activity to expend..

Anyway, here is my result. I call it Blueter*, and the code, app and how-to is coming soon:

First video 16/07/2014



Update 03/08/2014:
Video demonstration of finished Android app. (I also have a version with voice control to upload soon but my phone is ghetto, and I need to find someone with a newer phone so I can try it.)