Tonight's Hack Session!

You can read about it here! 

Arduino Timelapse Shield

Greetings Arduino and Timelapse Enthusiasts! Just thought I'd give you a sneak peak at what I've been working on of late. It's a Remote Shutter Proto Shield. I'm aiming to make this shield compatible with all major brands SLRs. Of course this is a very hard claim to make if I don't have access to all camera's for testing. I'm confident that it will work with Panasonic,Canon and Pentax SLRs at the very least. But as you can imagine I really need to do my homework on what's out there before I sell a product that claim this type of compatibility 

The shield will be compatible with the open moco timelapse engine as well as being a completely customizable with it's prototyping area. It's not a complicated circuit really. The most complex components are the opto-couplers which are basically just optical switches that safely trigger the focus and shutter on your camera. So I'm getting close to the manufacturing stages, I just have a few measurements to triple check before I send of the gerber files. This is quite a leap in complexity from the last PCB I designed. But I'm hopeful that it will work just as I designed it to when product is finally manufactured.

Timelapse Calculator for iPhone

Well actually it's called Timelapse Helper. Thanks Simon Loffer for his slick, and much more portable take on the Original Timelapse Calculator. Follow this link to download the iPhone app. I hear Simon is keen to do an Android version soon too. Man, I love open source!

Timelapse Calculator v0.1 Released

Yay! My first Cross Platform Application Is ready for use. It is written in Python utilizing PyQt for the interface. Enjoy!

 Features

• Shooting Duration (Input or Calculation)
• Playback Duraion (Input or Calculation)
• Interval Time Between Shots (Input only)
• Shots to be taken (Input or Calculation)
• FPS, Frames Per Second for playback (Input only)
• Reset values, Sets all values to 0
• Cross Platform Interface and API

To download the tool and for info on installation and usage visit this page on openmoco.org

Timelapse Calculator Preview

So I have been playing with pyQt recently and thought I'd have a go at writing a timelapse calculator. The cool thing about QT based apps is they are cross platform so all design for the UI translates to Windows, Mac and Linux with very little effort. The other cool thing is there is a python binding for QT which is called pyQt so it's pretty easy to learn even for a beginner like myself!

My First Timelapse

Lucas next to some wild Sturt Desert Pea

My family and I have just returned from a well earned vacation at Leigh Creek. Leigh Creek is coal mining town with a rich history that goes back to the 1800's It's quite a remote town located in the center of South Australia. Beautiful landscapes, especially at the moment due to the drought breaking rainfall that we have had this year. So the place was alive. I will post a slide show soon. While we were there we would go out driving in the bush in the morning and then my pregnant Wife and 2 year old Son would come home for an afternoon sleep. This gave Dad a chance to go out and play with his toys! Timelapse that is... ;)

Here's some stills of the remote trigger I built based on a circuit I found on Instructables for the Lumix GH1.

 
I used the Open Moco Timelapse Engine v0.82 and Slim v0.12. The code can be downloaded from the Open Moco website. If you are interested in getting into timelapse like me. Here are some use useful links:

openmoco.org Open source timelapse software for use with Arduino and various other hardware platforms.
timescapes.org I great online community for all things related to timelapse, motion control and slow motion photography.
arduino.cc A non-threatening programmable micro-controller aimed and hobbyists and tinkerers.. like me!