If you're taking that route, you might consider a "hobby" servo such as these (or do a search on Hi-Tec):
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You'd still need to build a frame to attach it to the camera (or the tripod mount) and a linkage to translate the servo rotation to the proper amount of pressure (several "cranks" are generally included).
Also, someone would have to design the electronics to take whatever control signal you wanted to use into the "standard" pulse-position signal. Know anyone who could help you here?
Hope this helps...
Frank McKenney
Until the milennium comes and countries cease trying to enslave
others, it will be necessary to accept one's responsibilities
and to be willing to make sacrifices for one's country -- as my
comrades did. As the troops used to say, "If the country is good
enough to live in, it's good enough to fight for." With privilege
goes responsibility.
-- E.B. Sledge / With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa
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J
Jim Thompson
Thanks for the pointer. My circuit design life is filled with all kinds of fun stuff: Six years ago I did a R/C receiver/servo-decoder chip design ;-) ...Jim Thompson
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
Obama isn't going to raise your taxes...it's Bush' fault: Not re-
newing the Bush tax cuts will increase the bottom tier rate by 50%
M
Michael Karas
I once used an R/C servo rigged up with a somewhat flexible flat nylon tab affixed to the end of the servo arm. The servo was mounted on a bracket from the camera stand in manner so as to have the flexible tab be able to push down in the camera shutter button when the servo was activated. Worked rather well within the operating range of the R/C controller unit.
- mkaras
D
David Eather
Will you be able to use the servo on the two position "shutter release"? And will there be a noise problem for nature photography (especially owls)?
F
Frnak McKenney
[...]
Jim,
Here's your chance to do an R/C servo _encoder_ chip (just add die and serve ).
By the way: there's an item in the latest Make magazine (#23) from someone who used a 556-based design to drive a DC motor with a cam to periodically trip a camera shutter. Not an on-demand kind of gdget, but his goal was to able take aerial photos from a kite.
As for the mechanical stuff, a 'web search with the following:
camera shutter operate|press|release motor|servo
turns up a lot of stuff, including the following:
KAP | Building a Shutter Release Servo Bracket
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You may or may not want to follow up on those suggesting attaching the servo to the camera with epoxy or caulking compound.
[...]
David,
Good questions (the questions are always the fun part ).
An R/C (radio control) servo is a "proportional movement" kind of thing: depending on the pulses it receives, it rotates CW or CCW some amount (up to a limit). It is capable, given the proper electronic and mechanical attachments, of letting you use (e.g.) a joystick to press a shutter partway or full down. What it does not provide is any feedback, so you need to measure (and mark) how far you would need to push the joystick in order to execute a "half-push" or "full-push".
On your second question, I understand your problem. Deer and hawks are remarkably sensitive to the sounds my Panasonic FZ-50 makes when focussing and snapping; I can disable the latter, but only if I don't forget.
Most of the R/C servos I'm aware of are based on tiny DC motors, and have a slight "whine" to them as they operate. From what I've heard of owls, I'd expect that one would be able to hear a servo operating; whether this would affect them you'd have to read up on or test out.
Frank McKenney
War is repugnant to the people of the United States; yet it is war
that has made their nation and it is through their power to wage
war that they dominate the world. Americans are proficient in war
in the same way that they are proficient at work. It is a task,
sometimes a duty. Americans have worked at war since the seven-
teenth century, to protect themselves from the Indians, to win
their independence from George III, to make themselves one country,
to extinguish autocracy and dictatorship in the world outside. It
is not their favored form of work. Left to themselves, Americans
build, cultivate, bridge, dam, canalise, invent, teach, manufacture,
think, write, lock themselves in struggle with eternal challenges
that man has chosen to confront, and with an intensity not known
elsewhere on the globe. Bidden to make war their work, Americans
shoulder the burden with intimidating purpose, There is, I have
said, an American mystery, the nature of which I only begin to
perceive. If I were obliged to define it, I would say that it is
the ethos -- masculine, pervading, unrelenting -- of work as an end
in itself. War is a form of work, and America makes war, however
reluctantly, however unwillingly, in a particularly workmanlike way.
I do not love war; but I love America.
-- John Keegan / Fields of Battle
J
Jim Thompson
I'm thinking more along the lines of a solenoid.
The noise doesn't seem to bother them, but they seem very aware of the LED aiming beam :-)
...Jim Thompson
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
Since New Yorkers think it appropriate to boycott Arizona over
stopping illegal immigration and drug trafficking, I suggest that
everyone else support building the Muslim Monument at Ground Zero
F
flipper
Two wrongs don't make a right.
J
Jim Thompson
A-holes should suffer appropriate retaliatory pain :-) ...Jim Thompson
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
Friday is Wine and Cheeseburger Day
J
Jamie
But three rights will make a left!
F
flipper
Let me clarify the consequences of 'two wrongs': in this case all you accomplish is additional harm to the country you live in.
"Appropriate retaliatory pain" might be an equivalent reverse boycott although I note that any 'state' boycotting another 'state' is a violation of the Commerce Clause in principle and spirit even if not in law. It's also another harm to the country, which is why the Commerce Clause is there to begin with.
If Obama had any (even if 'wrong') intellectual consistency, fat chance, he'd be condemning so called 'boycotts' as much as anything else since that, too, is a state taking 'federal immigration enforcement' on it's own.
The correct way is a court challenge and we better stop kicking each other in the ass or we'll destroy this Nation.
W
WangoTango
No, but three lefts do.
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