I just love time lapse video, and wanted to make my own. But I have just an "old" Kodack DX4530 digital camera which doesn't have any built-in time lapse function or any remote control system.
I have seen some solution on the web, but which involve to make some soldering inside the camera. As I just don't want to destroy my camera, I decided to make a little system with a servo-mechanism which will press the trigger button every 10 seconds like humans do. As a time lapse could take several day, the battery of the DX4530 wouldn't be sufficient for this so in addition, I realised also a power system for the camera.
Just like my previous realisation, (http://www.bricotronique.com/montages/interfaceson/) I decided to make this using different "Brick" which could be easily reusable for further realisations.
Thus, a power system and a command card have been ingineered.
The power Card :
The power card consist in a transformer and a card with voltage regulator and rectifiers.
The card have been thought in order to be scalable to other projects so it consists in two adjustable voltage regulator ( LM317 0-12V). Here we will need 2 voltage output : 3V for the camera and 5V for the command card. The tensions are adjustable with little adjustable resistors.
This design is a very classical one in order for further integration in future projects.
When doing early essays, I realised that my digital camera were pumping at least a peak of 2 amperes at startup. The transformer should be around 20 VA in order to provide this startup current without problem, otherwise the camera will stop during the boot sequence.
The voltage regulator are mounted with dissipator, especially the one associated with the camera, in order to avoid theirs destruction by over-heating.
The parts needed to build this card are :
1 transformer 220->9V 20 VA.
1 rectifer
3 capacity 1000µF 25V
2 capacities 100nF
1 led 5mm
1 resistor 2,2 kOhms
2 resistors 240 Ohms
2 adjustable resistors 5 kOhms
2 LM317
2 dissipators (compulsory for the camera power supply)
3 Connectors as seen on the photograph (I don't know the word in english...)
Here is a photograph of the power supply :
The command Card :
The command card relies upon a PIC microcontroller, using his PWN integrated device in order to generate signals for the servo. Details about the servo control by PWM can be found on this page : http://www.bricotronique.com/montages/asmsources/servo.php.
Then we just have to program a timing of the two differents angles of the servo (button push/relased). This is easily achieved by imbricated loops, given that our PIC runs au roughly 1.25 Mhz. For that I used a usefull online program at piclist.org : (http://piclist.org/techref/piclist/codegen/delay.htm).
Thus, the program only consists in changing the duty cycle periodically.
Improvements have to be made in order to select an adjustable time. Here the default time is 10s between two shots.
To adapt the given asm program to your needs, just modify these lines :
movlw B'0011111' ; bouton appuyé
movwf CCPR1L
and
movlw B'0011000' ; bouton laché.
movwf CCPR1L
Here just modify the value 00111111, and 0011000 which represent somehow the angle of the servo at the 2 states. Give them the value depending on your application.
Moreover, we have to adjust the time delay which are :
1 Connectors as seen on the photograph (I don't know the word in english...)
The camera Frame :
As you can see on the photograph, I have made a wood adaptator with the servo adapted to my own digital camera. Its construction is very simple, just two little wood pieces stuck with some glue and some little nails.
The softwares for assembling the bunch of taken images are numerous. For example I used BTV Pro for Mac OSX.
Advantages :
No destruction of the digital camera
Can be used on any type of camera
Provide power to the camera
Easy to build
To Do :
Selectable time delays
Control from a computer (USB ?)
Eagle Files : (All the componements and theirs values are inside these files):
