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Archive 2017 · Has anyone made an Arduino to trigger camera / flash

  
 
ctgoldwing
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Has anyone made an Arduino to trigger camera / flash


I am trying to get two of my grandchildren interested in electronics/computers/photography. I has an idea to use an Arduino microprocessor to sense the breaking of a laser beam. Searching the interwebby has yielded some results but not exactly what I hoped for.
I want to acquire several 'starter kits' and build the controllers with them - breadboarding, no soldering. One of the issues I saw immediately was that most DIY'ers who have done this already use a photo resistor - something that I think can be improved on by using a photo transistor. The transistor will respond to light changes much faster. It appears to be a trivial task for the Arduino.
The second part of the project would be to have a contest to photograph some high speed event like a marble falling into a bowl of milk, a balloon breaking, etc. Hopefully by making this easy to do I can peak their interests in these subjects.
The devil is in the details as they say. I am not sure if i am overthinking this . . .

Any suggestions (other than buying something already made) would be greatly appreciated.



Sep 18, 2017 at 08:13 AM
pyrohamish
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Has anyone made an Arduino to trigger camera / flash


I used some of the circuits from http://www.doc-diy.net/photo/smatrig/ to make a lightning trigger. Coupling a photo transistor with the op-amp works to only send a voltage if the light changes. You can use a photo diode too, fast enough for most things.

Send the opto trigger output to the arduino then use opto-couplers to trigger the camera shutter and focus circuits as required.

Very basic explanation but hopefully a starting point. Arduinos are good fun and great mix of easy programming and physical IO. Even just programming to make a flashing LED could be enough depending on age.



Sep 18, 2017 at 08:39 AM
ctgoldwing
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Has anyone made an Arduino to trigger camera / flash


pyrohamish wrote:
I used some of the circuits from http://www.doc-diy.net/photo/smatrig/ to make a lightning trigger. Coupling a photo transistor with the op-amp works to only send a voltage if the light changes. You can use a photo diode too, fast enough for most things.

Send the opto trigger output to the arduino then use opto-couplers to trigger the camera shutter and focus circuits as required.

Very basic explanation but hopefully a starting point. Arduinos are good fun and great mix of easy programming and physical IO. Even just programming to make a flashing LED could be enough depending on age.


Many thanks, a good starting point!
My 14 year old grand daughter is 'science curious' and when we went apple picking yesterday she was shooting with my son's camera, demonstrating a knack for it - far beyond where I was at her age. Her brother is only 10 but would probably be interested in the 'flashing light' aspect



Sep 18, 2017 at 09:14 AM





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