The Faux Shaux

I think the mic is broken on the Canon G7 I’ve been using.  It’s super low volume.  Anywho, after frying 500mA relays on the external flash, I got the remote flash trigger working through a 5 volt 1 amp relay.

I was working on soldering relays to old point and shoots.  I ruined the first camera, a 5-megapixel HP when I accidentally shorted the flash capacitor another circuit (while trying to discharge the capacitor so I wouldn’t get shocked anymore).  The second camera, Tedb0t was nice enough to donate, wasn’t proving to be much more fruitful.  I soldered wires to the 4 points of the shutter contacts on the circuit board but when trying to use the arduino power, it wouldn’t work.  I de-soldered the wires assuming that my solder job was lacking, and in doing so, I cleaned off one of the solder points as well.  Andy Miller told me I can find another area to solder to (using the continuity tester).

My nerves started up after spending a great deal of time with no progress.  I knew there was an instructable on using a graphing calculator to control a Canon Rebel XT for time-lapse.  Steve Litt looked at me, “wait… if you know how to do it… get something working first, then play around later.”

So that’s what I’ve been doing.  Here are videos (despite the crap audio) of a relay controlling the shutter on the rebel and an external flash.  When I get the 2.5 to 2.5mm TRS adapter from Radioshack tomorrow, I will have independent control of the auto-focus feature and the shutter.

I am also contemplating two flashes.  One regular flash and one with a user-modified color setting.

Flash Triggered by Relay from mike k on Vimeo.

Rebel XT shutter with relay from mike k on Vimeo.