HOW-TO: Take digital photos from a kite--Part 1, the camera

This week's How-To Tuesday is a two parter; this week we show how to convert that old digital camera you're got in your closet to one that takes a picture automatically every second until the memory card is full, which will we use in next week's How-To, where we'll put that camera on a kite. There are many other applications once you hack a digital camera to take a shot a second, and we'll also go over those in future How-Tos, for example: mounting to a car, bicycle, city bus, house pet, cubicle, and other fun things.

A couple years ago we bought an Olympus "Camedia" D-360L 1.3 Megapixel digital camera which took "okay" pictures and used that goofy SmartMedia format. At the time it was a good camera, but eventually we moved on and it's been sitting in the basement waiting for a project, dreaming of the day it'll fly, fly away like a bird.

There's been a lot of interest in taking digital photos from kites over the last few years, but all the articles we've seen involve really complicated gear and remote controls, most being very expensive—all we want to do is take as many photos as we possibly can until the battery dies or the card is full. Most importantly, we wanted to do this on the cheap since there's a good chance the camera will get smashed. We checked eBay and places like Fry's Electronics and found a lot of crappy digital cameras that people will be able to use to take photos from kites. The project shouldn't cost more than $30 for the camera and the parts.

Ingredients
1 digital camera that will be hacked apart
RadioShack 1 LM555 Precision Timer - 8 Pin DIP
Wires, solder, hot glue

Many cameras will work with this hack, but we realize digital cameras are different—so this week we're going to show you the theory behind our digital camera automation, and next week we'll show you how to string it up to a kite. As we get feedback from the folks trying this at home, we'll add more ways to automate the digital camera hack.

The Camera

Our soon to be airborne camera is an Olympus D-360L. A little bulky for kite pictures, but a good experimenter camera to get started.

Only 4 screws held the camera together, and quickly the camera face and back plate were off—this is another reason that old digital camera is good for hacks.

We located the shutter mechanism and popped the button off. Under the button there are 4 contacts, one was labeled "shutter" and that was the one we were after.

We then found positive and negative leads coming from the batteries (red and black). We're going to tap in to these and power our timer chip. To do this we simply soldered two wires directly from the leads.

We also soldered a wire directly to the lead that says "shutter" this is what triggers the camera when the black wire (negative) it applied to it. If you're testing your own camera this is a good way to test how the camera takes photos, once you figured that out, solder the wire from that button/lead.

For kicks we tested how many volts were going through, just to see what's flowing through there (it was 5.98v) which makes sense since the camera takes four 1.5v AA batteries.

The Timer Chip

The LM555 Precision Timer (8 Pin DIP) is available for $1.49 or less at every RadioShack we've ever been in.

 

This chips allows us to simulate the button being pressed continually once we wire the power from the camera through it and then in to the shutter.

Once you get the chip, you can solder it up according to our diagram below or you can use a breadboard to test. A breadboard (also available at RadioShack) will allow you to test wiring and the chip before you commit to soldering it all up.

The Wiring
With the chip pins down and the little round dot at the upper left, the numbers are 1 to 4 going down on the left side and 5 to 8 on the right side going up.

The black wire (negative) goes to the 3rd pin, Red (positive to the 4th pin). Run a wire from the 2nd to the 6th pin (or just fold the pins over the back and solder) then connect the 6th to the 7th pin. Last up, run the shutter wire to 6th pin. For the hardware geeks out there, you can of course add resistors and capacitors to change the timing (and possibly do a better job of not frying the camera than we did).

Once we tested the chip and the camera snapped dozens of photos without having to press a single button we then added the wires to the outside of the camera.

We used a small plug found in a pile of spare parts just so we could unplug it when not in use, or if we want to use for other projects. You don't need to do that, but we did for ease of use.

After that, we hot glued the chip as well as the wires to the outside of the camera.

The finished product. It works! So that's it for this week, next week we'll show you how to mount the hacked digital camera to a kite (and other things) to take photos automatically.

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Phillip Torrone can be reached via his personal site: http://www.flashenabled.com

[Frank @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

Is this correct?

'The LM555 Precision Timer (8 Pin DIP) is available for $150 at every RadioShack we�ve ever been in.'

[RP @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

i think you are missing a decimal point in the price of the 555.

[pt @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

in 2036 the lm555's are $150.

it's fixed for this time period, thanks.

cheers,
pt

[Rich Brome @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

are there any cameras you could use for this that are under four ounces? if so, you could use this to take pics from a DraganFlyer (check out rctoys.com if you haven't seen it). That would be cool. I know they have an "eyecam", but the quality is crummy. A 3-megapixel camera mounted on a DraganFlyer is all I want for xmas! ;-)

[Mary Branscombe @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

the first issue of Oreilly's mook (magazine/book) Make will look at ways of doing this with disposable cameras - it will be interesting to compare your approaches. Nice use for all those old cams!

[jimbo @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

anybody got a clue as to exactly how to change the timing of the chip to approx. one photo every 30 seconds? the more detail, the better. thanks!

[Jim Hughes @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

Paul Mutton shows what can go wrong when flying a $500 camera - http://www.jibble.org/kitecam/

[Corporate Serf @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

http://www.thehaefners.com/kap/

[Darrin Skinner @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

As a serious kiteflier it was nice to see your artical on KAP (Kite Aerial Photography). For those interested there are a lot of excellent KAP sites. Two of the most outstanding are http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/ and http://scotthaefner.com/kap/. Both these sites show 100's of photos along with all the equipment and picavet suspension systems used to suspend the camera from the kite. Enjoy.

[Mike @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

I've done this before, and I've got photos from construction and flights up on my website, http://3cats.us/gallery/KAP

For more details on the 555 timer construction and setting the timing, I'd suggest looking at http://www.gentles.milestonenet.co.uk/KAP/Pencam/pencam.htm I found it extremely helpful.

- Mike

[Keith @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

I have been buying small digital cameras for under $20 at Wal-Mart. Once you get the case off you have a very small board with four leads coming off of it, two for the battery (a pair of AAA) and two for the shutter. They work great with this hack.

[Jerry @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

Has anyone worked on a hack to disable the power-down feature on these cameras?

[v0od0o @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

In case you're interested in using a draganflyer I found 2 cameras that would fit the weight bill. The Canon PowerShot SD10 is a 4MP camera that weighs 4.9 oz, this is higher than 4 oz but the draganflyer site says it carrier 4 oz effortlessly and that more is possible but will affect performance, so I guess 0.9 extra oz are not that much.
There is another option in the form of the Casio Exilim EX-S3 and the Casio Exilim EX-S100 both weigh 4 oz and both are 3MP cams.
Personally I'd go with the canon though, I like their digital cameras more....

[John @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

Are these the one time use cameras that you have to return to get your pictures out of Keith?

Do they still process the camera if you have opened it?

[Walter @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

Loved the article, and was ESPECIALLY thrilled to see that you took apart and made use of an Olympus D-360L since I have one myself. Did I mention mine was broken? Well, something was wrong with the shutter, and the detailed pics you took of the insides of the camera gave me the courage to open 'er up and fix the shutterbug! I think the dimple in the plastic shutter button was misaligned because once I took it apart and attempted to remove the shutter button, thought better of it, then reassmebled the camera the thing worked like new! It takes a picture every time I depress the shutter button, finally :).

Course it doesn't hold a candle to my Minolta DiMage7, however the DiMage is a little harder to fit into my pants pocket :)

Cheers and thanks!

[Jim Martin @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

OK -- I'm hooked, off to e-Bay to look for a cheap camera. (I have an RC rig that is really skunky and uses a film camera, and is more trouble and expense than it is really worth -- but this rig sounds exactly like what I need.)

Could you provide some ore details on the part about "frying the camera" -- I am not really a goofing-around-with-electronics kinda person, and that is making me nervous. ^_^

What should I avoid doing to avoid frying stuff -- or is it just a risk that is part of the game?

JIM
American Kitefliers Association
Wings Agross Carolina Kiting and Okra Society (WACKOS)

[Harris bin Khurram @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

Hi folks,
i know this is not professional camera but ive to comment on that. We can use intel pc pocket camera for that. Its resolotion is not that high comparing to olympus but its lighter, cheaper and somewhat good for small projects and small kites. LM555 here just cost me would ya beleive....... 5 Pak Rupee means a dozen in One US dollar. :D. I also experimented with this cheap camera. I used infrared leds to take photos in dark. It worked but only in 3-4 cm distance fotos. :D
BBye

[Unsure @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

UMMMMMMMMMM, what does he mean about "not frying the camera"? That gets me kinda nervous......

[Bill Crozier @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

I like the 555 hack but I'm not ready to dig into my Canon A80. I'd like to try this on my old Oregon Scientific, but it only has 3v power. My various attempts are shown here:

http://www.crodog.org/kites/kites.htm

[Keff @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

Hello, may I ask author whether garmin forerunner 201 GPS is able to actually input the data to the computer 'on the fly' (for example for car navigation) instead just downloading it after run?
Thanks very much, and good luck with your awesome geeky series :))

[danny @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

I opened up my 3.2 MP digicamera and hit a wall. Instead of a contact under the shutter release button, there's a thin metal plate with a circuit under it and a 8 wire ribbon comming from it. The selector wheel, zoom and auto-focus/shutter release are all inegrated into the ribbon. I really want to use this camera but I'm no electrical engineer and don't see an easy way out. Any suggestions? If i must, i'll try a mechanical approach to time lapse triggering but it will have to stay lightweight.