Photo CamCon - Advanced Camera Controller

Current state of the project

[13. Jan. 2013] We are on the Indiegogo!
[12. Dec. 2012] CamCon MK802 based photography
[12. Nov. 2012] WEB based wireless camera settings and tethered shooting
[29. Oct. 2012] Experiments with time-lapse photography.
[24. Oct. 2012] The blog was created.

Introduction

Photo CamCon is for photographers who wants to try new possibilities of use of their cameras. The primary aim of this project is to develop and realize device for advanced control of DSLR cameras. CamCon is able to remote control digital camera, set parametres of photography (e.g. exposure, shutter, aperture …) and transfer pictures from the camera to another location/devices.

What is it?

Here is described basic idea of the whole device. CamCon is based on the small embedded computer with operating system GNU/Linux. Nowadays, in the time of very cheap embedded systems with ARM processors and with size of credit card is possible to choose from many single boards computers such as Beagleboard, Rasberry Pi, Cotton Candy and so on. These embedded computers include all needed peripherals as USB, Ethernet and universal Input/Output port.

On this small computer is running application which controls whole process of photography. Application sets properties, receives commands and controls camera.



On the picture is the block diagram of the device. Configuration is ensured over ethernet or wireless network via WEB user interface. CamCon module is straight connected with the camera over USB. Camera communication is going over PTP protocol (picture transfer protocol) and gphoto2 library. At this time libgphoto2 supports more than 1400 types of digital cameras. Taken pictures is possible to save on the local storage (USB stick, HDD) or transfer to the some of external storages (network, FTP …) potentially straight to internet or show on a tablet or smartphone. Universal Input/Output interface can be used for connecting other peripherals. This could be e.g. light meter, shutter release, light, external trigger and so on.

Possibilities of the device

Here are few examples possibilities of use. However if you have at least small imagination you can find much more.

• Shoot via wifi straight to local USB stick or HDD.
• Remote shooting via smartphone, tablet or PC and transfer picture straight to them.
• HDR Bracketing
• Control more than one camera on different locations from PC, tablet, smartphone etc.
• Time-lapse photography.
• Tethered capture.
• I/O port – you can connect light meter, external trigger (light, voice …), shutter release etc.
• And so on.