CAMremote-2A PRO
Having recently bought a Canon S95 I’ve since discovered I might be able to control it remotely via an Arduino using a combination of the CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit)/StereoData Maker (SDM) firmware and a VP-Systems CAMremote-2A PRO interface.
Admittedly I’ve barely explored the capability of the PS3 Eye camera mod I’ve realised recently… although I only ever saw it as an interim solution. I’ve always anticipated I’d invest in a higher spec machine vision camera - such as a Point Grey Firefly MV CMOS USB 2.0 / FireWire Camera.
But the principle of being able to integrate the capabilities of the S95 into my experimental tonoscope is appealing so I’ve just ordered the CAMremote-2A PRO and CR-Camera USB Cable for Canon (74€ + P&P) from the friendly folk at VP-Systems…
“The CAMremote-2A (CR-2A) is highly integrated miniature remote control devices for cameras and camcorders. Several digital cameras/camcorders from Canon, Nikon, Ricoh, Pentax, Sony, Panasonic and Olympus have a remote control feature which utilizes the USB port, an infrared signal or Remote Control Port. The CAMremote is a USB On-the-Go device which has USB host and device functionality. It can control the camera's remote features like shutter, zoom, aperture/shutter speed values, etc. In addition, CAMremote has an integrated intervalometer which will trigger the camera automatically after a predefined time.”
An email exchange with Linnar Edesi from VP-Systems in mid August ’11 suggested that CAMremote should have the capability to control my S95 in quite sophisticated ways - while being controlled itself by an Arduino.
“Both USB/CHDK and USB/CHDK+ can be used with scripts but we saw some instability with USB/CHDK+ so we suggest USB/CHDK method which is a bit slower. Good news is that real USB PTP protocol is already supported by CHDK (at least SDM build) so CAMremote can pass data to script reliable in both directions. This feature is not yet officially released but will happen in 1-2 weeks.
Currently new version of User Manual is not yet completed but following UART commands are available:
tv: shutter speed (query works as well) av: aperture (query works as well) iso: ISO (query works as well) recon: record on recoff: record off shoot: shoot camstat: camera status fpon: full press on hpon: half press on/AF hpoff: half/full press cancel t+: Tv+ t-: Tv- f+: drive manual focus f-: drive manual focus fp-: focus point fp+: focus point lvon: liveview on lvoff: liveview off lcdon: LCD on lcdoff: LCD off dial: dial position (= 0..5) dm: drivemode (= 0/1)”