ABOUT ME

I live in a camper van with a West Highland Terrier for company.
My passion is creating images but it is a work in progress.
I am always willing to share what knowledge I have and can be contacted through the comments on this post or e-mail ADRIAN
ALL IMAGES WILL ENLARGE WITH A LEFT CLICK

Sunday 16 September 2012

BEYOND MY APPREHENSION. (16/09/12)

The title is a Malapropism and was inspired by reading this from SCRIPTOR SENNEX. 

I started this post yesterday but what with one thing and another, idleness, sunshine and rounding up horse escapees, then preventing them going AWOL every time the children collected a pony or returned one I didn’t get very far, it’s been the story of my week. Busy with precious little to show for it.

I did finish the crossword yesterday. I then threw the paper away. The Duchess of Cambridge is starting to get on my tits. Flashing her boobs one day and her knees in a Mosque the next, she didn’t object to the later photograph. Little hussy! There have got to be more important things to report than the doings of arrogant hoorays.

Our parliament has got to vacate the Palace of Westminster for a couple of years. It needs rebuilding. That should provide a job or two……twice as many if they employ cowboy builders for phase one. Polite suggestions as to where they can go would be appreciated. I was thinking of Kabul but the Afghanis have enough troubles of their own without inflicting that shower on them.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA  The horses back where they belong.

I have been pondering the automatic camera trigger and have found all I need from intelligent and generous open source sauces, I mean sources. Thank you one and all. Some of my musings have been productive others less so. I started to worry about connecting, anything I’ve wired up, to a camera with a physical link. I spent ages devising the following……I had a toilet roll an LED and a photo resistor. Actually rigged it all up and yes it works. It would have to be a hundredth of the size but it worked. I then found one. They look like this……………..

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Four or five hours of messing over four days and they are easily available……the price £0.26p each. That sort of money I could buy two in case one was faulty. You could get at least a couple of hundred in a toilet roll.

image  My Fritzing is coming on…..I can now make the wires bendy I should have bent the left hand earth wire a bit more though. This is the lightning sensor bit. I intend to build a lightning trigger, intervaltrigger and a sound trigger all into one wee box. A chap called MAURICE RIBBLE has done all the hard work. No more reinventing the toilet roll for me! Thank you Mr Ribble.

The mechanical side I have half sorted. The light sensor can be mounted on a spare camera eyepiece so it looks through the lens. The sound trigger…..I’m thinking of a mobile phone mic. could be popped alongside it. Then with camera set to manual all I have to do is get the Arduino to short out the positive remote input to ground and the shutter will fire. A switch on the box to select the required function and Bobs your uncle.

The electronics will all go in a waterproof box and clip to a tripod leg. It would be good to get rid of the potentiometer….waterproof rotary switches are or used to be a Princess’s ransom. There will be three circuits in this box plus a battery and the Arduino. I’m thinking fag packet not shoe box so PCBs are something to be investigated this next week. I’ll have to be very circumspect here as I like big buttons so that leaves very little room for the works.

I’m also starting to understand this code malarkey….I write it out longhand and it seems to be sinking in. I’m still pinching it from all over. This is Mr Ribble’s.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Don’t copy this go to glacialwanderer.com I know this won’t work as I snapped the scribble with at least a couple of mistakes in it. This is very simple as it is only looking for sudden changes in light value. Being a bit simple myself, I like very simple.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA It’s generally peaceful here. This is the last of the light yesterday.

Have a good week.

29 comments:

  1. The duchess of cambridge and tits is very funny.

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  2. The duchess of cambridge and tits is very funny.

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    1. It is funny this time but next time it could be a rifle instead of a camera. That would be horrific. What are their minders up to. The ones we are all paying for.

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  3. I can understand the reluctance to connect anything directly to your camera, but will the photocoupler combined with the light sensor (or other sensor) operate fast enough to capture lightning? You need to have taken the photo within about 100ms, so I guess it depends on how fast the components operate but you might need to go for slightly more expensive versions in order to get really fast response times.

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    1. Mark a 25p one wouldn't a Toshiba one at a hundred times that would. Camera Axe which Maurice Ribble runs now produce triggers commercially. Worth looking at them. They are sold in the UK by Proto-Pic. They have loads of goodies. Sensors for almost everything.
      I'm still plugging away but for £180.00p it may be not worth the effort or risk. The only problem is I'm hooked now. I can't believe how cheap all this stuff is and in such small quantities.
      They do a shield for a hundred pounds less.
      I can see you filling model coal trucks with model coal. Fully automated with a tiny load cell under a section of floating track. It's daft but cheaper than the pub. Cheaper still if you know someone who is VAT registered.

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    2. Actually it looks as if for 30p you could buy a SHARP branded photocoupler with a max response time of 18ms and a typical response of 4ms, which should be fast enough -- mind you I haven't figured out if the voltage requirements of that chip would match up well with the Arduino but it gives me hope that it should be possible to find one that's both fast enough and won't require a mortgage!

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    3. Mark 4ms is acceptable. 18ms is getting a little close for comfort shutter lag is around 60ms add a couple for the processing. did find the sharp one but only saw the 18ms info.
      I wonder if an electro magnetic field sensor could predict a strike. No idea what one costs though I can see this hobby getting dearer than photography.
      How do you get hyper links into comments?

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    4. I have a feeling I read somewhere (can't find where now) that you can use an infrared sensor for a lightning trigger as it increases dramatically before the visible light gets to you. If that's true and you used an IR sensor instead of a standard photocell you might be able to shave a few ms. I also wouldn't worry about the processing time too much as the Arduino runs pretty fast (16MHz if I remember correctly) so as long as you don't tie it in knots with weird code it should be fast enough.

      Adding hyperlinks to comments has to be done manually I'm afraid. For example...

      <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk">BBC News</a>

      turns into

      BBC News

      Why Blogger doesn't provide easy to use buttons for this and bold, italic, etc. like they do in the post editor is beyond me.

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    5. Ta Mark, folk seem to use IR sensors. I just assumed they had some lying around.
      Thanks for the link info. Speed I type it will take all day.

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    6. I can see a greasemonkey script forming in my mind to add buttons for link, bold and italic to bloggers comment box. No pr0mises (especially given my schedule for this week) but I think it would be a useful way to burn a few hours.

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    7. I'll leave that to you....way beyond a man of my ability.

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  4. You made me chuckle once more Adrain! Thanks for this! Lovely sunsets!
    Btw i can't access my comments on the blog (have to check the settings i guess) so apologies for not replying but thanks to taking the time of writing them.
    A good start of the week to you! ;-)

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    1. I would leave it a day before messing. I sometimes lose bits from Dashboard...they come back on their own. the reading list seems to need more holidays than is reasonable.

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  5. Wow, it seems to me that you are doing fantastic with your electronic endeavor. You have a wonderful week and enjoy your electronics.

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    1. Horst it's all out their for free. The problem is knowing enough to disseminate the good free from the rubbish free.

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  6. A wide variety of things keep you busy. A horse wrangler now!

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    1. Damn horses, they just push past the little children.

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  7. Geesh, you're a man of many talents.

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  8. Nice end of the day shot. As for all that technical stuff - it just does my head in.

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  9. Does my head in as well. An hour or so is manageable.

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  10. Beautiful sunset photo.
    From Hilda

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  11. Horse rounder upper, chief cook and bottle washer, dog walker, photographer, Arduino programmer - is there no end to thy talents Adrian ;)

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    1. Jack of all and master of none sums things up.

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  12. The dogs look like they're in their element:) As for this Arduino programming....I have no idea what you're doing:) But good luck with it.

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  13. Did the dogs round up the horses in that first picture, they sure do look proud of themselves. Glad you got some sunshine.

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  14. The dogs treat it as a wonderful game but are more of a hindrance than a help.

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