Discussions

I have a REALLY nice Olympus DSLR (e420) that takes some amazing pics even though it only has a  10.1MP sensor. There is this really cool piece of (now discontinued) software called Olympus Studio that allows you complete control of all the camera functions from a laptop...and possibly a tablet. It also allows you to see what the camera is seeing on the laptop. So, last night, I had a brainstorm...what if I could hook that camera up to a telemetry link and use the Studio software to remotely control the camera? The one problem is the Olympus USB cable. The camera end of the cable is a proprietary design, but the other end is a standard USB male plug. Here's my plan. It starts with this little gem...

 

 

That's all I would need to plug the Olympus camera into a 3DR radio or even a RFD900 radio via FTDI cable. The problem is that I don't know if either device (camera or radio) would provide power. Seems that I could provide 3.3V or 5V power as required using a tap off the main batteries and a Buck Boost regulator wired into the red and black wires in one of the USB cables. Wouldn't the camera and radio be powered as parallel loads off of the regulator? Once the whole contraption was powered, it would be a simple jump to hook up to the telem link using the Studio software. Just tell Studio which COM port the telem radio was hooked up to and it should pretty much find the camera. Right? I just wonder if 57600 is fast enough to carry that kind of data feed.

Thoughts? Am I nuts or would this actually work?