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senseFly camera hardware hack

Posted by Andrew Chapman on November 29, 2013 at 5:13pm

Hi all, 

Does anyone know what senseFly have done to allow for more control over the Canon P+S cameras they use?

You can see here that they have made some sort of hardware hack with a plug that connects to the flight controller, but not via the USB port. It looks like maybe they're wiring directly in to the PCB internals, but it's not my system so I can't open it up to see what they're doing ;(

3691081494?profile=original

And they seem to have more sophisticated camera control than CHDK allows via USB.

For a reliable UAV mapping system you really need:

 - complete feedback loop, so the flight controller isn't just sending commands in the blind but getting notified when pictures are successfully taken, so you can transmit each shutter trigger to the GCS to be displayed on the map, and ensure it is working (CHDK seems to fail to trigger every so often)

 - multi-cycle lens extension and retraction. From my experience using CHDK you can manually turn on the camera at the beginning of the flight, keeping the lens closed and the CHDK script can extend the lens, but to retract it you need to run the shutdown command, and then there's no way of starting it up again (unless you made a hardware hack or servo control of the start button I guess)

- full control over all camera settings to ensure everything is set correctly and locked down for this specific use (ISO, shutter speed, focus, etc), and preferably also interrogating the storage card to ensure there is space

Anyone know any more about the senseFly camera hack?

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Tags: camera, control, hack, sensefly, trigger
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Replies

  • Gai May 19, 2014 at 11:52am

    Basically, that cable has three lines: one to on-off button and other two to shutter button. It goes trough small ‘auto-start’ module inside the camera. In later models, they use direct USB interface.  

  • Andre K. December 12, 2013 at 6:15am

    "CHDK seems to fail to trigger every so often"

    Please explain, I use CHDK, and never had a problem with it.

    Drawing image location in map is not important, with video transmission, I see the pictures being taken, - and later there's no problem getting location from the cameras GPS.

  • Gerard Toonstra November 30, 2013 at 4:03am

    I think I count 3 wires there. It may be connected to the UART (debug/factory connector):

    http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/UART

This reply was deleted.

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