Hey everyone this is a short intro on a project
I've been working on for the past month or so.
Canon S100 - 3D Printed Mount
Based on a craigslist ad, I found a reliable,
honest, and skilled individual with experience in
auto cad and a 3D printer.
Ryan, the guy who designed the mount, was
meticulous about measurements and got straight
to work from my quick pencil sketch. His attention to
detail paid off because on the first flight with the mount
the center of gravity was dead on.
The Canon S100 with battery and SD card, 3D mount and
necessary hardware all comes in at 245g.
DIY Iris+ tall legs
For the tall legs I took inspiration from Iris+, but made
it my own by sourcing the hardware and carbon fiber rod
from the local hobby shop.
A $10 investment in parts, and a quick 30min garage sesh
turned 4 stock short legs into tall legs. Total weight for all 4 legs is
36g. That's 11g less than the new Iris+ legs.
Next steps
1. Put together the cable based on flight riot's tutorial for triggering camera.
2. Call 3DR verify whether Iris+ arms can accommodate 11" props.
3. Set up & install CHDK firmware hack with necessary scripts.
4. Finalize pre-flight checklist
5. Test the finalized bird w/ camera in manual flight and evaluate for optimum mission duration.
6. Research & design first mission, test run with camera.
7. Evaluate imagery & refine post-production workflow.
Replies
I have an Iris+ that I plan on attaching a similar Canon to. Have you done your next steps? How did your images come out?
I don't think I'll bother with the triggering, I'll just stick to the intervalometer. I'm gonna get a heavier-payload setup in the future when I get into serious aerial photography. I got the Iris+ to play and learn.
Hey Samantha, yeah I have made some progress. looks like with a full payload I'm going to be flying 10 minute missions at the most, & I am going to be going the route of using the breakout board for triggering the camera instead of the intervalometer. The reason for this is that as a photographer I already use a RAW workflow for capture and it would be a big hassle and processing time to have images that I don't need for a flight not specific to the mission.
I'll definitely give you an update once I've flown it and triggered the camera and put together my first survey. Please update me on your progress with your iris plus. I'm really curious to see how those things have improved.
Interesting. I like the custom camera mount.
I'll have to check out that tutorial.
Todd.
I just discovered that Pixhawk is 3.3v system and Canon cameras require 5v for triggering.
This wasn't an issue on APM because the system was 5v. If your curious about this, read
this post and follow the comments.
I'm still fairly new to circuits and components so I need to get a second opinion and
plan to go with the proposed solution on the ardupilot wiki chdk page. About midway down the
page they reference this step up break out board.
1. Get power from a BEC
2. Make Marco's circuit
3. Buy board from Sparkfun
I would see if Iris already had a BEC or try Marco's circuit as I probably already have those parts lying around. Some people say the Sparkfun board doesn't really work.
Good luck
I went the sparkfun route. i'll report back my findings.
Speaking of which this is a goldmine for IR triggered camera users & pixhawk:
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/how-to-guide-pixhawk-auto-camer...
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