The Sony QX10 is a nice lightweight 18 MegaPix camera for very little money (mine cost less than 100$ online, shipping included). It looks like a good one for aerial mapping missions. Unfortunately, it does not support USB cable remote triggering (unlike the much more expensive models in the QX family). Also, a smartphone app allows to trigger the camera via Wifi but that does not allow a direct shutter trigger control via Pixhawk, which was the purpose for getting this camera. Therefore I decided to modify my QX10 to see how trigger wires could be directly hacked on it...
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Increasing the ISO is not a very good idea. The sensor is small as it is. Cranking the ISO will make the images very noisy. Your experience only reinforces my point that the camera is not suitable for aerial photography except when you have a vibration free airframe and slow moving target/aircraft.
The QX-10 does not offer a manual mode (via remote API), only various auto modes
It does appear to have an ISO setting, but I have not tried adjust ISO and don't know whether the setting is 'sticky' across power cycles.
I wonder if cranking it all the way to 3200 would work for you,
Simon.
Hi.
I don't have that camera so .. no guarantee ;-)
The exposure time is too low and the ISO to.
Try increasing the ISO, or if you can use a "Sport Mode", normally they try to set the shutter speed as fast as posible.
thanks
After hunting the camera, modified the shutter button (with sweat and tears...) and also buying several pack of extra power batteries... and testing... blurrrr.... because no manual shutter speed setting available :(
Any suggestions?
Very frustrating...
Btw that white blurry blob is me :)
Back to the software side of this :-)... for those who prefer Linux and/or python, there's a python script to rip open the update package to it's contents.
https://github.com/ma1co/fwtool.py
This lead me down a 'late night rabbit hole' on Tuesday...
The QX10 is running a Linux kernel with a few Sony specific modules and (of course) their app(s). Notes around the topic state that there's a hardware UART on the NEX camera which has a Linux command console active on it and the config for QX10 mentions a UART allocation.
Did anyone see an unpopulated header on the board? It's possible that this actually shares the USB connector, many cellphones use this trick to provide a manufactures test access... normally need some funny pull ups to active.
Also the camera will accept 'odd' USB commands via a custom SCSI interface, not fully understood.
https://github.com/erik-smit/sony-camera-usb
It´s true ... I made that for a Canon sx260 and it's working. But the canon need a positive pulse on the USB and the SONY a negative one on the wired shutter. Anyway it's working and I started to make mapps.
Thanks.
For that you may read this forum topic which gives you very simple circuits to build with a transistor to invert signals:
http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/using-aux-pins-as-relays-for-chdk...
Hi.
The switcher looks interesting but on that case I dont need to switch between cameras ...just invert levels.
I aso wired the zoom .. maybe I need it on the future ;-)
I found the battery bay is a good place to fit a voltage reg and forget about the battery too.
How about converting it to NDVI ??
Hi Mauricio,
Thx for sharing your setup. You can't connect a pixhawk directly to the wires, that won't work. You need an intermediate "relay" circuit. I personally use a three way video switcher like this one:
http://www.surveilzone.com/fpv-camera-3-channel-3-way-video-switche...
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