Wireless Controlled Electronic shutter release

This exercise began because I wanted to see how far I could go with computer control of a camera particularly in high speed photography.

What has evolved is a stand-alone wireless controlled electronic shutter release.

It is based upon using wireless doorbell units. These can  be quite cheap as they are coming in from China. And I was lucky enough to find one that was readily adaptable. Any of them can probably be used so long as you can find where the point on the board is that lets you tap off the signal you need.

The doorbell units I found also make it easier to have multiple receivers controlled by one transmitter. The encoding of a unit simple requires removing existing links and putting in the ones you need.



An overall schematic for the system shows how simple it is:

 

The key to having a simple remote switch to activate the shutter is an SCR (Silicon Controlled Rectifier). This is basically a solid state switch that can be activated by a very small current.  You could use a relay but the life of the batteries would be greatly reduced.

The circuit for the switch is dead simple and can be seen here.


Multiple cameras can be fired from the same receiver unit and flash units can also be fired - subject to the firing voltage and the SCR used.


The release head and its construction can be seen here.


The description of how it was all put together starts here.