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Primed for an entire night of unattended wide angle
Imaging, the Canon 10D will Patrol for Aurora,
Meteors, and wide angle panoramas.
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A
Robotic Digital SLR System
For
Wide Angle All Night Imaging
Uploaded 8/28/06
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Introduction
After almost 3 years of operation,
the film based Aurora Cam has now been retired. Its replacement
uses a Canon 10D DSLR camera, and the old system has been modified
for digital operation. You can read about the old system here, and the Robotic Barn Door mounting this new system
is mounted on is detailed here.
The modifications were
the removal of the film sprocket winder motor, and the addition
of a lever switch on the shutter/tracking servo to start the
exposures. Also, the electronics for the cameras remote was modified,
which is detailed below to single switch operation.
First System
tests
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Two hours of 5 minute
exposures can be seen in this sequence here. The night was cloudy
on and off, however the tracking coordination and shutter functioning
was tested out.
Click
To enlarge
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| Setup for
a night of testing, you will recognize the same console and tracking
mount as before. It turned out that the console programming did
not have to be changed if I simply added a switch to the old
shutter servo which in the film based model, actually pushed
the shutter button down while at the same time closed a switch
to start the Robotic barn door tracking. |
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The
back of the new setup shows the cameras remote wired into the
servo switch. See the new music wire pull rod going up from the
servo? Thats now the shutter switch. This servo also closes another
lever switch to inform the processor on the Robotic Barn Door
mount to start its tracking sequence of 5 or 10 minutes, with
one minute in between to allow the rewind of the barn door drive. |
| Modifications
of the remote included adding a phono jack connector, two diodes,
a resistor and a capacitor. The reed assembly is normally activated
by the pushbutton on the remote. It first pushes the ground reed
into the focus reed, then both are pushed into the shutter reed.
I found out there MUST be a delay between focus and shutter reeds,
or the camera will not operate correctly. I also found that closing
the shutter only reed wont work either! |
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Here is the schematic of
what I did. By adding the diodes, you create an isolation path,
and the resistor and cap provide a 5 ms delay between focus and
shutter, and it works every time.
Click
to Enlarge
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One of the frames
from the sequence. A meteor with a colorful trail appears on
the lower left corner. Not bad for the first night out! Polaris
is at center, and Cassiopiea at right.
Click
to Enlarge
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