Hardware timelapse IR for Nikon

Check out Whiternoise over at Hexus.net who has this great post about building a hardware timelapse device using programable chips.  He has posted circuit diagrams and great shots of the plastic breadboard set-up.

Looks like a real fun project if you like that type of DIY – the electronics with wires and solder type – and if your Nikon DSLR is one with an IR receiver for a remote; e.g. works with a ML-3.

Coming soon – the world’s most expensive DSLR remote control

Yes, to go with my expensive D300 — I now find I have no wireless remote control shutter release.  The handly little not-particularly-cheap ML-L3 remote that worked for my D40 is no good for the D300.

Instead I’m supposed to buy an ML-3 remote — which costs about ten times the price.  Sure it does a lot more, but I don’t particularly want more, I just want to press a button in my hand while the camera is on a tripod at the other side of the room as I do endless self-portraits while practicing my off-camera lighting.

So, what is a geek to do?  Well, build something yourself of course — with the techniques in mind that I used for the Tethered Shooting script I realized I could put together a wireless remote with things I had hanging around.

Now if I add up the cost of all those items it comes to about 25 times the cost of the ML-3, so that would have to count as the most expensive dSLR wireless remote control in the world!   But…  If I already have all the gear then the extra cost to me is zero.

So once again it’s a bit (ok a lot) of hardware tied together with a few lines of code – Windows only (XP SP2 minimum) in the version I’m doing, but I’m sure Macs can do something very similar.

Details tomorrow when I get it all packaged up.