DIY Camera Remote

For a few weeks now, I’ve been thisclose to buying a remote for our digital camera. I’d like to try my hand at some star trails like this one taken by Declan McCormak:

 

To get pictures like that you need to use an extremely small aperture (large f-number) and a long shutter time. The shutter time for this shot might have been 10 minutes or more. The longest possible exposure time on our D60 is 30 seconds, so any star trails would be almost impercepticle. The camera also has a bulb setting, where the shutter stays open for as long as the release button is pressed, but it would be a huge pain to hold the shutter release down for 10 or 20 minutes. Your best best is to use a remote, like Nikon’s ML-L3:

With the remote, the camera can be set to open the shutter when the remote button is pressed once, and then close it when it is pressed a second time. The remotes are between $15 and $30, depending on where you buy. Every time I thought about buying one, I decided that I should just wait. The other day, I stumbled across an application called PhotoIRmote for Android. This application creates an audio signal that can be converted to an infrared signal by a couple of photodiodes (basically LEDs that emit infrared radiation instead of visible light). Simply put, it turns almost any Android phone into a programmable camera remote. This remote can control most new Nikon, Canon, Olympus, and Sony cameras with an infrared port (probably mostly DSLRs). It can also be programmed for time-lapse photography, delayed shutter release, and extended exposure times. It has more functionality than the Nikon remote and at $4, it’s a bargain. The only thing missing was the infrared emitter.

The PhotoIRmote website has instructions to make one using two infrared photodiodes and an old pair of headphones that you don’t need anymore. Like everyone else, I have about 12 pairs of Apple headphones lying around from a decade of iPods that me and Emily have gone through. I decided to use one of those old, beat-up pairs of Apple buds for my IR emitter. When I cut it open, there were four different wires inside. One copper, one red, one green, and one with both green and red bands. After some time, I found out that the red and green are the audio signals, while the red+green and copper are the ground wires. If you use iPod headphones, just cut off the red+green and copper wires and don’t use them. The second hurdle is that these wires are all covered with acryllic. Acryllic makes for bad electrical contact. What I did was use a crème brûlée torch to burn off all of the acryllic. It burns pretty fast, and you don’t want to keep heating the metal after it’s gone because before too long it will melt. The acryllic burns brightly, so it’s not too hard to tell when it’s gone. Once you’ve burned off the green and red acryllic, go ahead and wire up your photodiodes and you have your emitter. Honestly, it took me about 10 minutes to go from iPod headphones and photodiodes to a finished, working IR emitter. It’s extremely easy to do. My finished emitter looks like this:

The PhotoIRmote application has a feature that lets you check to make sure your emitter is working. I tested mine and it worked on my first try, so I tried it on the camera. It worked perfectly! In fact, I took this picture on the kitchen table using the application:

I still have to clean up the exposed wires, but other than that it’s done! This has been one of my easiest projects ever and It ended up costing my under $6. The application was $4, the IR photodiodes were $1.65, and the headphones were free! As soon as I get a star trails photo that I’m happy with, I’ll throw it onto the blog.