dyi lumia 1020 or other camera phone shutter

[tknquad]

Ok I want to share the goal of my next project,,,
Basically I want to take photos with my lumia 1020 as the quality of them is really great, GoPro simply don't do that.
To do so I can't use and intervalometer as focus, during the shots, is fixed and flying I cannot be sure to have always the same distance from objects. (that is for windows phone, sure enough iphone has not this issue, but it is not 41mp)
So my idea would be to have a shutter activated by the (in) famous 7th channel so that while P2 is flyingI i can stop and take a 41mp picture.
I am sharing the project to get help and also because it can be of interest for other mobile phones brand owners.

1) tie the lumia to the P2 (done and test it)
2) get rid of the jello (almost done with mongeel type material)
3) find out how to activate the 7th channel. (to be done, I have seen several threads on this board)
4) study the mechanical vs electronical solution.
5) build it
6) test it and upload it on utube
7) make a lot of photos

Any help for any point is appreciated. I will add some pictures in this post about the lumia and the P2
Tkn

 

[tknquad]

Re: dyi project with lumia 1020 or any other camera phone

I have some homework, so here is the update.

First, I want to underline that this project is of about any other camera or camera phone that need a mechanical or electronic shutter to actually take a shot.

*mechanical solution. using a servo to press the button

I found somebody who did this, only not with dji phantom, here is the link:
http://www.wpcentral.com/strapping-lumi ... hotographs

basically this guy shot some beautiful pictures, using the 41mpx of lumia and having the gopro as a fpv setup. he went for the mechanical solution, as you can barely see in the articles pictures.
So I wrote to him and he send me some hirez pics of the setup. It is neither clean or elegant, but it works and he was very kind to share them with me.
here the hirez pic.

and another one


so I thought to do the same. I went to the local shop and bought a miniservo, powerful enough to be the shutter and I start playing around the phantom, aiming at the (in)famous 7th channel. I open the phantom and went for the X1 channel, the one that is supposed to be controlled by the leverage behind the Remote Controller.
In short, nothing happen.
I am sharing this anyway, I might get some help and in any case I want to document for me or somebody who me interested of my trials

My idea is to plug the servo cable into the NAZAM lite, and then go into the Phantom Assistant software and calibrate it.

here the picture of the phantom open,
I plug the cable in the X1 space, which was filled by another cable. What for? dont know exactly, maybe to be ready for the Zenmuse setup? I really dont know. Actually when I freed that cable and then tried the phantom and nothing really bad happened (and nothing good either). In the assistant software you see that the remote is actually controlling the X1 channel, but then the servo is not receiving any energy (at least it seems so).
Any help here is welcome. Of course I am sure it should've been to easy to do it like this. I will keep on doing research on the internet, but I find not much, as all the information are for the Dji Phantom 1, non the Phantom 2.


* electronic solution.
I have an update also for this, but I will dedicate a specific post. Basically I ordered an electronic switch and I am waiting for that.

bye to the next update. I hope someone would share his thoughts about it.

 

[tknquad]

update!
I found on a german forum the way to do it. And actually, now that I tried and it worked, I understood why that is the way to do it.

First of all, I could do it as I dont have a gimbal, so far (but in a near future it wll have it) so I could use the ginbal channel for my mechanical shutter.
The mistake was even though it is called X1 in the assistant software, it is not X1 on the NAZA's phantom 2. I dont want to discuss why it is like this, but there it is.

the suggestion from the german thread is that I should plug the servo straight in the F2 hole. I did it and then I went on the Phantom Assistant software to set it up.
Point is that there must be the ginbal activated and the gain control for X1 must be 0, so that the NAZA is not controlling it (or at least not giving any gain). So said, It become only a question of setting up the lever behind the remote and I have a perfectly working serve mechanism which I can use for whatever I want, for instance to press the buttom of my cell phone to take a shot.

The drawback is of course that I cant' have a proper ginabl working, but I am thinking now to have a 1 axis ginbal so at least I can balance it in one direction, but this is just a random idea.

Since there are not answers at all to this thread, I guess that either none of you has interest on attaching a servo to the remote (possible, event though to me is seems a great finding) or everybody knew it already ... Anyway my goal, beside having fun, is also to give something back to the community, and this is my way of doing it.

Here the pictures of the setup in the phantom and in the Assistant software. NExt steps will be to properly mounting the servo to the telephone...

 

[AnselA]

About 10 years ago I experimented with aerial photography by Nokia (Symbian) phones. Lifted one phone in the air by a kite. On the ground "photographer" sent a text message to the one up there. The phone in the air had a small application activated by the text message to take a picture and send it to the ground phone or a file server. No wires, just software only solution.

Don't know if similar app exists for Lumia.

 

[tknquad]

About 10 years ago I experimented with aerial photography by Nokia (Symbian) phones. Lifted one phone in the air by a kite. On the ground "photographer" sent a text message to the one up there. The phone in the air had a small application activated by the text message to take a picture and send it to the ground phone or a file server. No wires, just software only solution.

Don't know if similar app exists for Lumia.

and how where the photos?

anyway that is an interesting solution, and now it could be replicated with an app called "remote shot", basically it runs on a Windows phone remote, paired with the main one. Only I prefer to keep the camera phone in flight mode, to avoid any possibile interferences with the phantom... on paper nothing should happen, but I dont dont want to see my phantom fliying away with a camera phone worth more then the phantom itself (799 euro)...

 

[AnselA]

and how where the photos?

Photos were terrible. It was the early days cameras came into phones and the app didn't even use the whole resolution of it. But it was "a proof of the concept".

 

[tknquad]

Well, the mechanical solutions has been sorted out!
it works.
Tonight I finished to setup the shutter, made from lego, and went out at night to test it.
First I had to redo calibration, Phantom ask for it!
The quad was heavy and between that and the servo sucked the battery, but eventually it worked.
What amazed me is the great stability of Dji Phantom. the camera was on the front side, outside the landing gears, nevertheless it hovers perfectly. What a wonderful machine it is.
Photos were without any micromovements, perfect 41 mpx pictures, hi ISO as it was night, but good, given the conditions. I am looking forward to see what I get during the day.

Now finally the fun start about thaking good pictures, find great spots and take shots from above, see what comes out.

Of course I have to optimize everything a little bit, like the shutter is a bit bulky, the camera connection to the phantom must be improved, now it is really bad, and the lever behind the remote need to be fix, but it is just a matter of small improvements
I wil post some better pictures, but for the moments here there are:

this is one is a picture from above, 800 ISO, 1/10' and resized, so it is not intended to show the quality but that it worked





this one is for the setup
basically there is some moongel kind of stuff attached to some legos which makes the basic structure and absorbe vibrations. Then the phone is attached to it and to the phone there is the lego shutter, and the microservo is activating it.
the phone is quite heavy as I use it also a camera grip, which give space for the servo and protection for the phone.
this setup can be used for any other camera or devices that has a power button.



Since for the moment I have no fpv, I frame the shot on sight. To have FPV I have for sure get rid of some weight like the camera grip.
So, go up, decided where to take the picture, hover (needed no wind), and the plug the lever behind the remote (it has to be fix as I said) and then turn it some 30 degress , take the shot and then get it back. While I keep it on the position, the phone will autofocus.

I am quite satisfied, and many complimentes to the lego techinics, they are always useful.