Motion sensor trigger for triggering shutter

Hi everyone

Got my head down and managed to get to maplins yesterday and with some great and kind help from Mattmatic got a list of electronics bits and pieces with a view to try to assemble an IR sensor kit to trigger my flash and also the shutter for my K20.

I am now looking for some diagrams so that I can try to put it together, something like one of link or if someone has a better option please let me know.

Another thing that got me thinking while shuffling my old stuff in the shed, I ran into various PIR and motion sensors that I had for my old wireless house alarm. Would I be able to use one of these if I stripped it and tried the connections? I know the detection angle would be very wide for the PIR sensors but I definitely would be able to work around it.
Any ideas please? I am particularly keen in knowing if this wouldn't damage the camera circuits as I would be connecting to the PC socket to trigger the shutter for some of the experimental work I want to do.

Many thanks

Amin

Any chance you could use the infra red? You can buy a generic remote from eBay and use that. Personally I would be very wary about wiring directly into the camera. Anything happens and you'd be on your own!

I can see the headlines now Amin..

Man found burnt to a crisp in his shed after connecting his home made IR to camera.

My first move would be to get hold of a Pentax cable release. From this you could work out what the camera is expecting from the cable to fire. Once you know that, it should be possible to work something out with the PIR.

Hi aminstar.

You might like to look at the following links:

http://www.dpchallenge.com/how.php?HOW_ID=38
Half way down the page are details on the trigger (I lose about 10 text characters on my monitor)

http://www.diyphotography.net/universal_sound_and_optical_slave_flash_trigger
This site has circuit diagrams

http://www.doc-diy.net/photo/sound_trigger/
More circuit diagrams.

If you type ‘electronic projects sound photo trigger’ into google you should find loads of sites (try swapping ‘optical’ for ‘sound’)

A guy at work made me a sound trigger about 20yrs ago which used a cassette-deck mic to fire a flashgun with 2 dials to set trigger volume and firing lag, that relied on being in darkness so the camera shutter was open on “B” and the trigger fired an off-camera flashgun.
I had a lot of fun bursting balloons etc but haven’t used it for a long time as with film experimental work takes a lot of time (and film!) -I keep finding notes that I wrote but forget what they referred to. Now I’m digital I must retry it.

I’ve just thought you can probably do something with a light sensor from something like a street light or the flashing orange roadworks lights, they work by coming on when light gets dim and you could use a laser pen as stated in the links to provide a narrow beam with tape on the sensor to cut out ambient light.

Disclaimer: Anything you wire direct into your camera is nothing to do with me!
Good luck

Personally I would buy an SLR or a dirt cheap DSLR cos unless you are an electronics wizard you could seriously fry your camera....eggs and bacon on stand by!

Cos electronics



Plus camera




Plus Shed





Equals




Edit: The usual dodgy spelling

LOL,

Phil, thanks for the link,

Paul thanks for the advice also, will bear that in mind, very nicely and graphically explained ha .
And don't worry, I love my K20D to bits and would never risk doing any foolish thing to risk it, will find safer ways to fulfill my urges to experiment

That's Very Funny Paul

Amin's Shed R.I.P.

shim

Such as.

Tel don't worry, if I blow up it won't be my shed, nor my K20. If something ends up toasted it will be my cheap IR remote control.
You really didn't think I was going to plug a DIY device, specially one made by yours truly into my beloved K20D, did you? .

And I thought my shed was always a partially secretive place . Seen only through the reflection of the bubbles. Dont know how Paul managed to get that image of my shed at all. That is the exact shed I have. Oh there is a sign and a red light missing outside the door saying "DO NOT ENTER IF RED LIGHT ON, DANGEROUS PHOTOGRAPHY WORK IN PROGRESS"

Amin grossly overestimated the voltage required to power his trigger, subsequently he wiped out the whole neighbourhood





Paul

Think I shall stop there, I have a very twisted sense of humour

I once made a remote control for my Nikon F301. I looked at the connections and noticed that contact was made by a pin and the metal surroundings. I took the servos out of an old radio control car and made a small box that velcroed onto the camera. Then with my radio controller I could take a picture using the forward stick. It had a huge range, half a mile in fact.

I was 18 when I made that, whilst a YTS student at college.
Wouldn't have a clue how to copy that now, it would have been darn useful though

Amin, good luck to you mate. If you do pull it off, which I am sure you will, you could mass produce it for all us Pentax Users - at a small fee of course


Paul

Get and see anything on Google Amin