My first time-lapse with an arduino and a CANON EOS450D

Last week, I decided to use my photo camera for time-lapse shots, however to do that, I needed a so-called intervalometer. Damned, what is an intervalometer ?
It's a device that times the shots to regular intervals, but those are so expensive, and cost for the CANON EOS 450D around €150, just for a tiny microcontroler and an IR LED.
So I decided to build my own with my favorite open source hardware: arduino.

Here's some example timelapse movies made with several hundred of jpg pictures taken from 4pm to 10pm

Here's my second timelapse movie made with several hundred of jpg pictures taken from 6pm to 9pm.

 Here's my first timelapse movie made with several hundred of jpg pictures taken from 8am to 11am.

The setup in action (a shoot every 30s):

The Arduino code :
http://code.google.com/p/my-arduino-projects/downloads/detail?name=CanonEOS_Sandra_TimeLapse.pde&can=2&q=#makechanges

IR LED with its holder

 

Small breakboard with two buttons (manual or automatic mode), several resistors to manage multiple button choice on analog pin 0, and a voltage divider that holds the IR LED on the image bottom.

Required Parts:

• 1x Arduino (e.g. Diecimila)
• 3x 1kohm resistors
• 1x 4.7kohm resistor
• 1x IR LED 940nm
• 2 x push buttons 
• 1x Arduino AC adapter OR Arduino 9V battery pack
• 1x box ;-)))

The code is derived from code: 
http://controlyourcamera.blogspot.com/2010/01/infrared-controlled-timelapse.html
Software to mount the images together: Photolapse (freeware): http://home.hccnet.nl/s.vd.palen/index.html