Shutterbug Remotes Are Here

I’ve been looking for something to use as a remote trigger for my Canon 5D.  It occurred to me that controlling it with my phone would be a great feature, and I was amazed to find out that there was nothing out there that could do it.  I found infrared controllers, USB controllers, Wi-Fi controllers, and a plethora of cheap Chinese knockoffs of the Canon and Nikon release cables.  After a bit of research, I decided to make my own.

I started by studying the BluetoothLE protocol that is now standard in all of the new “smart” devices.  My iPhone had it, as did the new iPads, iPod Touches, and a bunch of Android devices.  After getting the radio hardware working properly to trigger my SLR, I moved on to developing the iOS app.  Luckily, I’ve done quite a bite of Cocoa programming in OS X and transitioning to iOS was smooth as can be.  Apple really did a wonderful job with this framework and the new IDE. The last development step involved optimizing the hardware for power.  I wanted to power everything from a watch battery, and it needed to last long enough to do decent time lapse sequences.  Moreover, I didn’t want any switches or buttons to turn it on and off – just another thing to break and complicate the form factor.  I ended up designing a circuit to detect mechanical insertion of the shutter release cable and then activate the onboard switching power supply (optimized for efficiency.)  Here is the final design with a custom enclosure and beautiful domed artwork:

Everything worked wonderfully, and was so well received by my photographer friends that I decided to offer them up for public consumption.  Get yours from my online store or Amazon.com.

The app is a free download on the Apple App store.