Camera, Remote Operation

My camera doesn’t have a way to be triggered externally. So, I decided to build a remote controlled Canon camera and it turns out to be 'Green.'

So, some of you may have heard of CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) software.
This Lazy Old Geek has. One of the reasons I bought a Canon A495 camera was because I was hoping someone would create a CHDK version for it and they did.
So what is CHDK? Well, it’s a way of rewriting the firmware operating the camera. Now CHDK has a lot of technical features that I don’t understand. What got me re-interested was USB remote.

Step 1 CHDK

I do have some general comments about CHDK. CHDK was developed by some talented, innovative people. Canon Point and Shoot cameras have microprocessors that control their operation. They have Firmware which is software that is hardwired into the camera. CHDK customizes this software to add features. It does it temporarily, not permanently. Each model of the camera and each firmware version have a unique version of CHDK. What this means is that each version may not operate the same and may not have the same features. Also, it seems that the documentation is not consistent and may disagree on how things work.

 WARNING: There is a slight chance that CHDK can damage the camera. However, there are no reported cases of this happening. By simply removing the CHDK SD card and putting in a standard SD card, the camera will return to ‘normal.’ Nevertheless, you are forewarned, do this at your own risk.

 To further complicate the issue, my Canon A495 has only a BETA version of CHDK which means it is still under development as of August 14, 2011.

 Here we go. This is the website for CHDK:
http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK

For those of you with a different Canon Point and Shoot camera, there is a list of supported cameras. This Instructable should work with any other supported camera that has CHDK software but there may be differences especially in using CHDK.

This is the website for CHDK Installation
http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/File:CHDK_Installation_Guide.pdf     

There are three Beta versions available for the Canon A495. Some of the methods to find the version do not work. But I did find a way to find the firmware version that should work with any Canon camera.     

Download this program
http://savedonthe.net/download/247/CameraVersion13-sfx.html
            (Hopefully, it is still available)

Install it and run CameraVersion13.exe.
Browse to a *.jpg taken with your camera
The version will appear. Mine is 100F

Actually, what I did was download and try each version, until I found the one that worked.