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This Instructable will show you how to make a cheap Helmet Camera which can be controlled via a remote so your main camera can stay safely in your ruck sack.
The controller can be attatched to one of the shoulder straps of you ruck sack, and will allow you to Record and Stop the camera as well as being able to switch the 'bullet' camera on and off also.
This is perfect for people who want to film extreme sports such as bmxing, snowboarding, skateboarding etc. from a first person perspective.
The picture below shows the bullet camera and remote controller along with the main camera adn battery pack.
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Signing UpStep 1How it works.
It is fairly simple to connect a small 'bullet' style camera to your camcorder and get the camcorder to film what the mini camera is 'seeing', but I wanted to be able to control the record and stop fuctions of the camcorder without taking out of my bag everytime.
After a little investigation, I found that Sony camera have a LANC connection on them which can be used to control the camera and also give information about the what the camera is doing. This is great, becasue when you remotely press the Record button, you can read the data from the LANC cable to find out if the camera is actually started recording, and have a record LED illuminate on your controller.
The mini camera cost only 15 pounds from ebay
The 2.5mm stero jack was about 1 pound
and the other bits and pieces were less than 5 pounds
So for about 20 pounds, you can have a a fully working, remote control helmet cam.
My controller is very simple. It has a Record button, a Stop button, a power switch for the mini cam and 3 LEDs. (Minicam power, Main camera power and a record indicator). This is all I needed for my project, but the source code I have supplied is pretty straight forward and can be adapted to allow you to control anything on the camera.
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I have added another step, Step 4, it is an update that gives an indication of low battery and end of tape)
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Pictures:
Picture 1 - The prototype (with 8 LEDs to help debug my program)
Picture 2 - A close up of the 'bullet' camera and controller
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In the code, when the 8 bytes have been processed, you check whether the camera is recording or not and after that you jump back to '_Start2'.
Isn't that wrong as the subroutine '_Start2' again checks which button is being pressed even though in between the program has already checked whether the button has been released or not....!!! I mean, we should not be pressing 'Stop' button multiple times to execute the command.....
Please let me know....
It was a long time ago when I made this. I used this website for reference
http://www.boehmel.de/lanc.htm
Basically, my program waits for the long gap. When it sees the first bit change of byte 0, the program waits 1/2 a bit length (then you know you are in the middle of the bit) it then reads it, waits a whole bit length and the reads again etc. etc.
To write on the LANC, you simply wait for the long gap, and when it sees the first bit, simply output your byte, bit at a time at the correct bit length.
If you download the .asm file you should be able to see how it works. I have documented nearly every line of code.
http://sites.google.com/site/telepicdata/
Thanks for your answer
Also I didn't want to always be looking down at the LEDs to check if I was recording, so using two buttons, I would be sure that when I press the record button, it would start recording. With 1 button, it would toggle start and stop.
Using 1 button would look neater I think.
Here are a couple of youtube links of a dangerous pathway we walked in 'El Chorro', Spain. Most of the footage of the second part was filmed with the head cam, but unfortunately youtube has removed the sound due to copyright infringements!
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PDOQkvvpIw
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47YwybKu74Q
The quality of the camera is actually pretty good, but due to compression on youtube it doesn't look as good.