Hello all,

I am looking for clues on how I might go about triggering the shutter release on my canon point and shoot using the Mach3 software and the relays(?) on Campbell's breakout board. Anyone have any suggestions on options I might explore? ANY help would be greatly appreciated, as I am "new."

buck

One way would be to use a small solenoid to push the button on the camera. It would be activated by a relay controlled by mach.

(;-) TP

Some cameras have a port for an external trigger I think. I have seen the switches torn into and wired, that works I know. Vmax is right about the solenoid too.

Brett

I used Mach 3 to control a rotary table and trigger my digital camera for a 3D laser scanner fixture. 
My camera is a Konica-Minolta A3.  I had a remote cable that I took apart and found that there are three pins and two of them need to be shorted to trigger the camera.  I had to file down a connector to fit in the camera remote and connected it to a relay, then to a digital output on my CNC 4-axis board.
I made a simple macro in Mach 3 to turn the table x-degrees and then take a photo. 
The camera trigger worked very well.  The problem was the laser scanning software was a little difficult to use.  Make sure to add some delay or timeouts between when the rotary moves and the camera triggers to reduce vibration and blur.
This set up is much simpler than a solenoid.

Thanks for the ideas.

The camera (Canon PowerShot S70) is controlled through a USB cable. I have thought about opening up a cable and trying to hardwire a switch, though I am fearful of losing the other functions that the cable/software provide.

After doing some more research, it looks like I can create a batch file in PSRemote that can trigger the camera, rename the image, save the images in a specified folder, etc. Now I need to research how to run batch files with the Mach3 software and hopefully Mach3 and PSRemote can work together to solve this problem. I will keep you posted.

If not, the solenoid is a fantastic idea. Thanks.

buck

I also notce that there is a remote control available. (;-) TP

I can control the camera from the PSRemote software and a usb cable, but, as with even a remote control, I am still required to manually depress the shutter control. My hope is that I can integrate the shutter release into a mach3 program...

...maybe an M-code that runs a batch file that will activate the shutter release through PSRemote(?)
I don't know wheather this is feasible, as I am new to cnc, batch files, and electronics in general. Any help in this regard would be fantastic.

buck