Infrared controlled timelapse photography with Canon DSLRs

I wished all digital cameras would allow timelapse shooting out of the box. Digital cameras with a selftimer are able to trigger a photo via it's software but for some odd marketing reasons timelapse is seldom added. And even if your camera has a timelapse option it is often limited to 999 shots.

You can find lots of remote cable based external timelapse solutions for Canon cameras on the web but I haven't yet seen one that works infrared based.



This solution is based on a previous post. A different code and a push button instead of a switch allows timelapse control of Canon DSLRs that are compatible with the Canon RC-1 infrared remote control.

The timelapse settings like interval and number of shots can be set in the code. Once the sketch is loaded to the Arduino board it can run standalone close-by to the cameras infrared receiver.

/*
Arduino sketch for simulating a Canon RC-1 IR remote control to do timelapse photography with a compatible Canon DSLR
2010, Martin Koch
http://controlyourcamera.blogspot.com/
Huge thanks go to http://www.doc-diy.net/photo/rc-1_hacked/index.php for figuring out the IR code.
*/

#define irLED 12 
#define statusLED 13
#define pushBUTTON 7

int interval = 15; //seconds
int timelapseDuration = 60; //seconds
int numberOfShots = timelapseDuration / interval;

void setup() {
  pinMode(irLED, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(statusLED, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(pushBUTTON, INPUT);
  digitalWrite(pushBUTTON, HIGH);
  
}

void loop() { 
  if (digitalRead(pushBUTTON) == LOW) {
    digitalWrite(statusLED, HIGH); //Timelapse active
    for (int i=0; i <= numberOfShots; i++) {
      sendInfraredSignal();
      if (i < numberOfShots) delay(interval * 1000); //ms
    }
    digitalWrite(statusLED, LOW);
  }
}

void sendInfraredSignal() {
  for(int i=0; i<16; i++) { 
    digitalWrite(irLED, HIGH);
    delayMicroseconds(11);
    digitalWrite(irLED, LOW);
    delayMicroseconds(11);
   } 
   delayMicroseconds(7330); 
   for(int i=0; i<16; i++) { 
     digitalWrite(irLED, HIGH);
     delayMicroseconds(11);
     digitalWrite(irLED, LOW);
     delayMicroseconds(11);
   }   
}

If the infrared timing is known the sendInfraredSignal() sub routine can be adapted to release other cameras.

Add a serial LCD and potentiometers for setting interval and number of shots for a simple to make luxury intervalometer that doesn't require to re-programming the Arduino every time you want to change settings. Multi turn precision potentiometers would allow very fine adjustments e.g. a voltage between 0 and 5 V could translate to an interval between 1 to 3600 seconds and to 1 to 5000 shots. Rotary encoders would give even more flexibility and accuracy.