custom Cam Trap : Nikon D5300, arduino based elecronics and 20years old flash

[syl20]

I am new here, and I live in the french Alps.
I setup a trail cam around my house, and I then wanted to build a real camera trap so I checked out Camtraption's wireless pro gear, which seemed pretty good for the price. But I decided to build my own setup based on an Arduino Nano RF board for more customization.


I used an Arduino RF nano board which give me all the features I want, and a range of up to 20meters. One for the motion detector, one for the Flash , and one for the camera control. Can had any of those modules in the setup in the future is needed.

The most efficient setup I found is to us 2S 21700LiIon battery pack whatever the use of the module. I use 5400mAh battery element. The packs I build are 2S1P for the motion detector and 2S3P for flash and camera trigger. The arduino module downclock itself after 2minutes without pressing the button, this cut the current consumption by 2.

Here are the battery life time from Amp mesurements:

• Motion detection, 2S battery : 25days
• Camera trigger Nikon D5300, 2S3P battery : 26days
• 20 years old Flash trigger, 2S3P battery : 12days

Here are the battery life time when poping the RED Power LED from the Arduino board and the light sensor modul for the flash:

• Motion detection, 2S battery : 38days
• Camera trigger Nikon D5300, 2S3P battery : 30days
• 20 years old Flash trigger, 2S3P battery : 14days

Unfortunately winter has come and animals are not coming as much. I decided to setup the system so the Camera is In Aperture mode, F8, ISO 400, manual focus. so I can take day and night picture.

The flash module has a light sensor that inhibit flash during daytime to save the battery and since I don't control properly the flash synch, I decided to delay the flash 1 second versus the camera, so during night the camera will shoot at shutter speed of several seconds (30 seconds Max) and the flash will act as a shutter .

[-jeff]

Great video. Thank you for sharing.

[ghosthunters]

Nicely done


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[syl20]

Thank you.
Can't wait for getting proper picture .

[MaxRomantiq]

Greate idea to build custom PIR activator. Could you share the wiring diagram for the PIR sensor to the camera?

[syl20]

Hi,
the PIR, The FLASH interface and the Camera interface are each using oen arduinoRF Nano board. so there is no physical connectino between the PIR and the Camera.The main interface component is an optocoupler.
The optocouplers comes in pairs and are used as an interface between the arduino board and the Camera
I did not draw a complete diagram yet, but here is the first one I did:


The Camera nterface depends on your camera weither it is a Jack or another specific connectors. but most of the time there are 3 pins to connect: GND,Focus,Shoot.

https://cults3d.com/:2454377

[syl20]

I finally got some interesting footage:

[sean8781]

This is awesome wish I had the skills and knowledge to make one of these,what is the rough cost of making one of these

[-jeff]

Hi,
the PIR, The FLASH interface and the Camera interface are each using oen arduinoRF Nano board. so there is no physical connectino between the PIR and the Camera.The main interface component is an optocoupler.
The optocouplers comes in pairs and are used as an interface between the arduino board and the Camera
I did not draw a complete diagram yet, but here is the first one I did:


The Camera nterface depends on your camera weither it is a Jack or another specific connectors. but most of the time there are 3 pins to connect: GND,Focus,Shoot.

https://cults3d.com/:2454377

Very nice. Thank you for taking the time to write this up.

[syl20]

This is awesome wish I had the skills and knowledge to make one of these,what is the rough cost of making one of these

~35€ the box
~5€ the flash housing
~50€ of electronic

The camera and the batteries are depends on what you can find.