Can’t Keep Me Silent – Angelic

2009-07-14

Well I guess it’s human nature
How people out-talk each other
But then we face the danger
Of only listening to ourselves
In the pressure of the situation
I wont let my tongue get tied
A silent voice in the congregation
I refuse to live a lie

Can’t keep me silent
Can’t keep me silent

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Video Games

2009-07-12

As time goes on, I notice that I find increasing solace in video games. I used to play because they are fun. I used to play to beat them and feel like I had accomplished something. These days, I play to keep my mind un-bored.

I play a lot, too. I mean, seriously.

I play Team Fortress 2 quite a bit. I like that game because it is the most well balanced multiplayer FPS that I have ever played. I have fun when I play, and for the most part the others I play with online aren’t a bunch of Xbox Live, 12 year-old retards. It is summer though, and that means the potential for the aforementioned folks to be playing is higher as school is out. The servers I play on aren’t competitive, and most of the time there are people having funny conversations as well. There isn’t any taunting, name-calling, or insulting talk. I like it this way. Just an easy, fun and low-stress environment.

Incidentally, the server I play on the most has me ranked at 10th overall by number of points earned. I was 9th but someone passed me up one of these last days when I was working long hours.

I like switching my brain off and not having to care about anything. Sometimes people in the game will get wound up and try to coach the team into a strategy, but I just go with the flow. If the team needs a particular class, I usually jump in and try to fill the gap. I don’t get stressed though, it is just a game after all.

I also had a great time putting together the intervalometer setup for my Nikon D40. I have it enclosed in a shoddy case now, but it should serve its’ purpose well. That is to say the circuit board isn’t exposed. I also got a hold of this USB recharging device to power the intervalometer during my camping trip. It is designed to recharge cell phones and iPods and such, but works equally well at powering my Arduino board. I don’t know for certain how long its’ charge will last, but I am fairly sure it will last longer than the battery in the camera itself. I should do a trial run with the setup here in the next couple days to work out any kinks before I have to leave…

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Nikon D40 Intervalometer Project

2009-07-04

So, I’ve been wondering how to get my camera (Nikon D40) to do time-lapse photography. I am going on a camping trip here in about 2 weeks and would love to be able to take some time-lapse shots of the night-time sky whilst we sit around the campfire.

A problem arises. The Nikon D40 does not have an intervalometer (nor does it support auto-bracketing, but that’s another post). This means no time-lapse photography with this camera.

Or does it?

A couple of generalized web searches brought me to some informative sites:
http://www.cibomahto.com/2008/10/october-thing-a-day-day-7-nikon-camera-intervalometer-part-1/
http://ilpleut.be/doku.php/code:nikonremote:start
http://www.bemasher.net/archives/114

I was in luck! I happen to have an Arduino board lying around doing nothing. Happy times!

I set off to the only place in town with electronic components, Radio Shack (I know). IR LED in hand, I proceeded to assemble my very simple circuits. I built a second circuit to blink a second LED for 2 seconds before the IR LED sequence is fired off for the camera. I chose to use the code from the bemasher link.

The Arduino microcontroller board that I have has a 220 ohm resister built into digital pin 13 that I was not aware of. My IR LED was understandably dim as a consequence of my adding a second 220 ohm resister to the circuit. The camera wasn’t taking pictures when it should have been. With that problem solved, I edited the code to include a timer that I can set easily to whatever number of seconds I need. I set it to 10 seconds and tested the camera out again.

Success!

I built a small enclosure for everything, soldered a few wires together, and tested again to make sure I had put it all back together correctly. It works from about 10-12 feet away, but I shouldn’t need it for anything that far away. The idea is to just place the IR LED directly on the IR receiver and let it take a picture every 60 seconds for hours at a time. Simple.

Code I am using:

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/*
Author:         BeMasher
Description:    Code sample in C for firing the IR sequence that mimics the
ML-L1 or ML-L3 IR remote control for most Nikon SLR's.

Based off of:   http://make.refractal.org/?p=3
http://www.cibomahto.com/2008/10/october-thing-a-day-day-7-nikon-camera-intervalometer-part-1/
http://ilpleut.be/doku.php/code:nikonremote:start
http://www.bigmike.it/ircontrol/

Notes:          This differs slightly from the other 3 versions I found in that this doesn't use the built in
delay functions that the Arduino comes with. I discovered that they weren't accurate enough for
the values I was trying to give them. The delayMicrosecond() function is only accurate between about
4uS and 16383uS which isn't a very workable range for the values we need to delay in for this project.
The ASM code that Matt wrote works well but is limited to only pin 12 and I haven't got a good enough
grasp of the architecture to modify the code to work on any pin. So this is what I've come up with to
produce the same result.
*/

#define IND_LED 10       //Pin the Indicator LED is on
#define IR_LED 13        //Pin the IR LED is on
#define DELAY 13         //Half of the clock cycle of a 38.4Khz signal
#define DELAY_OFFSET 4   //The amount of time the micros() function takes to return a value
#define SEQ_LEN 4        //The number of long's in the sequence

unsigned long seq_on[] = {2000, 390, 410, 400};        //Period in uS the LED should oscillate
unsigned long seq_off[] = {27830, 1580, 3580, 0};      //Period in uS that should be delayed between pulses
int interval=0;
int time=0;

void setup() {
Serial.begin(19200);        //Initialize Serial at 19200 baud
pinMode(IR_LED, OUTPUT);    //Set the IR_LED pin to output
pinMode(IND_LED, OUTPUT);   //Set the IR_LED pin to output
}

void customDelay(unsigned long time) {
unsigned long end_time = micros() + time;    //Calculate when the function should return to it's caller
while(micros() < end_time);                  //Do nothing 'till we get to the end time
}

void oscillationWrite(int pin, int time) {
unsigned long end_time = micros() + time;    //Calculate when function should return to it's caller
while(micros() < end_time) {                 //Until we get to the end time oscillate the LED at 38.4Khz
digitalWrite(pin, HIGH);
customDelay(DELAY);
digitalWrite(pin, LOW);
customDelay(DELAY - DELAY_OFFSET);        //Assume micros() takes about 4uS to return a value
}
}

void triggerCamera() {
for(int i = 0; i < SEQ_LEN; i++) {            //For each long in the sequence
oscillationWrite(IR_LED, seq_on[i]);      //Oscillate for the current long's value in uS
customDelay(seq_off[i]);                  //Delay for the current long's value in uS
}
customDelay(63200);                            //Wait about 63mS before repeating the sequence
for(int i = 0; i < SEQ_LEN; i++) {
oscillationWrite(IR_LED, seq_on[i]);
customDelay(seq_off[i]);
}
}

/*
void loop() {
if(Serial.available()) {        //Wait 'till something is connected
if(Serial.read() != 0) {    //If anything but 0 is sent take a photo
triggerCamera();        //Take a photo
}
delay(100);                 //Delay an arbitrary amount of time, serial isn't instantaneous
}
}
*/

void loop() {
if(interval == 10) {
digitalWrite(IND_LED, HIGH);
delay(245);
digitalWrite(IND_LED, LOW);
delay(250);
digitalWrite(IND_LED, HIGH);
delay(250);
digitalWrite(IND_LED, LOW);
delay(250);
digitalWrite(IND_LED, HIGH);
delay(245);
digitalWrite(IND_LED, LOW);
delay(250);
digitalWrite(IND_LED, HIGH);
delay(250);
digitalWrite(IND_LED, LOW);
delay(250);
triggerCamera();
interval = 2;
}
delay(995);
interval += 1;

//Serial.print("Time: ");   //This is to get timing as close as possible
// time = (millis()/100);
//prints time since program started
// Serial.println(time);

}

This is probably boring to almost all of you, but I just thought I would share. :)

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