Playing with my new timer controller prototype, I shot a time lapse video with my DSLR of the Alameda 4th of July Parade. Rather than shoot RAW or even full res, these were shot at 1500×1000 and then cropped and scaled to the 1280×720 size. Stitched together into the movie in iMovie, I was then able to export it as a reasonably small video for internet use. It’s also available at full quality around 500MB if you’re interested, and of course I have all the stills if someone wants those.
Early June, we do a trip up to Mendocino every year. It’s really dark up there, so sky/night photography is very cool to do up there. However, I’m really a morning person. Morning people and night photography don’t work well– especially on the pacific coast where you can have skyglow from ocean reflections well past midnight in the summer. Really cool night photography frequently requires hours long exposures. This one, is only about half an hour (apologies for the quality of the scan, high quality forthcoming):
Anyway, I picked up some parts I wanted to play with anyway:
The upper bit is an Arduino — it’s an ATMega168 AVR microcontroller, a USB interface, and some other cool bits. It’s designed to take “shield” boards, which plug into the top of it. It’s on 0.1″ pin spacing, so you can use perfboards to prototype things up.
The lower bit is the Bodhilabs switch-mode power supply. It takes 1.1V to 4.5V and steps that up to 5V. This module is set up to take two AA batteries (NiMH or Alkaline) and provide 5V to the Arduino. I’ve got another one that takes a single AAA and outputs 3.3V (more on that one later).
Here’s what I built with it (working prototype, all but one function rolling):
It’s a little ugly right now, but works! Basic functions listed:
Triggers D70s via IR and my film camera via transistor.
Three modes:
“Trigger” - just triggers the cameras when you push the red button
“Intervalometer” - Triggers the cameras every “n” seconds or minutes (range is 1 second to 6 minutes)
“Long exposure” - Triggers the camera for a long exposure (range is 1 minute to 6 hours) (D70s only goes to 30m, but the film camera can go all 6 hours)
The trimpot sets the time, it’s dual-scaled: 0-1:00 is half the range, 1:01-6:00 is the other half of the range. Basically, the difference between a 2m and a 4m exposure is a lot more important than the difference between a 2h05m and a 2h15m exposure.
Currently not implemented is the Xbee-link. This becomes the red button, up to 300′ away (or more, I got 1000′ unreliably out of my Series 2.5 xbees). This is actually just using the GPIO capability of the Xbees, so the remote is entirely dumb– an xbee, a battery, and a switch.
The world’s largest chalk drawing is now complete. I was on site Wednesday and Saturday to cover the project. My photos are here and here. The Saturday photos are currently just machine processed, meaning they are not the final touched up images, but I wanted to get something up day of.
Media inquiries regarding these photos can be directed to my e-mail or 888 number below.
To much fanfare, a lot of wine, and a whole lot of vegetables, my photography show at the Alameda Naval Air Museum opened. Thanks to all those who supported the effort & stopped by today. More information on the photography show is at the Alameda Project website.
I helped man the Kite Aerial Photography booth at Maker Faire, the booth mostly organized by Cris Benton.
I got a short mention on c|net’s Maker Faire updates. — 4th paragraph from the bottom.
I am incredibly happy to announce that my photography show is opening May 24th at the Alameda Naval Air Museum, and runs Saturdays and Sundays through June 24th. Drop me an e-mail if you want an invite to the opening. (Above photo is one of that collection).
There’s a small “debate” running over on a Flickr group, however I think one person summed up photography and the internet perfectly:
you’re going to get upset about the completely personal and subjective opinion of one person on whether your photograph is good enough to get into a group then you should probably stay away from the internet in general. — allmodjohns
This Saturday afternoon I’ll be discussing at CraftCon, discussing–basically–productivity in an artistic sense. Should be a good time, I’m the “Project Management Toolbox” organizer, with a couple of other smarter people involved too.
That evening, I’m running the photobooth at the CraftCon Gala. Fun dress-up stuff with hats and what appears to be a dress form. I haven’t actually dug into the box. Definitely fun to be had with all. Photos to be up quickly to Flickr… link here when they do!
At the CraftCon Gala, I set up a “play dress up” photo booth. Clearly, we had a LOT of fun. The entire collection of photos of that are 
Hey, you found me!
This Saturday afternoon I’ll be discussing at 