This is a great little device of my own invention; it’s a “smart” IR remote control for the Nikon D70.
I set it for exposure length, exposure count, and delay between exposures, and just walk away. The little box takes care of the rest. Saves having to run a laptop all night, plus it was really fun to learn how to program PIC microcontrollers in order to build it.
I actually built the circuit during the summer of 2005, but didn’t get it installed into a project box for a year. That’s how projects go sometimes.
hello,
how much is the D70 IR Intervalometer?
regards,
João Álvares
Hi,
I created the D70 Intervalometer for my own personal use; it’s much more a “working prototype” than a commercial design.
It’s not for sale, but the parts to build it probably cost around USD$25 or $30; the most expensive two parts are the LCD (around $10) and the keypad (I pulled mine from an old telephone, but they can be had for around $10 also). The PIC chip you can probably get for free; Microchip (the company) has a very generous “samples” program. The rest of the parts are general “electronics junk drawer” stuff: resistors, capacitors, diodes, hookup wire, and a perfboard.
The code for the PIC was a bit tricky; I did it in C but then refactored in PIC assembly. If I were going to do it again, I would probably switch to Arduino, but that adds a bit to the cost, as the basic Arduino is $35 (you can get cheaper ones, but then you get into an Arduino construction project before you can get to your intervalometer construction project…).
The IR timings for the LED, I found online. They are documented elsewhere on the site, here.
The D70 is a tough DSLR to do this with, because of the requirement for IR. The later Nikons and all Canons back to the 300D can be controlled with a wire switch.
Best of luck, and thanks for reading!