Micro Camera Controller App

Hi,

here's a video showing an app I created to control settings of micro camera via expansion port.

As said in description I messed up soldering so only controls 2 pwm channels. Also there is legacy stuff in the app from the other version of app.



Steve

EDIT: The vimeo link just had video so I've copied description from vimeo

A very quick test of an app to control Black magic micro cinema camera using the expansion port. I'd been working on a dirt cheap wireless follow focus using an arduino and bluetooth when I heard about using the camera's expansion port. Original app was to allow controlling focus while a camera was on a ronin m gimbal.(I'm still working on that, it uses a servo to drive focus directly)
I borrowed a camera, lens and bm video assist from a friend.
I quickly made another app to control camera. I messed up soldering the D sub and melted 2 of the pins so I could only connect 2 out of the 4 pwm channels. That's why there is a break when I switch wires on the arduino - also had to power cycle the camera to make it change properly - that is purely because of my terrible construction skills, if I had all the wires correctly connected I think it shouldn't be necessary.
Interface is a bit clunky so sometimes button presses etc don't register(probably made the buttons too small).
Power to camera is coming from the mains power of the camera via the d sub(which is also powering the arduino).
The 2nd bit I'm changing the white balance which is a bit hard to see in the video but it does change it.
Video is terrible quality, as it was shot using an ipad(only other camera I had available)
Lens is olympus 12-40mm.
Cost of parts around £30.


UPDATE: Since posting this I've tested it with 2 other lenses, a cheap olympus 17mm and a canon 16-35 via metabones speedbooster, both worked fine(though the speedbooster did need it's firmware updating to work with micro camera). Though the canon lens had more stop increments so the numbers in the app don't match but it does change the stop in the same way, would just need to map the lens stops to the values.

Hi,

(I'm posting this for my friend Steve who can't include links in a post)

First real world test of controller app.



Full unedited ungraded takes to show in operation, so expect bits to be out of focus and operation of camera to be of varied quality, assuming the type of person watching this then you will understand that footage would never be used this way, it’s just to show warts and all operation of controller.
There are a couple of photos of the controller board on the camera, I did get a second controller circuit and do some wonderful planning and soldering to get it to fit into a nice little box. Got it all to fit then thought I’d check it worked before connecting to camera - plugged in 12V power and puff of smoke and controller board was fried - I was given some slightly wrong information about powering the board by the manufacturer(adafruit), but they were very nice about it and have sent a replacement free of charge.
So this is with the original circuit on a breadboard - which is why it looks so clunky.
Because the camera outputs 5v via the expansion port even when there is just a battery on camera the board can be powered so it can be used for hand held or on tripod(ie doesn’t need to be powered by external source)
Controller app can control 4 channels depending on the remote settings of the camera, in this case it was set to focus, aperture, iso and record - camera was started and stopped by the app.
Take 1 is single user, with phone in a £3 plastic iphone holder mounted on the ronin arms - it didn’t put the phone in a perfect position but still usable. I am in process of redesigning app interface because a couple of times I accidentally hit other buttons in the app.
Take 2 is with one person operating gimbal with other using app to control focus, no rehearsal just winging it. Also at one point changed the stop(which I should have done earlier but forgot). In and out of focus at times because I didn't have an exact feel for the lens - and I kept forgetting which way to move the slider to move closer/further away(since added ability to switch direction of slider)
I had planned to put distance mark saving but because most of the sort of lenses that would be used with this are not parfocal I may forget that.
Also the range of movement of the lens servo is limited(ie it only move a small amount from min to max focus) I have put the ability to limit the range of the focus slider(technical note, the focus is controlled by arduino servo library which generally is used to control real servos, the values to change from min to max focus on the canon 16-35 were in the range 50 - 140).
Cost of parts around £35, minimum construction is just soldering 6 wires from board to 15pin Dsub connector.
Over the weekend I came up with an idea for connecting a physical knob to the phone to make it more like a proper wireless FF, just waiting for parts to test.
Song - I’m on your side by Adam Beattie
adambeattie.com
DP - Simon Minett
filmspace.net
Camera/Gimbal - Roger Bowles
rogerbowles.com
Filmed at Darnley Road Studios
darnleyroadstudios.net

HI,

I've worked out a way of controlling the app using an external remote.



could be a thumb controller(on a gimbal) or a focus knob like a proper wireless FF, but with advantage of large display.

Steve

really cool Steve

I'm building a hardwired remote grip but was also thinking of including bluetooth on it (seeing your first video inspired me there) but more the opposite way around - ie let an app control the arduino in the handgrip (so the handgrip then becomes more of a HW 'interpreter' between the app to the camera)

are you planning on 'publishing' any sort of API for this so DIY hardware like my project could interface with it over bluetooth (either way I guess)?

Hi,

there is nothing particularly clever about what I'm doing. The little circuit with the knob is a sine wave generator which goes into the mic jack of phone, which uses a fft to get the frequency which controls the slider. It uses that because it gets around having to make lightning connector device which is a more complex connector than a mini jack.

The issue with it is that the generator(which cost £3 on ebay) needs a 12v power supply so I'm looking for a lower voltage one.

I guess the whole thing could be done without the phone, ie one bluetooth arduino talking to another but the phone gives it an easy graphical interface and allows for more control.(e.g focus ramps etc).

Steve

was meaning more if those of us making more complex HW that attaches to the camera physically could there be a way for that to communicate with your app via bluetoothLE? (either in slave or master mode - ie HW controls the app or vice versa))

Hi,

I guess in theory it's possible.

I would have to create some kind of simple communciation protocol that would be transmitted by bluetooth LE.

I'd have to think about how exactly different arduino bluetooth devices communicate, (I'm no expert on either)

If you could give a slightly more detailed example of what you'd want. I'm not sure at the moment exactly you'd want it to do.

Steve

If you could give a slightly more detailed example of what you'd want. I'm not sure at the moment exactly you'd want it to do.

well my grip design will basically control the available camera settings via sbus (probably much like your app does!)

one version of this would just be to implement sbus via BLE

that way the grip could send an sbus signal to the app rather than the camera directly or the app could do the same to the grip and its just then used to pass the signal physically to the camera (in effect it just becomes a BLE receiver 'dongle')

I'm assuming of course you already have some bit of hardware that is essentially a BLE dongle attached to the camera via the dsub socket tat the app on the phone sends BLE signals to, so in effect you already have this communication protocol setup for your own purposes?

I'm just imagining using your app but replacing that bit in the chain with my own HW

or - and this may be easier as sbus is a bit tricky to encode/decode:

just send 8 * 2 byte channels

if absolute channels (ie focus, iris, zoom, levels) send a position in some agreed range (eg PWM its 1000 to 2000 centred on 1500, for sbus its maybe more 0 to 2047 centered on 1024) for 'incremental channels' (ie rec start/stop, ISO, shutter, WB) send a simple code for UP or DOWN or no change

I guess there would need to be some agreed method of channel assignment as well (eg first channel = focus, 2nd channel = iris, etc)

that way the grip can deal with converting that into the sbus serial signal itself

my own sketch does this but just reads a bunch of HW switches/pots/encoders instead of receiving the input commands from BLE right now

I guess I was just assuming you did this anyway in some form and my initial email was just a request to publish how so I could potentially piggy back onto this (though obviously depends on whether you have any commercial ambitions for this - if you do and would rather not then no worries!)

Hi,

sorry for delay in replying, been a bit busy.

The way my device works is that the arduino which has built in blueooth LE is on the camera, the phone controls that.

To have an external controller use the bluetooth of the phone is tricky - ie working out a way of communicating from your controller to the phone. Would probably be easier for you to use 2 arduinos with bluetooth(ie one in controller on on camera) or some kind of bluetooth receiver on the camera but that is probably harder to do.

I did look for some prebuilt bluetooth dongles with a DSub connector but the only ones I could find were only 9 pin and even if I found a 15 pin one I doubt the pin outs would be wired exactly as the camera requires.

Steve

Hi,

sorry for delay in replying, been a bit busy.

The way my device works is that the arduino which has built in blueooth LE is on the camera, the phone controls that.

Steve

yeah that's what I meant too

sorry, I've probably been muddying the waters a little.

at some point to integrate BLE app control I was essentially going to do exactly what you have done - I guess I am being lazy and reaching out to see if I could just use your app as a controller without doing the work on the IOS app part

HI,

here’s a video demonstrating latest version of the BMMC Controller app.



Apologies for the rather breathless voice over, done late in the day after multiple attempts trying different cameras to shoot the phone(no batteries for a couple and in the end had to borrow a 5D from someone else in the studio complex). Output from the camera recorded on BM video assist.(when I demo audio levels sound switches to the camera audio which is pretty low as camera was some way away from me).

I forgot to say thanks to Roger Bowles from Commercial Pictures for letting my play around with his camera, which initially was me just sticking wires into the expansion port. Also Stu Aitken for the BMC S-Bus library, and for helping me out with a few things when I was trying to get it to work. And Kim Janson for a post where he explained how SBUS zoom works on the camera.

The electronics are pretty simple, for a basic device just need an arduino, hex inverter chip and D-sub connector, and it only needs 3 wires connecting it to camera. The version I made also has a 12V in and composite video out. You can see the box mounted on the camera here.







The box is much bigger than it needs to be as it was just whatever box I could find in Maplin(uk electronics store). The actual electronics are small - I use some stripboard to make it easier to connect the wire(which in this case is just solid core cat6 ethernet cable - just simplest multi core cable I could find at aforementioned store.

The lens database is currently using iCloud because it’s simple to integrate into an IOS app, but I may use some other online database to allow cross platform sharing of lens data if I make an android version.(amount of data for a lens is tiny, so would not eat into any kind of mobile data plan). Currently the database doesn’t let you save distance marks(as demoed in video) because a lot of the lenses this would work on are not parfocal, but I may add it as an option(it might be useful for prime lenses I suppose).

Setting the stops looks a bit fiddly in the video but you only have to do that every now and then(plus if more people use it then ideally more lenses would be stored in the icloud database. The (SB) on the canon lenses is just to show then are used with a speedbooster)

The big button mode becomes available if you add any marks(not 3 as I said in video) it just only shows a maximum of 3 buttons. But the swipe functionality was only added in the last few days so that mode may, as I said in video, be redundant. The original idea for it was you’d maybe set a close focus and a distant focus(say on gimbal) and could quickly jump between them without having to manually slide, but the swipe is probably just a good for that.

The external hadrware control of focus demoed in an earlier video is still in the app, I just disabled it currently while I work out a way of making the sine wave generator work at a low voltage)

I’m still not sure how I’m going to release this. Though the parts themselves probably cost £40, for me to actually make them I’d have to charge quite a lot more than that, and I’m not sure if I can be bothered(dealing with orders, returns, warranties, postage etc). I have designed a pcb for the device but again actually getting that made might be more trouble than it’s worth - plus making cables is fiddly - it’s not that hard just soldering the tiny D-sub connections takes a bit of effort(but as I said a bare minimum it’s 3 connections).

My current thinking is to put the app on the app store for maybe $10 and just have the plans freely available on a website(plans it’s probably too grand a description for what is in reality just a few minor connections). I’d like to make an android version of the app as well but that will take time, plus I don’t currently own one of these cameras.

I’m at the stage now where I need a couple of beta testers. Already have one lined up, but could do with a couple more. You’d have to make the box yourself(less than £40 in parts), would need an IOS device with bluetooth LE(I think anything later than an iphone 4s - I’ve got it running on an ipod touch 5th gen as well). Also good english would be necessary to explain to me what goes wrong. If interested just send a PM via the forum. If you are in London I could even possibly help out with construction but it depends on time I have available.

I don’t want anyone to be out of pocket for testing so you’d get a free code for the app when it’s released(or if I never release it I’ll just open source the code).

I’m hoping to shoot a few things next week showing what can be done with the app, so keep an eye on this thread if interested.

Any questions etc just reply.

Thanks.

Steve

Hi ! I'm surprised this thread hasn't gotten full of replies. I would think a lot more people would be interested in an app that could control the micro cam.
Will the app be available anytime soon for people who want to follow what you did?

There is another tread by Phil who is also developing a Adruino remote/with IPhone remote application.
See: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=55310&p=318765#p318765
Cheers

Hi,

I spent time over christmas starting an android version of the app. Also started thinking about actually making the box myself for people, designed pcb and started thinking about maybe doing a kickstarter for it - but didnt get very far.

I saw Phil's project and decided to put it all on backburner to see what happened to his. His box design is more flexible than mine would have been, as it can work without an app, whereas mine would have needed the app.

Plus to be honest I wasn't that interested in sorting out manufacturing, the app development interested me more. The biggest issue was the actual cable - I tried contacting some UK companies to see about costs of a custom cable but none of them got back to me.

It's hard to gauge exactly how big demand is(which is what kickstarter is good for I suppose), original video of the first version of app got over 2k views on vimeo(admittedly in 8 months), wheres latest one has had only 67. It might be that anyone who wants a controller has made it themselves, or that the demand is not as big as the video views show. At time of writing Phil's kickstarter has 69 contributors and Kim Janson mentioned in a post that he had not got as many enquiries for his box as he would like(to allow larger scale manufacturing)

A lot depends on whether BM continue producing cameras with this expansion ability. I really like the micro camera, the stuff it shoots both raw and pro res is brilliant, used it on quite a few jobs and in particular using it on a gimbal with my controller makes it very flexible.

I may still release the app and just provide instructions so anyone who want to make it themselves can.(it's really not that hard)

I've gone back to my original idea of a wireless motor driven follow focus which would work with any camera.

Steve

Good to read you guys.

I am aware of Phil's new KS product. I'm not really interested in it, I think it's a step backwards in comparison to his version 1.0. It's way too bulky now. Despite that it offers more controls, its size is counterintuitive IMO for a camera like the micro. And it doesn't address the need to control the camera you don't have physical access to. (Update: I see now Phil's planning an app with his KS. Still, I would hope for an app integration with a much smaller footprint)

Also I've created my own design using flush surface buttons and my device takes so little space I love it.

Anyways, it would still have been great to have an app functionality, it fills a gap not found elsewhere. What you are doing is unique in this regard... When controlling the camera via buttons is not practical (e.g. camera mounted on car, drone, etc.) then an app like that would offer incredible functionality.

Steve, especially if that's what interests you, I encourage you should pursue it. Focus on that, why not?
Do you have a beta version of your app ready to go? Then why not put it out there and see what kind of response you have from people wanting to build their own little bridge box for the app.
Your app offers something something completely new for micro shooters right now, and it looks like Phil won't make it.

I don't think a full fledged app is necessary, at least at first. Only basic controls: ISO, Shutter angle, WB, frame rates. That would be huge for some people.
Aperture could come next if it's easy to do.
As for focus, I personally don't see myself using an app to pull focus. I don't know much about app design but I would think this is a lot more complex to integrate than settings options. If not, then go ahead and have fun, but sometimes when we aim to make something as feature rich and complex as possible, it actually prevents us from doing something about it period...

To get something out of the door, I would suggest to aim for simplicity. 90% of what people are looking for is the basic controls I mentioned above. Then you'll see how people respond.

Hi,

I spent time over christmas starting an android version of the app. Also started thinking about actually making the box myself for people, designed pcb and started thinking about maybe doing a kickstarter for it - but didnt get very far.

I saw Phil's project and decided to put it all on backburner to see what happened to his. His box design is more flexible than mine would have been, as it can work without an app, whereas mine would have needed the app.

Plus to be honest I wasn't that interested in sorting out manufacturing, the app development interested me more. The biggest issue was the actual cable - I tried contacting some UK companies to see about costs of a custom cable but none of them got back to me.

It's hard to gauge exactly how big demand is(which is what kickstarter is good for I suppose), original video of the first version of app got over 2k views on vimeo(admittedly in 8 months), wheres latest one has had only 67. It might be that anyone who wants a controller has made it themselves, or that the demand is not as big as the video views show. At time of writing Phil's kickstarter has 69 contributors and Kim Janson mentioned in a post that he had not got as many enquiries for his box as he would like(to allow larger scale manufacturing)

A lot depends on whether BM continue producing cameras with this expansion ability. I really like the micro camera, the stuff it shoots both raw and pro res is brilliant, used it on quite a few jobs and in particular using it on a gimbal with my controller makes it very flexible.

I may still release the app and just provide instructions so anyone who want to make it themselves can.(it's really not that hard)

I've gone back to my original idea of a wireless motor driven follow focus which would work with any camera.

Steve

Make a Grip, not a box!

Where can I buy one? For a disabled person like myself, having the tools to control the camera that way would be VERY helpful.

Phil's One Little Goat is the only one with a IOS or Droid remote application, comes with his new Remote for the Micro cameras (he is just finishing the last details in the remote application), see: http://onelittlegoat.com.

If you just want a small cabled remote controller, Kim has his remote whichnis smaller and quicker to use than Phil's, see his posts on the Micro camera Remote here or go to: http://www.levitezer.com
DS

Phil's One Little Goat is the on,y one with a IOS or Droid remote application, comes with his new Remote for the Micro cameras (he is just finishing the last details in the remote application), see: http://onelittlegoat.com.

If you just want a small cabled remote controller, Kim has his remote whichnis smaller and quicker to use than Phil's, see his posts on the Micro camera Remote here or go to: http://www.levitezer.com
DS

Thank you, Denny. Have you tried the latter? If it's reliable this could be the thing that makes me switch from the Pocket to the Micro. I've been using BMPCC's since they were first released.
Raw is still the best format for me. Until BMD make another Cinema camera smaller than the URSA Mini, these two cameras are my only options.

I have to find a good cage with 15mm rod support for a Micro as well.

I have both Micro cameras, and I use the Wooden Camera Micro cage on both (ver 1 on the Micro Studio/ver2 on e Micro Cinema), they work great, without adding a lot of bulk. Ver 2 has a cutaway for the record button access. But with the Micro remotes, either Phil's or Kim's, you are going to be unsing the remote record button anyway. I have an extra ver 1 cage if your are interested, ($50 plus shipping).

As for Phil's new remote, it works well, is a little larger than Kim's Micro remote (which I like for its small size and ease of use, but no IPhone application for it). Phil has not released his IOS/Droid applications yet, so I can not comment on how well it works, yet. The remote itself works fine, easy to setup and use.
Cheers

I have both Micro cameras, and I use the Wooden Camera Micro cage on both (ver 1 on the Micro Studio/ver2 on e Micro Cinema), they work great, without adding a lot of bulk. Ver 2 has a cutaway for the record button access. But with the Micro remotes, either Phil's or Kim's, you are going to be unsing the remote record button anyway. I have an extra ver 1 cage if your are interested, ($50 plus shipping).

As for Phil's new remote, it works well, is a little larger than Kim's Micro remote (which I like for its small size and ease of use, but no IPhone application for it). Phil has not released his IOS/Droid applications yet, so I can not comment on how well it works, yet. The remote itself works fine, easy to setup and use.
Cheers

Thank you. And I'll keep in mind that cage you have for sale.