Part 1 ended with the gluing of fabricated items to the inside of the case. A camera shelf, a battery shelf, the control board mount, etc. Now for the next steps…
Using foam I pad the inside of the case that will contact the Sony. Not really for protection of the camera or anything like that but to get a seal around the lens and flash holes. With a camera inside a case, the flash can bounce around inside the case creating spots and lines across the photos. Keeping those two sealed from each other is very important. I also use an ordinary rubber band to hold the camera on the shelf. There is a hole drilled in the shelf and some eye bolts that have been bent open at the top of the case. Rubber bands are cheap, plentiful and easily replaced. Its an easy and effective way to hold the camera in place.
Camera foam
The next step I move on to is the wiring of the components in the case. I soldered two lengths of wire to the leads on the switch and covered them with shrink tube. With the switch installed I soldered my positive wire from the battery pack to the switch wire and the other switch wire to the positive lead on the control board. The negative leads from the board and battery pack were soldered together. A quick flip of the switch showed I had power. I also wired together my C-cell battery packs. And, since a 4-pack can not feed a 2-AA camera due to increased voltage, the wiring of the packs needed to be modified to effectively create four 2-packs. These were all wired in parallel and had one set of leads coming off for connection to the Sony.
Switch wiringExternal battery packs
Now its time for the tough part…hacking the Sony camera. Actually it isn’t all that difficult but the wires are small, the spaces are tight and a wrong move can ruin a camera. I needed to run five wires out of the camera to a servo connector. Three of the wires allow the circuit board to control the camera and two of the wires feed the rechargeable AA batteries inside the camera more juice. The camera is taken apart and wires are soldered to the internal battery contacts. On the opposite face of the camera guts a ribbon cable is soldered to the end of the other three wires. This ribbon cable will be inserted sandwiched with the factory ribbon cable into the plug that controls the camera. This allows the camera to be powered on and off and to activate the shutter remotely. The five wires were run to the outside of the case thru the DC power port. There was no need for that port so I chopped a hole thru it on the inside of the camera and ran all 5 of my wires out thru the port. The other thing I did while the camera was open was to disable the lens cover door of the camera. This does make some noise and after viewing thousands of photos and videos, I know that it is frequently heard by most animals. This is as simple as just pulling the shutter door motor plug out of its socket. Prior to cracking the case of the camera it needs to be powered up and the lens cover will open. Remove the batteries and the cover will remain open. After it is unplugged, it will stay open. The method I chose to use to connect the controller board to the camera was by using telephone line. A jack on the board accepts standard phone cable and the necessary wires from the phone cable were soldered to the servo connector. And finally my battery packs were soldered to the servo connector wires.
Power connections
Phone and power cables
All done...just tidy it up
After a trial run to ensure that everything was working properly, I stuffed the DC port with Marine Goop to act as a wire hold. I cleaned up all my wiring with small black zip ties. And I fabricated an “eyebrow” for the lens opening. I like having a hood over the lens as it acts like a sun shield to keep glare off the glass and it is of some help during rain and snow.
Lens and eyebrow
Just a few more steps to go and it will be ready for the woods.
Stay tuned for the final installment…
