fotomote: Advanced DSLR Photography Simplified

[Bill the Duck]

Hi folks! Boy have I got a sweet deal for you! Ever wish you could take timelapse sequences with your DSLR like this?



Emerson Biguns designed and built a tiny little advanced wireless remote control device for DSLRs that we've called fotomote, and I wrote the smartphone apps to control it (Disclosure: the iPhone app is still in development*, the Android app is fully functional, needing just a few tweaks to be ready for the Play store.) The key advantages of fotomote are:

• fotomote is wireless! Your phone is still a phone. You can still take calls and listen to music while a long time lapse series or any other extended photo shoot is going on. The fotomote device will continue to execute its time lapse program independently, and when you go back to the app you'll see the actual progress as if you never left.
• fotomote uses Bluetooth! No need for WiFi access, and while point-to-point WiFi is possible, it's another limiting thing since it would disconnect you from any other WiFi and suck down battery life.
• fotomote is open Source/Hardware! If you're like John and I who like to fix things that aren't broken , the open source and hardware of fotomote lets you to modify the app or add sensors and other electronics to the device itself.

I know, I know. Too cool, right? We get that a lot. But here's where we're at today. We have a fully functional prototype and smartphone app, and we want to make this a full-fledged commercial product. If it goes well, we intend to build a small company around it.

But we need just a tiny little bit of help.

You may or may not be familiar with Kickstarter? It's a place where young (or not) aspiring entrepreneurs can go to beg for money, er, provide a low-cost value proposition to potential backers. We're trending upward, but need to ramp things up a bit. Please visit our Kickstarter page for more information on fotomote and to see how you can get in on the ground floor! Also, check out www.fotomote.com to find out more about fotomote and see some examples of what it can do! (Please keep in mind that if we don't reach our goal you won't get charged, so there's no downside risk! )

Thank you very much in advance for your help! Here's are a couple of sexy pics:


That's prototype version three, the final product will be smaller than that.


A much earlier prototype, this is what I used for testing when developing the Android app. The final product will be surface mount printed circuit board.


The app's home page.

*A quick word about iPhones and Bluetooth for the cognoscenti: Yes, Apple, in their infinite wisdom, locked up the standard Bluetooth SPP protocol inside their MFi (Made For iStuff) program, and we're aware of the hassles and expense involved with getting a device approved through MFi. We've solved that problem by using BTLE (aka Bluetooth Low Energy, BLE, or BT4.0), which Apple implemented starting with the iPhone 4S left open to developers. We have a working comms prototype. See also: "Kobyashi Maru".

[soloyosh]

Cool stuff!

[07wee]

This looks AWESOME!

How long have you been working on it?

I wish you much success