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Digital Camera Setup
We decided to use a digital camera for high quality pictures at the high altitudes our balloon will reach. This will give us great pictures, showing the curvature of the earth and the clouds from 20 miles up. In order to use the digital camera in the payload we needed to have it take pictures approximately every one-minute. This way we could take pictures continuously throughout the flight. Most digital cameras don’t have this option built into them, so we had to alter the camera.
First we needed to take apart the camera, which proved to be very complicated. The camera had a lot of small and delicate parts in it. All we needed to access was the switch to take pictures. After disassembling the camera and accessing the cameras switch, we removed the switch from the casing and put the cameras casing back together. This allowed us to have access to the switch, while also keeping all the cameras parts intact.
A circuit was then built to accomplish the same task as pressing the picture button ourselves. This was accomplished using a free running multivibrator with a solid-state relay. The circuit is shown below. After testing the circuit on a breadboard we hard wired it onto a circuit board. This will give us greater reliability and durability.
Digital Camera & Memory Card Specifications
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