Camera GPS official version

The final version of the camera GPS had to be smaller. In fact, a number of things needed to happen: smaller, lighter, own GPS module, PC connection and an LCD display. The picture shows the final version. Still slightly bigger and heavier than a flash module, with a rather clumsy 9V battery (which should clearly be replaced with a LiIon one) and a serial output port (which should become a USB port, which can also charge the LiIon battery). On the picture you can see the GPS module (the square at the top left) the LCD display (2x8 characters, on the right), the battery, the 6-pin ICSP connector, a white button, an on/off switch (at the bottom) and an RS-232 output (at the top). The system still uses the PIC16F628A and the 24LC512 memory. The circuit seems a bit awkward because of the attached flash port at the bottom. I did not yet make an enclosure for it.

On the picture you can see the GPS in operation. The display shows the number of the last picture taken (40) as well as the direction in degrees, the quadrant that we are in (NW) and the movement speed. Another picture, below, shows the actual coordinates, although the display is too small to show the smallest values: this is something that still needs to be addressed in the new version of the GPS software.

Camera GPS

Another project I work(ed) on was the camera GPS. The idea is that when you take a picture, your camera tends to send a signal to the flash port, which could trigger the flash if necessary. A very simple flash port just has an on/off switch, which could be hooked up to a GPS to record the current date, time and place so that you can later associate the picture with this information. The board shown here actually used to be a prototype for the servo controller featured elsewhere in this blog, but was modified to communicate with a gps. On the board you can see a 7-segment LED display in green, an on/off LED, a 24LC512 external EEPROM to store the results, a PIC16F628A microcontroller, an RS-232 input port that would hook up to the GPS, the usual 6-pin ICSP and a 74HC125, which seems useless but was used to hook up a smaller GPS module that worked on 3V. There is also the obvious 7805 power supply with 9V clip. This, as well as the software for the GPS camera controller, will all be explained in more detail in later posts, first another picture of the prototype hooked up to a camera (a Minolta X700 in this case, which worked really well).