Hi, I'm back! During the last week I've been mainly working in the hardware side of the project, which has been really time consuming. Yesterday finally got to test part of the rig with ten cameras (with only SX150is cameras), and wow! It worked way better than I expected! However I had to deal with a couple of hardware problems first, that may be troublesome in the future when more cameras are added. Software wise, just a couple of hiccups that I got to bypass temporarily.
- First of all USB hub connections are topped out with seven cameras on a single port, even if I use a network of self powered usb hubs. Win7 throws a "too many devices" error. So I had to plug a branch of cameras to a different port, and this is a limiting factor in order to plug the remaining 17 cameras I have since i have no more ports (there's four USB ports but i think they share just two internal hubs). This is probably a hardware/driver issue I'll have to deal with. (I'm suspicious that the main central hub, the one where all the other hubs are being connected is not powering up by itself and instead drawing power from laptop, will need to check)
- Turning cameras on. I already expected this, but yesterday I realized how big a PITA is to turn each camera on manually once they're set up on the rig. I've read suggestions about hacking the power buttons, etc... but couldn't find it again.
- The LED light strips I'm building are way less powerful than I expected. They're SMD 5630s which are the most powerful/readily available for general public. But the amount of light is clearly insufficient and gives a ton of noise in my images. Will have to double the amount, or look for other alternatives. Any tips are welcome.
- Ok, now regarding the software/CHDK side: Couldn't get this to work
mc:download_images({dst='c:/download/'..folder..'/CAM${id}/_IMG_${shotseq}${ext}',delete=true})
I tried inserting the readline like 'folder', "folder", '..folder..' but to no avail. Will try to copy/paste the error later. It surely is a syntax mistake on my side...
- If the cams.txt file that stores camera numbering doesn't match up the connected cameras, the program will quit. I disabled this line temporarily (and used just mc:connect) in order to test the rest of stuff. Will have to recreate it with the new batch of cameras
mc:connect({list='cams.txt'})
- I haven't yet implemented the tonumber suggested previously nor the prompt with default values/confirmation. It's in the to do list. I tried setting the values manually with option 4, but I probably introduced them wrong (had little time to test yesterday) and i think they were ignored. Shutter 0.02, ISO 80, f 4. I'm trying to use the lowest ISO available (which should be ISO 80 "market") and since cameras don't have a real aperture diaphragm I'll have to use the widest aperture available so ND filters don't come in and spoil image quality (f3.4 in SX150is, and f2.8 in most of the others, since they're not the same, is there a possibility to set "widest aperture" in all of them?)
Well, despite all these problems, the project is starting to take shape and I'm very happy with how the code worked up to now. I'm very surprised! Will keep working on it and report anything that comes up. Thanks!!