SX150 IS time lapse day and night

reyalp

14117

Re: SX150 IS time lapse day and night

« Reply #10 on: 24 / October / 2012, 16:51:18 »

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Quote from: perspixe on 24 / October / 2012, 16:30:20

this is a buidling site of a garden and house. I am using permanent time lapses because I can be on site only every few weeks.

Note that it may be optimistic to expect a CHDK camera to run continuously for weeks on end. The underlying Canon firmware would certainly not be expected to run this long without rebooting, and CHDK can have it's own stability issues. One known issue is that available RAM is reduced as more pictures are recorded, see here: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK/Camera_RAM_memory_usage

There is also a tick counter which will wrap to negative after ~24 days and completely at 49.

I'm not saying it won't work, just that you shouldn't assume it will. If uninterrupted coverage is required, you will need to test beforehand. This could be quite time consuming.

There are some people who have done quite long time lapses, search the forum may get you some useful information.

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lapser

1093

Re: SX150 IS time lapse day and night

« Reply #11 on: 24 / October / 2012, 18:52:44 »

Very interesting project. A sealed AGM RV battery and 12V inverter would probably provide plenty of power to run the cameras for a week with a small inverter and 120VAC camera power supply (amazon.com).

Reading the memory info reyalp mentioned, it sounds like keeping it simple is the best solution, i.e. turn off all CHDK features you can. There's a CHDK script function to reboot the camera that would clear out memory, but it says it doesn't save the exposure counter, so that might not work.
http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/Script_commands#reboot.28.5Bfile.5D.29

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perspixe

13

Re: SX150 IS time lapse day and night

« Reply #12 on: 24 / October / 2012, 19:18:41 »

Thanks for the input.
I am trying another script, in Lua this time, based on SunsetF16.
Otherwise I am in Europe for supplies.
What I found so far (did not order yet) is 3.3v 40Ah Lithium battery for 60 Euros. It is quite smaller than an RV battery. My point was to be on battery only when the Mains power is down (night and week-ends). Then when mains power comes back then battery recharges and power supply to camera is switched to mains, all this without disturbing the camera. So it can last for 45 days or crash before. 45 days would be 64800 images if shot every mn.
I can imagine the camera will crash before that, easily.

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reyalp

14117

Re: SX150 IS time lapse day and night

« Reply #13 on: 25 / October / 2012, 01:44:33 »

Quote from: lapser on 24 / October / 2012, 18:52:44

There's a CHDK script function to reboot the camera that would clear out memory, but it says it doesn't save the exposure counter, so that might not work.
http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/Script_commands#reboot.28.5Bfile.5D.29

Note that in some cases the cameras update the image counter based on whats on the card, so that may not be an issue if you aren't deleting the images. As usual, testing is recommended

Also, at least some of the memory usage has to do with the number of images actually on the card, so rebooting may not help that particular case.

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