Hey everyone,
Right off the back: I'm a complete newbie to Arduino and circuits and have been playing with the stuff for about 5 days.
The attached file is a screenshot from Fritzing and it shows something I built to control a Canon 7D camera, 2 solenoid valves (represented by two red LEDs) and a Canon 580EXII flash. It will be used to take pics of water drops colliding. Code is at the end of this. I have used the Sparkfun inventors kit and its guide to get an understanding of the basics and the circuit I built is really just a small customization and joining of 2-3 of the example circuits. I admit I do not know whether all the parts on the board are needed or if this should be done another way. The idea here is this:
- push a button: camera shutter opens (camera is in Bulb Mode) - I'm using a relay to control camera shutter, as the only thing needed to trigger the camera is shorting of pins.
- specific amount of milliseconds later, open and close valve 1
- same as #2 for valve 2
- wait till the drops hit the surface
- Trigger the flash - as with the camera trigger this is done by shorting pins. I'm using same way an LED would be lit up and turned off
- Close the camera shutter
As it is currently built - it does the job, BUT... I read somewhere that I should protect the circuit from the flash using optoisolators. I have no idea how they work, but I'll figure that part out.
Here is the part where I need help and hopefully someone that's very experienced with circuits can just look at this and tell me what's going on in a few minutes.
Can you look at this, please, and tell me if any/all parts of this circuit are put together correctly? What is done wrong and how it can be corrected? Remember that this WORKS as is, but I understand that doesn't always mean its correct and should be used like this.
Any advice/help/comments would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Tom
const int button1Pin = 2; // pushbutton 1 pin
const int camerafocusPin = 6; // camera focus pin
const int camerashutterPin = 7; //camera shutter pin
const int valve1Pin = 9; //solenoid valve one
const int valve2Pin = 10; //solenoid valve two pin
const int flashPin = 11; //flash trigger pin
const int relayPin = 3; // use this pin to drive the transistor
const int timeDelay = 1000; // delay in ms for on and off phases
const int shutteropen = 8000; // delay in ms for on and off phases
void setup()
{
// Set up the pushbutton pins to be an input:
pinMode(button1Pin, INPUT);
pinMode(relayPin, OUTPUT); // set pin as an output
// Set up the LED pin to be an output:
pinMode (camerafocusPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode (camerashutterPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode (valve1Pin, OUTPUT);
pinMode (valve2Pin, OUTPUT);
pinMode (flashPin, OUTPUT);
}
void loop()
{
int button1State; // variables to hold the pushbutton states
button1State = digitalRead(button1Pin);
if (button1State == LOW) // if we're pushing button 1
{
digitalWrite(relayPin, LOW); // turn the relay on
delay(timeDelay); // wait for one second
digitalWrite (valve1Pin, HIGH); //open the first solenoid valve for 2 seconds
delay (100);
digitalWrite (valve1Pin, LOW);
delay (200); //delay between two valves
digitalWrite (valve2Pin, HIGH); //open the second solenoid valve for 1 seconds
delay (150);
digitalWrite (valve2Pin, LOW);
delay (200); // delay between the valve closing and drops actually hitting the water
digitalWrite (flashPin, HIGH); //fire the flash
delay (50);
digitalWrite (flashPin, LOW);
delay (300);
digitalWrite(relayPin, HIGH); // turn the relay off
delay (shutteropen);
}
else
{
digitalWrite(relayPin, HIGH); // turn the relay off
// shutter stays closed
}
}
