Using a mega 2560 to control a sony camera zoom via TTL?

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello everyone,

Like the title says, I'm trying to get my arduino mega 2560 to talk to a Sony FCB-IX11A camera via TTL. I took a look through the manual, and the output messages from the sony control software, and I'm pretty sure I only need four TTL commands - the IF CLEAR, ADDRESS, and then zoom in and out. As far as I know I don't need to receive feedback but I am fairly inexperienced at both electronics and programming. I know TTL control works on this camera because I used a MAX232 IC to convert RS232 from my computer to TTL and that worked fine. How would I go about programming this, and am I correct in thinking it would be just a simple connection (RX/TX/GND)?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

FCB-IX11A manual: http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/assets/files/mkt/indauto/manuals/FCB-IX11a_tech_manual.pdf Commands start on page 20.

2

Okay, got it solved with some help from an old thread I found. Many thanks to grumpy_mike if you happen to see this!

http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1255016068/all

To talk to this particular camera you need to send the packet, which is in hexadecimal, to the camera as a BYTE. Here's my code for the zoom-in:

  Serial1.print (0x81, BYTE); //zoom in speed 5
  Serial1.print (0x01, BYTE);
  Serial1.print (0x04, BYTE);
  Serial1.print (0x07, BYTE);
  Serial1.print (0x25, BYTE);
  Serial1.print (0xFF, BYTE);

I'm certain there's a more elegant way to do it but if you're ripping out your hair like I was it's at least a start.