I have a canon rebel, that I have a wired remote trigger for, its got a 3/32" plug best i can tell...so I picked the same kind of plug up at radio shack to build a trigger that i can connect to the arduino for my camera. The thing is, I have to say im new to this stuff. (though i just soldered up my 9 volt battery pack thingy ) and I am not sure, i crack open the plug and i thought there would be two places for wires (sorta likt eh 9 volt 2.5mm power plug thingy) and alas there just seems to be one... its just a one wire shot? anyone can help? (and since this will be plugging into my camera does there have to be resistors in between? if i wasnt such a cheap ass id pull apart my remote trigger i have for the canon eos to see what makes it tick but alas i dont want to destroy that).
thanks for any help, here is the pic of the plug i got from radio shack (it says its a strain relief solder terminals whatever that is)
Looks like there should be 3 spots, whats on the other side of the connector we can't see in the picture? Each metal area separated by a band should have it's own connection spot.
This type of jack definitly should have 3 solder tabs. If you look at the front of the jack i has 3 seperat metal parts, on a stereo jack they are usually called tip, ring and sleve. The tip and ring are the two parts that actually carry a setreo signal (left and right) and the sleeve is the ground connection.
On your picture it looks like there's only a solder tab for the sleve. Did you remove any metal parts from inside the black "tube" ?
I've had one of those (I think it was a RA style, too) that do not have tabs; it just had some little flat-bottomed grooves cut into the pin. From what I can tell from the pix, it was similar to this one.
3/32" (or 2.5mm) is tough to solder. THe easiest way to make a cable involving it is to sacrifice another cable that already has it - you can buy pigtail cables (connector on one end, bare wires on the other) from Mouser, etc, or you can buy (or find in your junk box) a cell phone headset cable, chop of the headset end, and go from there.
Thanks for the info guys! Looks like my old halo2 headset is going to be mauled and brought to a great purpose (I can just cut the wire on an end and solder or alligator clamp to it right? Though not sure what wire is what i guess )
ya i know the headset should be the right size but of course ill double check. and hmmm I see me having to purchase a multimeter eh? stereo plugs are 3 contacts? (cause the two bands split the plug up into 3 parts eh?
There are two common sizes: 3/32" (2.5mm) used by cell phones, etc. 1/8" (3.5mm) are standard iPod/walkman/etc headphones. If it plugs into an iPod or computer, it's probably 1/8".
If you don't have a meter, you can rig something with a battery and flashlight bulb, LED, etc.
Correct, there are 3 conductors, one per contact. The one farthest from the tip of the plug is usually the common/signal ground. The contacts are frequently referred to as tip, ring, and ground. The ground wire is commonly a shield, which is a bunch of uninsulated strands around the insulated wires for tip and ring.
its a 2.5mm jack i'm sure of. And okay, I see signal and ground I just found this other post on wiring one of these triggers up (he uses transistors in his circuit ) i just figured id slap the wire to the right pin and write to it, apparently not but this is good. The common goal here is to use a lightning detector circuit i'm building that instead of chirps when bolts are detected fires my camera off. Just as a fun little project...
this is the new post (as of like today) for the camera trigger not ulnike what i was building (a different plug my canon eos digital rebel takes the 2.5mm plug not he one spoke of here) again not sure what the transistors are for. http://www.glacialwanderer.com/hobbyrobotics/?p=13
I really am having fun with all this though and thank everyone for their help
I'm glad you got some use out of my camera trigger tutorial. The transistors are just acting as switches. You could could replace them with manual switches and then instead of using the arduino to trigger the camera you'd need to trigger the camera by manually flipping the switch. Just remember that the transistor is a switch that arduino can turn on.
Oh see I thought just writing to the digital pin the plug is hooked up to is the same thing... boy had i known id be interested in this stuff over straight coding somedays I would of taken more EE classes
Not sure about your particular circuit, but if the output needs to be tied to ground, one trick is to make the pin an input (therefore high impedance, or hi-Z, effectively an open circuit). When you need to fire it, make it an output and the output is low, therefore at the same potential as ground. This has the effect of shorting the pin to ground. To "release" the trigger, got back to the input/hi-Z state.
some of our guys did this with a Basic-whatever, no reason the same thing shouldn't work for the Arduino's ATmega.
That's a good idea kg4wsv. I did not try that. I used the transistors because I wanted to be safe and they cost about 5 cents. That said wiring your idea would be easier so maybe I should try it. On the other hand I have something that works so why change...
Codejoy, I took some EE classes during the university, but I wish I would have paid more attention I seem to need to relearn everything I use in this hobby.
) and I am not sure, i crack open the plug and i thought there would be two places for wires (sorta likt eh 9 volt 2.5mm power plug thingy) and alas there just seems to be one... its just a one wire shot? anyone can help? (and since this will be plugging into my camera does there have to be resistors in between? if i wasnt such a cheap ass id pull apart my remote trigger i have for the canon eos to see what makes it tick but alas i dont want to destroy that).
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