The road ahead: 2018
It is time to come to conclusions and make propositions for the year ahead. In a nutshell is has been both disappointing and fascinating. I have to admit that the Facebook group has not had the community effect that I was hoping. You sometimes “like” what I do and I guess that sometimes you just don’t understand what is it I am doing. And it’s perfectly fine, it’s weird. That being said, with time the project started to metamorphose as a learning project for me. It has been amazing, and I have done stuff that I never thought I could do… and couldn’t do, all of the PCBs I have had manufactured are useless, but I am learning a lot from them. At least I know that the dimensions of the board are spot on, and that is not an easy feat. All I can say is that I will persevere! What is coming up in the year ahead? I am going to try to shift the main focus of the project to the website and try to give the project a wider exposure, I think it deserves it.
Project wise I keep working on different fronts:
-coding the control main Arduino program
-finalizing and manufacturing the dongle and the main PCB and then a fully integrated openSX70 camera.
-keep on investigating the SX70, find out how the Sonar “ticks” and then dream about a manual Sonar.
-keep investigating from a photographers point of view, with a HFR camera (1000fps) find out what the REAL exposure is. Since I don’t know what a “normal” shutter is I have collected four of them for my tests, one is from an early model metallic frame, the “alpha” I used in the FrankenSX70, a Sonar, and the one removed from my SLR690. Then maybe I try to mess with the screw in the solenoid to see what happens. For these tests I would like to build a solid jig, and use an external power supply with something like 5.8v so battery depletion is not an issue. I want to know how long it takes the shutter to fully open and how long it takes to shut, if its consistent across all my specimens and if it can be tweaked and improved.
-Also in the future I would certainly like to create some sort of BLE control and app. That would be way cool, and maybe totally unnecessary.
I have made a lot of mistakes: all the boards I manufactured are basically crap, but I have learned a lot from them, dimensions are right, I have also ordered boards of different widths, 0.8mm (dongle, everything with the flash connector) 0.6mm and 0.4mm, the later are the most expensive and probably not necessary but they are quite nice. From the boards I have also learned that the optional buzzer is a feasible possibility. I have also manufactured some other boards, “flash tester” (two versions through hole and SMD “mini” versions) and my own take on the PC adater for “normal” SX70s. I don’t intent to sell any of these but maybe I give them away, don’t know yet. Sorry for the long post, my best wishes for all group members for 2018!
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