Flightless Angels

Here is the DVR hooked into the test jig. I’ve tapped into the connections on the shutter and power buttons, and the LED. These will give me everything I need to figure out how to do the interface.

Here’s a look inside. It’s pretty basic. When you press the power button the LED glows dimly then brightly, and then it stays on. If you press the shutter button at this point then the LED goes out briefly and you have taken a picture. If you hold the shutter button down then the LED shuts off and you are recording video. I think this is quite a clever way to use a single LED.
Anyway the plan is to run the Atmel directly from the battery and intercept the on/off button press to wake from sleep. Then wake the rest of the module, wait for the LED to turn fully on and take a picture. Then power off the module, sleep for 30 seconds and do it again.

“What’s This?” you ask. It’s a keychain video recorder. Search for “keychain video dvr” on Ebay to see what they can do and how incredibly cheap they are.

“What’s a throwie?” you ask next. You can see here for the details but it’s basically a LED, battery and magnet that you can throw at something metallic and have it stick there and entertain until the battery runs out.

So a Time Lapse Video Throwie is a combination of the two. The unit is small enough that it can be attached to a rare earth magnet and left somewhere for a few days and take pictures every 30 seconds or so. Now, this unit does not do that currently; it can record about 30 minutes of (so-called) HD video or take several thousand photographs. My modification will be to install an Atmel ATTiny45 microcontroller (as used in the Blink Project to wake up the device and take a picture every 30 seconds.

The memory (4GB Micro SD) runs out before the battery does so I think I’ll be able to leave this somewhere for a few days at a time.

Assuming, of course, that the Apocalypse leaves the petrochemical industry intact. I ran the complete generator test and ran our furnace, fridges, and sundry lighting without a hitch. Here’s a picture of the split circuit running the fridges and lights, and the generator doing its thing.

Here’s the switch for the fridge circuit. This one was a little trickier as I had to wire into the main breaker box.

Here’s a switch installed in my basement. This feeds the furnace.

Over the last year we’ve had a long time without power; between Hurricane Irene and the blizzard in October we’ve been dark for about 7 days. This is bad enough in the summer (losing a freezer full of food is expensive) but it’s really serious in the winter (frozen pipes are Bad News). So we bought a generator and I’m modifying our house wiring so we can run the essentials from it.

Here are two of the three boxes I’m making. Pretty simple really, just a switch, a breaker and a recessed male socket for the generator cord.