Small lightweight camera , easy to mount to FC stack , now talking to a onboard AVR
This small camera, with a surprizingly good quality sensor for its price, has exposed a uart interface for communicating to a racing UAV`s Flight computer runing firmware like Betaflight, cleanflight etc. for FPV Racing pilots to control it while this camera is mounted on board the quad without the need of any app . Protocol explained here
My idea back in 2015 was to package this camera into a go-pro sized 3d printed box, have a arduino comunicate with the Pixhawk , the FC that my copters use , and that i would be able with a few pwm lines not only fully control the camera (menus, start stop rec , photo capture ) from my FrSky Taranis Plus switches but also be able to send commands like "take picture" from arducopter missions. As per 2020 , folks in ArduPilot have added support for this camera right on the firmware, providing almost all functionality that i was looking for back in '15 , but for their implementation the copter has to be disarmed to change setings , mine doesnt.
The AVR (Atmega328p) runing this Code would have the RunCam device (Split 1,2,4k etc) connected to its hardware uart, running at 115200 baud.
Then it would have 2 PWM inputs on arduino pin D2 and D3
These 2 PWM inputs would connect to the AUX pwm of the pixhawk , shutter config described here.
The RC1(aka D2) would receive the Camera trigger event for a mission for example , then proceed to send the SimPower byte array to the RunCam device over serial , that this will trigger the camera to take a picture assuming the camera is in picture mode.
The RC2(aka D3) acts a bit differently. Its what controls the menus .
In my taranis i have created a mix using 2 switches that allows me to navigate the menus,
I do this by setting as a natural position of a 3 way swich the center, then when i go to their extremes means that im "pushing" one of the 2 buttons on the camera , (SimPower or SimWiFi).
in the physical camera , a long press of the Wifi button changes modes (Photo/Video) here its done using the 3rd command, Mode. Alongside my taranis mix.
sounds chaotic but is proven to be very functional to fly with this setup.
byte SimWiFi[] = { 0xCC, 0x01, 0x00, 0x32 };
byte SimPower[]= { 0xCC, 0x01, 0x01, 0xE7 };
byte Mode[] = { 0xCC, 0x01, 0x02, 0x4D };
byte StartRec[]= { 0xCC, 0x01, 0x03, 0x98 };
byte stopRec[]= { 0xCC, 0x01, 0x04, 0xCC };the protocol was as follows :
{Header,Command ID,ActionID,crc8}
now in 2023 i re-visited runcam's website , the protocol much more elaborate , i dont know if it will work with the modern splits (Split 3, split 4k) ... it should...