Digital camera

What should Open Circuits say about digital cameras?

discussion

Should I move my tips on building a digital camera from scratch to this page? --DavidCary 11:26, 24 October 2007 (PDT)

Should we talk about circuits that adapt off-the-shelf cameras to do things they were never intended to do?

• "How to give your low-end Canon digital camera RAW support" by Nathan Willis 2007, discusses CHDK, an enhanced, free software replacement firmware. There is a CHDK wiki.
• Other people have replaced the firmware of a "$11 Dakota Digital Camera" [1] [2]. "author is now working on allowing user code (e.g. compiled in C) to be downloaded and executed from the camera's RAM."
• the CamMan project that uses a 8 pin Microchip PIC microcontroller to snap the shutter of an off-the-shelf camera attached to a RC airplane.
• DIY Drones: Amateur UAVs often talks about attaching cameras to RC airplanes
• ...
• etc.

Or should we focus more on designing "cameras" more-or-less from scratch: an image sensor, a CPU, etc. and designing a custom PCB to hold all the parts:

• "Is there an open source camera?"

further reading

• For a general introduction Wikipedia: digital camera
• For information about using a digital camera, you might want to see the PhotoWiki, a section of http://visualwiki.org/ .