£100 Canon File Transmitter...

Hi,

I read this thread earlier today and, although it is a good idea, I think there is an easier way to identify/engineer the communication protocal. All EOS SLRs come with the "EOS Utility" software which, on compatible cameras, allows the tethered shooting function which includes writing directly to disk. Wouldn't it be easier for you to either port this software (or at least it's drivers) over to Linux (using Wine?) or build a very small Windows PC using a Pico-ITX board etc? Obviously, you'll need some form of power and I'm not sure what kind of output the Canon batteries give?

Another option which would need no software/hardware fabrication is to use one of the many netbooks like the Acer One or Asus EEEpc and connect directly using USB. You can then simply strap the netbook to your belt and use the same HTTP link to access the images or setup a simple FTP jokb to automatically copy the images to a base PC? I realise that this doesn't give you the same small footprint as the Gumstix but it would also save any HEX analysis!

Cheers
Steve
 
Hi Steve, Thanks for the reply.

You hit the nail on the head with the porting option - battery life. I'm sure you could get the EOS utilitiy to run in wine but its not going to get you the same sorts of functionality that you will get with a WFT, I'd have reservations about strapping yet another item with another snag-hazard to my body too, at a wedding I'll be shooting with two cameras both with flashes. One of the flashes will be on a battery pack so things can get very confusing very quickly.

Back to the issue of battery life, using and eepc, onenote or similar device just isn't really plausible. I need a device that sleeps and wakes with the camera and is capable of working every time I use it throughout a wedding which might last as long as eight hours.

I appreciate the suggestion of moving EOS utility to Linux over wine and I'd happily support you doing that but my object remains to create a hardware alternative to the Canon WFT.

Cheers
-Rob (y)
 
No problem Rob. The idea of using an EEEpc/Acer One for studio-based tethered shooting has been going through my mind for a while. I can see how you'd need better battery life and where the gumstix come in.

Maybe there is still something you can take form the EOS utility software? Although, I'm more of a Windows/hardware techie than a linux software engineer so I'll leave that in your hands!

Good luck with the project, you'll definitely be onto a winner if you can get this together. :)

Cheers
Steve
 
raven07866 said:
just shoot in RAW + fine Jpeg, you can preview the image on the computer then later plug the sd card into the reader
Click to expand...

Thanks for the post Raven, shooting in RAW + fine only mitigates one of the limitations though.
 
I was at an interview/meeting today with one of the operations managers from the ships photographer and this sort of system would be brilliant aboard the ships, however rather than transfering the images to a computer, it would be good if they could be transfered via sensors in photographic "hot spots" on the ships where the togs tend to worl, within a network to be sent back to the photo gallery to be viewed by customers.
 
With this sort of system that wouldn't be a problem as its fully 802.11 complaint. It would simply require a wireless access point in each "hot spot" with appropriate routing back to a central point where the images could be stored and displayed.
 
Somewhat annoyingly, I sold a WFT shortly before joining this forum as it had been sitting around for a year doing nowt and would have been quite happy for you to have borrowed it for as long as you needed. Instead, I sold it on eBay and made a £200 loss.
 
Hi hyakuhei,

I believe that the particular model you mention - the WFT-e2 - is for the EOS-1Ds Mark III & EOS-1D Mark III.

Since these use CFcards, might it not be possible to write a new kernel module for a CFcard-equipped Gumstix that would allow the Gumstix just to pretend to be a CFcard?

Thus the camera thinks it's writing to a CFcard, but the CFcard is really the Gumstix. You could just NFS a network share & write straight out to it whatever comes in your kernel module.

I have no idea if this is possible without major modification to the Gumstix circuitry - obviously it'd be ideal if you could just make a dumb pin-to-pin adaptor for it - and I'm afraid I'm not the guy for writing kernel modules myself. But you'd just be talking EIDE to achieve this, which must be very well documented, so I just thought I'd throw the idea out there.

Stroller.
 
Strolls said:
Hi hyakuhei,

I believe that the particular model you mention - the WFT-e2 - is for the EOS-1Ds Mark III & EOS-1D Mark III.

Since these use CFcards, might it not be possible to write a new kernel module for a CFcard-equipped Gumstix that would allow the Gumstix just to pretend to be a CFcard?

Thus the camera thinks it's writing to a CFcard, but the CFcard is really the Gumstix. You could just NFS a network share & write straight out to it whatever comes in your kernel module.

I have no idea if this is possible without major modification to the Gumstix circuitry - obviously it'd be ideal if you could just make a dumb pin-to-pin adaptor for it - and I'm afraid I'm not the guy for writing kernel modules myself. But you'd just be talking EIDE to achieve this, which must be very well documented, so I just thought I'd throw the idea out there.

Stroller.
Click to expand...

Hi Stroller,

Firstly the WFT's don't interface through the CF but through the USB connection on the camera.

Using the CF is an Idea that I discounted for two reasons:
i) Canon DSLR's shut of when the CF door is open and there is no way to make the form factor of a device using gumstix small enough to fit inside the CF compartment, this would mean users would have to modify their cameras and remove the microswitch that tells the camera when the door is open or closed - not good
ii) If (i) were not a problem it would be trivial to write an interface for CF which would share from a gumstix using NFS or something similar however - you would not be able to configure this from the camera. When a genuine WFT is plugged in you get menu options on the DSLR to choose how it operates, it would be nice to do this with the homebrew version.
 
Al de Man said:
Somewhat annoyingly, I sold a WFT shortly before joining this forum as it had been sitting around for a year doing nowt and would have been quite happy for you to have borrowed it for as long as you needed. Instead, I sold it on eBay and made a £200 loss.
Click to expand...

:crying::eek:
 
This may sound daft, but why don't you start out by reverse engineering the usb connection between the camera and computer, and then add the wireless stuff, so the camera just thinks its tethered? That way you won't need one of the canon transmitters to reverse-engineer, as you just need to add a wireless bridge on the usb interface.
 
What a good idea...

Having said that, emulating the USB link via wireless would be a more marketable product perhaps?
 
there is wireless usb kits out already, but if i remember correctly they arent fast enough or reliable enough:thinking:
 
Welsh Dan said:
This may sound daft, but why don't you start out by reverse engineering the usb connection between the camera and computer, and then add the wireless stuff, so the camera just thinks its tethered? That way you won't need one of the canon transmitters to reverse-engineer, as you just need to add a wireless bridge on the usb interface.
Click to expand...

Not daft at all, its partially for the reasons I've listed to do with interfaces, being able to configure the device from the camera is crucial for genuine emulation. Another issue is that the camera behaves differently when on a WFT than USB tethered.
 
just a though - how about looking for some funding for this?

How about the TP community are your backers and we start small company - this sounds commercially "viable", based on the feedback on here.

Obviously, this route would need to comply with legal aspects re-canon.

BUT - I am sure the TP community has people who would donate their services.

Accountant, lawyer, marketing - and then backers....
 
I`m sure this has been done before on Blue Peter, i think they used an egg carton, some string, some double back sticky tape, a small pipe cleaner for an aerial and some paint. Will yours look similar ?
 
I'd be very interested...
 
hyakuhei said:
I'd like to know what features you'd like to see in a Canon WFT
Click to expand...

Wireless File Transfer but with memory card style 100% reliability in place of flaky wireless performance.

If that's not achievable I'd like USB cable reliability but without the random dropouts you get with USB.

hyakuhei said:
and if you'd be interested in buying one.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. A noble effort, I wish you every success and if you manage to come up with the goods and it proves to fit the above specs, it will sell like hot cakes.

I'll buy 4 when it's RTM ;)
 
Subaru_WRC said:
I`m sure this has been done before on Blue Peter, i think they used an egg carton, some string, some double back sticky tape, a small pipe cleaner for an aerial and some paint. Will yours look similar ?
Click to expand...


roflmao :LOL::LOL:lol::runaway::banana::LOL::LOL::D
 
hyakuhei
you have a PM :nuts:
 
Destroying the portability a bit, but it should be relatively simple to produce a USB to bluetooth class II adapter, then use a Usb->Bluetooth->USB/serial driver on a PC to fake a USB->Bluetooth adapter into looking like a USB connection.
Then the EOS utility would think that the system is tethered. I think that class II has a (at least) 100ft range, and no hacking of the protocols involved (several sites must have the docs on USB host protocols, which the BT adapter would need to replicate).
The usb on the camera could power the bluetooth adapter I would have though. For most situations where the wireless is used, I would guess that a grip is used anyway.
An adaptor I have for example, has a 10m range (class I), doesn't support USB host unfortunately, but the dimensions are 7mm x 16mm, most of that being the USB plug.
 
Thanks Rick,

I'll keep an eye on it but I'm a Nikon shooter ;)

As for the project, I'm making some progress on a Nikon system (y)
 
Highly interested and for £100 I would certainlly buy one.

I have not used a Canon one so I am not sure if it has this feature, however would it be possible for you to make it so goes to a dongle in a laptop, rather than a Wifi connection?
 
They're slow cards from what I've heard. THen there's the issue of sticking that in a CF card adapter for use in the Canons
 
We haven't used a canon version but we have a nikon equivilent, that wasn't exactly fast at sending decent size files.
I admit I know nothing about this feild at all but wonder if a memory card could be addapted as a feed to the transmitter? I'm assuming the data wouldn't be encrypted there.
 
Sounds like an interesting project and I wish you a lot of luck! I'd be interested in taking one once it's all up and running.

I've also got a product/industrial designer who might be interested in helping once the electrical guts are a little more finished?
 
swanseamale47 said:
We haven't used a canon version but we have a nikon equivilent, that wasn't exactly fast at sending decent size files.
I admit I know nothing about this feild at all but wonder if a memory card could be addapted as a feed to the transmitter? I'm assuming the data wouldn't be encrypted there.
Click to expand...

Could you use a CF card but replace the onboard memory with a connection a very thin cable that's routed out of the CF door (thereby allowing it to close) and to the external transmitter?

Wouldn't give you wireless camera control though but might be a viable alternative to the eye-fi specs?
 
RAW files!??

I think some of you haven't considered the speed of 802.11g wireless...

Personally, I'd want to see wireless networks a lot faster before I started mucking around with the wireless transmitters, assuming of course we could ever break free from the seeming historical link between network speeds and the size of the files we want to send (ie networks get faster but the files get bigger, so the time spent transmitting stuff never decreases!)
 
desantnik said:
RAW files!??

I think some of you haven't considered the speed of 802.11g wireless...

Personally, I'd want to see wireless networks a lot faster before I started mucking around with the wireless transmitters, assuming of course we could ever break free from the seeming historical link between network speeds and the size of the files we want to send (ie networks get faster but the files get bigger, so the time spent transmitting stuff never decreases!)
Click to expand...

That's what N is for :). Also it should queue the files, so when your not taking pictures- its transferring.
 
Yes, I realise the Canon/Nikon products basically transmit images from your flash card queuing them up ... and not just try to transmit the one you've just taken (hmmm 8fps might take a bit of ooomph to do :D)
 
It's a long time since I've used my Canon WFT-E3 wireless grip, but from memory I think my 40D large JPEGs popped across my 802.11g network in about a second and the raw files took about 7 seconds each. If shooting raw+JPEG the jpegs would come over before the raws so it was pretty quick to get an initial preview displayed, with the raw trailing behind in its own good time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top