Triggering your ideas

Being an electrical engineer, and a keen electronics hobbyist, one of the first projects I embarked upon, when I took up photography, was to build a reliable device that would fire a camera shutter when sensors were activated. I was unimpressed with what the market had to offer at the time; devices that could read a single sensor only. I designed my system to house a number of senors in its casing, eliminating the need to plug in microphones, PIR sensors etc. This saves on having to carry additional equipment, and allows greater ease of operation. An added feature is that the sensors can be monitored in sequence, allowing for complex triggering events. The four sensors are PIR, Range, Light and Sound, and there is also a real time clock to facilitate intervalometer operation.

Recently I added an output port in order to drive the ever-popular water-drop apparatus. This gave me the opportunity to use the additional port also as an input, so now one of a range of external sensors can be added. What springs to mind is using this input to detect operation of a pressure pad, as an animal approaches, or to have an infra-red device that triggers the camera when a beam is broken, such as by insects flying. There must be a host of different events that demand instant reaction in order to photograph them.

I am kindly requesting that members offer suggestions for the situations that could be captured using the extra input. Bear in mind that, as an electrical engineer, I can design any necessary circuitry, so no idea will be considered too ambitious.

I have attached samples of its use.

Thanking you all in advance,

Piranha