I just finished this mega-pano controller, a fire-and forget solution that involved physically modifying a Celestron telescope mount to move the camera’s nodal point over the rotational axes, then mounting everything that would normally be cabled to an internal wireless usb hub. Besides the serial-to-usb connector needed to direct the mount and the usb to run the camera, there’s also an added gps and a XGA webcam that mounts to the camera’s viewfinder in order to add a “liveview” function. In order to get the range needed to get very far from the device, the Belkin wireless usb hub was gutted and its antennas were replaced with ones scavanged from a wi-fi router. The whole thing runs off of internal battery power. I do not want to lug this up a mountain.
Ahh, that Cybil Shepard glow. I used a rapid prototyping machine to cover up the nasty gap between where the mount arm used to meet the base and where I had to move it to center the camera. I did this mainly so the airport security dudes wouldn’t think it was an entirely jury-rigged device (hmmm…we’ve got a gps transponder here, Jim.) It lends it a nice finished look and served as the perfect place to mount an antenna. The whole shindig can be set up to run any variety of captures autonomously, run by a program based on the Canon SDK.
