Gigapan: Shutter release modifications

After the posts about an electronic shutter release for Nikon cameras and the first travel with the Gigapan Epic 100 there were some points which did not meet my expectations and so I used some spare time to fix them:

First off, the box housing the relais was just velcroed to the metal which was ok for the time being but looked like crap to be honest. The servo which came with the Gigapan was screwed in place which was way nicer - so I opened that box and extracted a small metal plate in which the screw screwed into (nice rhyme :)). The only thing left was to put it into my relais box, drill a hole and be good to go - done.

Next up was something that came kind of surprising - I bought a new camera for the trip which left me with my 'old' one to use with the Gigapan. Since my old release cable was designed with a Canon Plug, which I needed to use with my geotagger it was no longer feasible to use - I don't want to remove my geotagger from my main camera to put on this one every time I take a pano.
Since I am working on another project right now I used Mini-Din Plugs to interchange the cables between the projects and just need to carry one set at a time - more on the other project coming soon.
Put a socket at the top of the box now I can trigger every kind of camera with the appropriate cabel - done.

The next point was something I overlooked when I set the unit up for the first time - the camera with a lens mounted did not sit right in the double rotation point which is really important for panos with foreground objects as well as land- or cityscapes in the background. And since I am sure now that I keep my little Gigapan I used brute force to fix the problem...
I just used my Dremel tool and cut a piece of the arm which supports the camera to give more room to position it - the space on the arm was used to hold the servo in place but since my relais box is so much smaller it fist perfectly.
Now I have more room than I need for this lens so maybe there is a longer once to come - done.


On a side note: since starting the other project and getting back into microcontrollers I am playing with the idea to replace the Gigapan controller with my own to implement features and make it work together with my other project - something crazy to look out for in the future...