Last Wired Remote Control involved a small surgery on the camera. The main drawback is the risk of the surgery. It may end up with getting your camera damaged or even killed. That's why I experimented it on a very cheap camera.
This time I built a shutter release using a powerful solenoid to press the shutter so that no surgery is needed. The solenoid is available from www.allelectronics.com and www.goldmine-elec.com.
The solenoid has a spring return, which is not required as the shutter will return itself. So I removed the spring and added a few hardware and put them together as shown below.
Once all the mechanical parts were secured, test the solenoid with a bench power supply. Set the power supply at 3V and see if it is sufficient powerful to press the shutter. Then ramp up the voltage a little bit and try again. I found that it worked properly when the supply voltage reached 6V (draw 1.65A).
Then add a power pack and a relay. It happened that I had a battery holder that it holds 5 AA batteries so that I can use Nimh rechargeable batteries.
The schematic diagram
The whole thing can be bolted to a base plate for better stability.
The wired push button may be replaced by wireless module (future project).
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End of the project
