Cam Com 1.0 documentation • Description Cam Com is a tool for serial comunication between Palm and Olympus compatible digital camera. It can send commands to camera to take a picture in given time intervals. With this tool you can create stunning time compressed sequences, like moving clouds or growing plants. • Requirements: Palm OS 3.1 Hardware model with serial COM port (RS232). Digital camera with serial COM port (RS232). USB models (both camera or handheld) are not supported ! • Known compatible cameras: Olympus,Epson,Sanyo,Agfa These cameras uses the same protocol. But the program was tested only with Olympus Camedia C990Z and C960Z. Let me know, if you find it work with other camera (it should be save to try) or if it doesn't work with some model mentioned above. • Installation: Install the CamCom.prc file using standard install procedure. • The cable: You need to have Palm and your digital Camera connected together with a cabel. Usually you don't have the cable to connect Palm directly to digital camera. But usually you have cables from Palm to PC and from camera to PC. So only thing you have to do is to connect both cables together. You can buy special connector for this. It is called 'crossovered' connector. It has 9-pin male connector on both sides and the TxD and RxD pins are crossed inside. It means that one device will read what the second device writes and vice versa. This simple detail is vital for comunication ! If you don't have such connector, you can simply tape both female connectors (cable endings) together and temporarily connect the holes with any reasonable thick wire. You need to connect only 3 holes. Holes usually has numbers written on the connector. If you look at the female conecter, you should see it in this order: 5 4 3 2 1 9 8 7 6 Connect holes like this: 5 - 5 3 - 2 2 - 3 Note, that 3 lead to 2 ! This is the crossover. See picture Connector.gif to see cables connected like this. Don't worry about damaging your camera or Palm. COM ports are usually very immune against static eletricity or even short circuits. Anyway I take no responsibility ;-) • Controls: Select time interval in list and press 'Start/Stop' button. Palm will send command to camera to take a picture. Then it will wait the rest of the given time interval and then it send the command again and again. It means that if you have set 10 seconds and if taking a picture takes 3 seconds, each frame will be taken 10 seconds after the previous one and not 13 seconds. If some error (timeout, full memory) occurs, the process will be stopped. You can also use 'Take picture' button to take only one picture. • Notes: -Palm won't auto-off, even in long intervals. This should be fixed in some next version, so battery consumption will be as low as possible. -Never mind if camera goes auto-off. It will be automatically woken up by the COM activity (at least Olympus cameras does so). -Keep in mind that pictures with small resolutions take shorter time to take and they takes less memory. I can take over 300 pictures in 640x480 with my camera. -Let me know about sequences you have made with this program ! • Price CamCom is distributed for free. • Actual version, fixed bugs, new features: 1.0.0 (Dec 11,2001) Initial release • Contact: Questions web site: questions.hyperlink.cz Email: Questions@seznam.cz