4 French Alps Time Lapse, Android Update, Tech Tip #4
Video of the Week- Shot with Radian and Michron
This video was recently shot by Dominic Joubert in the French Alps.
If you want to see more awesome footage that people are posting, check out the Facebook, Google+, or Twitter page and feel free to post your own for a chance to win some free gear! Winners will be announced next blog post.
Time Lapse Compilation Tutorial
We’ve been really impressed by the speed and ease of using Picasa’s time lapse assembly feature. So much so that we made a tutorial on how to use it! It is certainly not Lightroom but it is a great way to do some quick filtering and compilation.
Radian Android app
We have new version of the Radian app out for Android! In this newest app version we did a little bit of behind-the-scenes work to make the packet transmissions more robust, and we altered the way in which the “hold” setting is set by the app.
In the new version of the app, the app automatically selects the longest hold time possible (up to 1 second) to reduce the likelihood of your camera missing the trigger signal sent by your Radian. If you’re curious about how exactly the hold settings works, please check out this tutorials : How Radian Works.
Tech Tip #4 : Way Under The Hood
This week’s tech-tip is a two-part foray deep under the hood of Michron and Radian. The first part talks about the under-the-hood work that allows your phone to talk to MIchron and Radian, and the second explores my single favorite part inside Radian.How Does The App Send Data To You Radian/Michron?
Well, it’s a bit of tech that we’re quite proud of, so we’re glad you asked! Your phone/tablet/phablet communicates with your Radian/Michron (I’ll call them “your device” moving forward) via an asynchronous communication protocol (we use 8-N-1 to be exact). This is a protocol that was created long ago by some smart people, and it’s a very established bit of tech. In fact, it is so commonly used that many microprocessors (the chips we use to do the thinking) have special hardware (ie layers of carefully-placed silicon) built-in that can process these signals and immediately turn them into useful data without the chip’s software being involved! This is handy since using the built-in chip hardware allows us to reduce the code complexity, reduce power consumption, and increase transmission robustness. It also make my life way easier.
When you use your phone to send the time lapse settings to your device, the app follows the following path (excerpted from our patent):
The last step after the above process is to then send the data (saved as a .wav audio file) out of your phone’s audio port by just playing that file as though it were any other audio file. Your device then receives this data through the programming port, does some work to boost the signals to the appropriate voltages, and then parses the information into time lapse settings on its end.