Author: Robert Harrison

Date Created: July 2008

Last Revised: See Bottom of Page

Version: 1.03

Email: rharrison [email @ goes here ] hgf.com *NB The awkward email address format is to prevent my address being harvested by spammers

WARNING - Digital Cameras have large capacitors which often are charged (and remain charged for long periods of time) - they really hurt if you discharge them through yourself and will destroy chips!

I haven't actually found this capacitor on the Ixus 400 so I guess it must be quite well hidden however the warning is there and notice should be taken, especially if you decide to delve deeper into the cameras innards than I have in this document.

If you use this guide please email me with the success or failure of your attempt.

If you can think of any improvements that can be made to this guide then please email me and let me know.

The Canon Ixus 400 is a versatile, compact, digital camera with the ability not only to take pictures but to also take short video bursts. The camera can be found second hand on ebay for about £35-£40 UK pounds. The camera has a nice square shape making it easy to mount in a cradle. The screws are standard M1.6 which is useful when you want to mount stuff onto the body of the camera using the screw holes which secure the outer casing.

This guide explains how you can take one of these cameras and modify it so that it can be operated remotely by crossing wires attached to the switches on the cameras circuit board. The second part of this guide will show how to control the camera using an Atmel ATmega32 microprocessor to which will cross these cables electronically.

Some camera terminology explained:

Power Button: Obvious? This is the button that turns the camera on and off.

Shutter Button: This is the button that makes the camera take the picture.

Mode Selector: This is the rotating knob that allows you to set manual, automatic, landscape or video mode.

• Open the camera up.
• Identify and test contacts points which control the cameras power, shutter and mode.
• Solder wires to the contact points to control the power switch, shutter switch and mode switch.
• Put the camera back together again and remove any extraneous parts.

• Wire 0.1mm stranded PVC insulated wire (Various colours make life a little easier) Example
• Soldering Iron & Solder (14-25 Watts with a fine point should be just fine, get some thin 0.5mm solder for an easy life)
• Side cutters (or nippers as they are sometimes called )
• Wire Stripper (or teeth but don't send me the dentist bill)
• Set of micro screwdrivers

The buttons on the camera operate by closing a circuit on the the circuit board. They operate in exactly the same way as a switch on the wall which closes a circuit to turn a light on.

Starting with the power button for the camera. When you press the button you are in fact pressing a bit of metal onto the circuit board to close the connection between two points. A small current then flows through this circuit which flips another switch to turn the camera on. When you stop pressing the on button the connection opens and the current stops flowing around the circuit but the camera remains switched on. Pressing the button again sends the current around the switching circuit again but this time the power switch is turned off. If you think about it this prevents you from having to constantly press the power button to keep the camera powered up. It would certainly not be very practical to press two buttons at once to take a picture, it's bad enough just pressing the shutter button at the right moment.

The shutter button is a simpler circuit. Pressing the shutter button closes the circuit. This causes camera to capture the image on the CCD sensor and copy it to the compact flash (CF) card. The switch is actually slightly more advanced than this as when it is only partially depressed the cameras auto focus system is brought into operation without a picture being taken. For the sake of this guide you can ignore this.

The mode selector switch is the most complex of all the switches. This switch can close several circuits simultaneously. If no circuits are closed by the mode selector the camera operates in “Automatic Mode”. To make sense of the rest of this paragraph the letters refer to the diagram in Step Three. If the 'B' 'C' circuit is closed the camera operates in “Manual Mode”. If the 'B' 'A' circuit is closed the camera operates in “Video Mode” and if both 'B' 'A' and 'B' 'C' circuits are close then the camera operates in a “Landscape Mode”.

Hopefully the camera you have, or are about to obtain, looks rather like the one in the picture below. If not you probably don't have an Ixus 400, however the theory below should apply to most modern compact cameras in one way or another.

On the picture I have labelled the areas we are interested in modifying, namely, the power button, the shutter button and the mode selector. These are really switches and I will refer to them as such for the rest of this guide.

To take the casing off you will need to remove all screws around the edge of the camera. Many of the screws are of different length so unless you have a gifted memory I would strongly suggest that you write down where each screw comes from or you will end up putting the wrong screw in the wrong hole.

There are 11 Screws to remove before you can separate and remove the outer casing.

Starting at the base of the camera there are four screws, two long ones either side of the tripod mount (1,2) and two short ones (3,4).

On the side where the USB port is there are two more short screws (5,6). One (6) may be hidden behind the plastic port protector if it is still attached to the camera. Just pull it back to expose the screw head and remove.

On the side where the compact flash (CF) card is inserted there are a further four screws (7,8,9,10) remove these.

The last screw is on the back of the camera in the top right corner and is labelled (11) in the picture.

Release the CF card door after removing the screws and it will come away from the camera. Do not worry about the door spring, it is firmly attached to the door hing and will no spring off into the either! It is worth noting that the CF door operates a small “door open detector” switch above the CF card. If this switch is not pressed in the camera will not operate. This guide will permanently disable this switch but keep in mind that the camera will not function with out this switch being pressed in.

Having removed all the screws you should now be able to prise the casing from the body of the camera. Hold the camera with the lens facing your palm and remove the rear casing first. This can be done by pulling apart the casing on the side with the USB port. The casing should pivot around the side with where the CF card is inserted.

Having removed the rear casing remove the front casing. There should be no surprises with this separation. No springs or bits should fall out! Possibly a bit of grey plastic from next to the flash may come off. This is a shield for the flash. It prevents the light from the flash affecting the picture sensor when the flash is in use. I'm not sure that it does much in reality and it can easily be put back again when you come to reassemble the camera later on.

With a bit of luck you should end up with the camera body exposed with the power and shutter buttons still attached to the top of the camera.

The switches which control the power and the shutter for the camera are under the bit in the picture below. You need to remove this bit by releasing the two clips marked A and B. I found a small flat head screwdriver the best for this. If you prize of clip A first you will find that clip B will just come off without any need to use the screwdriver again.

You should now have a rather naked Ixus 400.

You may wish at this stage to remove the “compact flash door open” detector which is marked in the above picture as C.

Unfortunately I had already removed it before taking this picture. There is a very small metal cover over the switch. Just prize this off using a flat head screwdriver and try to catch the spring and plastic press button. The camera will now operate when the CF door is open. This makes testing in the following stages a lot easier, otherwise you are going to have to wedge this button in the pressed in position.

Your camera should look like this now…

Now we get on to the interesting bit! Identifying the contact points and shorting them to test their function.

Start by clicking on the image below to bring up the full size image. This will make it easier to identify the areas we are talking about below.

Print the image out so that you can continue reading this guide whilst easily referring to the image. Failing that just open the image in another tab / window and tab between the guide and the image.

The first connection you need to identify is the power one. This is denoted D,E in the picture.

To test that you have identified the correct contacts to use you need to short circuit them using a spare bit of wire, paper clip, whatever so long as it conducts electricity. Place one end of the wire on point D and the other on point E if you have identified the correct locations and the camera battery is charged and inserted and you have removed or wedged the “CF door open detector” then the camera should power up. If this doesn't happen check battery, “CF door open detector”, the conductor and that you have identified the correct contacts to short.

You do not need to keep the connections shorted for the power to remain on.

Short the contacts again to power down the camera.

Assuming that you have managed to power the camera up and down you can move on to operating the shutter.

This is done by shorting the contacts (bits of solder) on each side of the shutter switch. These are labelled E,F in the picture.

Make sure the camera is powered up and short the E,F contacts with a wire.

With a bit of luck the shutter will operate taking a picture.

Now were rocking…

Finally we move to selecting the camera mode.

By default the camera is in automatic mode (point and shoot). To be able to set it into manual mode a connection needs to be made between contacts C and B. The advantage of manual mode is that you can set the camera settings you wish to use and the camera remembers the settings even if you power off the camera and power it back on again. i.e. even after the camera has been power cycled.

To test this power the camera up and make a contact between C and B. This time the short circuit need to be maintained. The mode should now change to manual indicated by a little camera symbol with an M in the top right hand corner of the display. If you break the short circuit the mode will return to automatic.

The mode can changed to video mode by shorting the A and B contacts. This can be tested using the same technique as above and making sure that a video symbol appears in the top right hand corner of the display.

At this point you should have identified and tested all the connection points that wire needs to be soldered to operate the camera remotely.

This is where you need a steady hand and good eye sight.

Cut off some generous lengths of flexible, narrow gauge, multi core wire. I would go for at least 50cm in length as you can always shorten them later.

Strip the last 4mm of insulation from each end and solder the ends.

Try to leave a little blob of solder on the ends of the wire.

Tin the soldering iron and hold the wire against the contact you want to solder to.

Apply the soldering iron until the solder melts and the wire is fused to connection.

Think about the direction you want the wire to go in and try to make the connection so that it facilitates this. If you look at the picture below you can see that the red wires both go in the same direction and when the job is complete they will be pulled in roughly the same direction as they travel towards the hole in the back of the camera.

When soldering to point D to make the power connection, use a bit of fine sand paper or a sharp knife to scrape the surface of the metal contact until it is clean and shiny, this will make for a better joint.

At this point it may be worth removing a few superfluous bits on the camera, such as the wrist cord anchor, the rubber port protector and the bit of rubber blocking an access hole into the battery compartment.

Keep these bits in a safe place you may want to put the camera back together again one day!

If you are careful you can put the camera back together with the wires emerging from the camera mode switch.

You will need to remove the mode selector knob from the rear casing. This can be done by removing screw A in the picture below.

It's a bit fiddly getting the wires to run around the view finder but as you can see it looks nice and neat when all put back together.

Start by putting the front casing on the camera.

This should go one with relative ease.

Make sure that the front casing is pushed on completely.

Now put the rear casing on using a screwdriver or other long object to help direct the cables below the view finder.

Test the connections by crossing the cables and operating the camera before screwing the casing into position.

Though not shown on this picture I put a little piece of cable shrink wrap on the wires where they emerge from the camera to make them less prone to damage by being accidentally pulled. If one wire is accidentally pulled the strain is distributed over all the wires and not just the single wire.

Well done you now have a modified Ixus 400 so that it can now be operated remotely.

The next step is to interface the camera with an microprocessor using the newly attached wires.

Finally please let me know via email if you have used this guide to hack your camera.

Email address at the top of the guide.