At church, we've permanently mounted an old Panasonic video camera in the chapel. This is the camera used for all our Sunday service livestreams. But - I was thinking - wouldn't it be cool to automate the camera zooming in and out, rather than having to point and aim the IR remote every time? (It's not as easy as it should and could be!)
Finally a weekend project that we could use those ESP8266 's for!
- ESP8266 MCU
- IR LED (I ripped out one from an old DVD player remote)
- Code from Michael Higgins to run on the ESP: https://github.com/mdhiggins/ESP8266-HTTP-IR-Blaster. This starts up a HTTP server on the ESP, which listens for IR commands to emit. Ran into a few compile issues but finally got there! (The code also can 'learn' IR codes if an IR receiver is wired, which is what I did to learn the codes for the camrecorder remote)
- In Bitfocus Companion I simply POST the HTTP command with the IR send code (and for a bigger 'zooming step', I repeated the send codes)
Bonus:
Whilst I'm posting stuff about DIY electronics, here's my DIY LCD monitor made from a donated broken laptop (thanks Leanne and John(?) !). I've made two of these - each HDMI controller board kit costs about ~$50 from AliExpress + 12V power supply. We're using some of these at the AV desk 🙂
