DIY - Wireless Tethering of Your Camera to a Computer

This is my original write-up of a project from about 6 months ago. Thought folks might be interested in trying this.

I was inspired by a project by Pete Tsai. He describes his "Do It Yourself" project to connect his Nikon D300 to his PC via a new wireless protocol for USB. Wireless USB is similar to Bluetooth, but connects devices that talk over USB, without using a cable. Since most cameras have a USB connector for downloading photos we should be able to do this without the wire, allowing us to view our images on a computer screen as we take them. We can also control our camera from the PC.

I was inspired by Pete's project, but I'm more a software guy, rather than hardware, so wasn't looking forward to soldering and wiring work. I was in Frys and decided to see if I could find some components to build my own version, off the shelf, without any modifications.

Tonight I was able to piece together a solution that works. Reading Pete's detailed description of his prototypes, he is on his second version and a quite impressive and compact solution inspired me. I highly recommend you read his two posts to get a grasp on the technical problems to overcome, and for the amazing thought stream of a creative individual. Then you can look at my solution which can be termed "Wireless Tethering a Camera to a Computer for Dummies".

Now for my "Dummy" solution.

The goal was to try and do this in less than a day, with no modifications, and all off the shelf components. That meant a trip to either Frys or Micro Center. I decided to hit Frys and if I didn't get everything Micro Center was next. Luckily I found the three items I needed at Frys.

First thing is getting the wireless USB hardware. There were two choices: D-Link or IOGear. The IOGear hardware looked smaller to me than the other, so I went with that. Quick overview of how the wireless USB works. There are two pieces of hardware. A dongle that plugs into one of the USB ports on your computer (similar to the type that are used for WiFi networking). The other item is a USB hub that runs on power, so it has a wall plug converter to 5 volts to power the hub. The idea is you plug in your USB device into the hub and it can communicate to your computer from 30 feet away without a cable. The problem to overcome is that the hub portion is what you need at the camera, so smaller is better.

Luckily the one I chose was very thin and about 2 1/2 by 5 inches. I got the kit that contained both the hub and dongle, since you need both. This is a link to the kit at Frys: I/O Gear Wireless USB Kit. It was on sale for $90. Pricey for an item that I wasn't sure I could get to work, but far cheaper than the Nikon WT-4A Wireless Transmitter, for over $700 and really ugly and bulky.

Now that I selected the main hardware I needed to figure out how to power it with a portable solution. No use in having a wireless tether to the PC if you are tethered to a wall plug. Paid for it and went to the car to open it up and see what I can do by visually looking at it. I was hoping that the power connector would be a mini or micro USB but no such luck. It was a round plug which meant I might be out of luck. I looked at it closely and to gauge the size of the plug, and went back into Frys to search for a cable that is similar, and provides a standard USB connection on the other end. I had already determined that I would use one of the USB battery solutions that provide extra juice and a recharge for mobile devices as my power source. Really lucked out on my find for that solution.

I looked all over the cable/plugs/adapters aisles looking for something and couldn't find anything. Went over to the gaming section figuring maybe one of the portable gaming systems would have something. Bingo, the PSP has a USB/Power cable that looked like it would fit nicely. I grabbed this one: PSP cable for $5. I decided on the retractable version to cut down on space. I may remove the cable from the holder and wrap it up to make it even smaller.

Now to find my power supply. I choose this item from Duracell: Duracell Battery for $20. The best part of this is that there is an On/Off switch built in so it won't drain while the USB cable is plugged into it and not in use. It is also super thin and light weight.

Got back to the car opened up the cable and it fit perfectly on the hub device. I still didn't know if the polarity was correct, and I needed to charge up the battery before I could test. I went home started charging the battery, installed the IOGear drivers and software on my PC, paired it to the hub, and tested that it worked. I was able to plug a SD reader into the hub, while plugged into a wall outlet for power, and transmit the contents across the room to my PC. That was easy enough.

Now I needed to find some software to test with my camera. I don't have Nikon's Camera Control Pro 2. Searched the net and found a freeware solution. Nikon has an SDK available to developers who want to create solutions that work with their cameras. I settled on Camera Control 4.0 since it seemed to have some nice features. Installed it with no problems.

The battery was now charged, so it was time to test it out. I connected the battery to the hub, via the PSP cable, and it powered up and was recognized by my computer. I did the SD reader test again and it worked. A very good sign. Now to connect the contraption to my camera and see what happens. Started the Camera Control software, plugged a USB cable into the hub and my camera, turned on the camera and I was able to connect to it from the PC. I took a photo from across the room and within 3 seconds there was an image on my computer screen.

Success. I played around for a bit and was actually able to set shutter, aperture, and white balance settings remotely from my PC. The shutter release was unavailable for a D700, said so on the download page, so I was clicking the trigger myself.

Not the prettiest solution, but a workable one. I need to package up the components on the camera end to be as compact as possible and maybe mount it on a light bracket, or wear it on the camera strap, or myself.

You might ask yourself why do this. Well two reasons for me. The challenge in trying to come up with something more reasonably priced than the current offering from Nikon. The other is that in studio shooting it is nice to see your results on a bigger screen than the camera in a quick and easy manner. Plus your images are already transferred to your PC and ready for editing. I can easily hook this up to a large screen TV and see my photos while shooting.

Next steps will be to decide if it is worth purchasing Nikon's Camera Control Pro 2. Anyone use this software? Or to truly be DIY, download the Nikon SDK and see if I can code my own solution. Figure out how to make the hub/battery/cable contraption as compact as possible. I'm also going to try and get the wireless USB working on my net book. Currently it is giving me some trouble with the drivers, but I hope to get past that. Then I should have a full portable and light-weight solution I can easily carry anywhere and use when I need to.

The beauty of this solution and Pete's is that we are using off the shelf components so no proprietary protocols which means this should work with any camera that has USB connectivity.

So my solution comes out to about $120. If I shopped around on the net I should be able to bring the cost under $100, but I wanted to see if it was possible to do this in a few hours, so it was a rush job.

A huge thank you to Pete for paving the way so a nerd like me can build his own solution.

Note: I have since bought the Nikon Camera Control 2 software and it is working great with my Wireless USB rig.