The pins that the arrows are pointing to are for the power button on my camera. If I take a small piece of wire and touch the two leads (they seem microscopic), then the camera turns on and off. I need a way to short these leads out so I can control power to the camera.
Two questions:
- Can I solder straight onto the button, or do I have to scrape back a little bit of the orange plastic?
- Is a Raspberry Pi capable of performing this function? That way I can setup a cron job to turn this camera on and off.
This photo is magnified with a helping hand magnifying glass, it is a very small button.
Image credit: Windell Oskay, CC-BY
Best Answer
Yes, you should be able to use very fine wires, with a fine touch.
Do NOT attempt to scrape the Kapton in any way. I suggest you attempt to attach the wires on the opposite (top) side of the switch to avoid the traces. That would be the other two terminals of the switch.
Use really fine wire (AWG30 is about right), pre-tin the wire, and use a microscope and fine clean tip unless your eyes are very good. You could ruin your camera, of course.
The RPi should be able to do it, but how is another question. I suggest trying something like an optoisolator. An optoMOS solid-state relay would work (almost) for sure, but a cheaper optoisolator might work too (given the right polarity).