Canon VIXIA HF R50 and R600 Zoom Hacking - Part 1

I was unhappy with my attempt to control zoom with a servo - so lets directly control it.

You can see the small servo attached to a screw - the lens has a bracket that attaches to the screw.

The bracket is able to slip when it hits the end points of the travel - so this limits the worry of damaging something with missed steps.

I found more then a few of these servo-screw combinations on ebay all rated at 5-volts; the camera looks to be using 3-volt signals



At the far end of the camera is an  IR Emitter Detector that the Lens assemble trips when it reaches the end of it's travel. As an added bonus the camera lens (as it powers up) always returns to this end point - so the lens position on startup will be at zero.



Here are the pads to the IR Emitter Detector but fried it while testing with the voltage meter - oops!



Attached wires to the servo.



Hot glue for wire support



There are two other servo's on this assemble: focus and aperture. But not planning on using those at this time.

Using an Ardunio Nano with servo code it moves the lens - \0/

Update 20180301

I replicated this to a working camera  - so the zoom does work but focus is now an issue - I was hopeful that it would auto-focus - so that was a big fail :-( 

I haven't really tested with an infinity focus point - so there might still be hope!

The backup plan is to hack the focus stepper ;-)