ShAKY (SHift Angle KentuckY) is a little module designed to be mounted to the base of any camera -- an earlier version was specific to the Canon PowerShot ELPH160 or ELPH180 and lacked Xsync support. Via a USB cable, ShAKY can continuously report 9 axis position data with sufficient accuracy to distinguish position changes that alter the sensor image by less than a single pixel shift -- the graph above is an example of shake recorded during an exposure.

Why do this? Well, my lab at the University of Kentucky created ShAKY for a variety of research experiments involving new methods to obtain better images in the presence of camera shake.... It's posted here partly as documentation of our research, but also because the sensor assembly is surprisingly cheap and this packaging of it may serve as a good reference for coming up with packaging of the sensor module for other applications. The IS&T Electronic Imaging research paper overviewing it, source code, etc. are posted at Aggregate.org/DIT/ShAKY.

The working parts are two circuit boards and a 3.5mm jack with a debounce capacitor. The smaller (top-mounted) board is an $9 MPU9250/6500 9-Axis sensor module that measures movement in X, Y, Z, roll, pitch, and yaw as well as absolute X, Y, Z orientation using a magnetometer. The larger (bottom-mounted) board is a $6 Pro Micro ATmega32U4 Arduino that provides a programmable USB interface to the sensor. The USB interface also powers both boards. The jack is for the Xsync signal from the camera. Thus, the entire unit build cost is under $20..

Anycubic

Kossel

No

No

0.2mm

25%

There are two parts: the body and the screw. Although the screw could be printed, it is a standard 1/4-20 thread and a metal one can be tightened more without fear of stripping the threads. The body prints in the orientation shown in its STL file. There is a minor span in the body at the opening for the jack, but the part prints easily without supports. The body doesn't need more than 25% infill.

The connections must be made between the all components before placing them in the body. We recommend direct soldering using wire-wrap wire.

The printed parts should require little, if any, postprocessing. First insert the jack and tack it in place with hot glue. The ATmega32U4 boards are then inserted, face up, so that the wires route nicely and the USB connector pokes through the hole for it. Press the boards into place and tack them with hot glue.

Once assembled, ShAKY is simply bolted-onto the bottom of the camera using the printed 1/4-20 screw and the Xsync and USB cables are plugged in. The design of ShAKY not only keeps everything neatly self-contained, but ensures that the sensor is held as close as possible to the camera's sensor and in a known orientation: X points out through the lens, Y points toward the USB connector, and Z points upward. ShAKY also mounts in such a way that the camera's battery + SD card are still fully accessible, which is why ShAKY mounts only on one side of the camera's base.