Canon BLE remote supported by Unleashed '18 and '22?

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PapaBear
Posts: 25
Joined: July 18th, 2022, 1:56 am

November 13th, 2023, 11:37 am

]Dear Foolography,

Seeing the FW 3.11 text, I was wondering if Foolography has implemented native support for the Canon BLE remote, both for the Unleashed '18 and '22 versions?
The brand Fotolinko has an alternative replacement for the Canon BR-E1, so I was wondering if this device can be used with the Unleashed, for both Nikon and Canon cameras?

See pictures:
Unleashed-Canon.jpg
Unleashed-Canon.jpg (241.37 KiB) Viewed 1792 times
Canon-remote.jpg
Canon-remote.jpg (55.01 KiB) Viewed 1792 times
Also see link to remote reverse engineering project:
https://github.com/maxmacstn/ESP32-Canon-BLE-Remote

And Fotolinko remote alternative:
https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Control ... B07L2Z93HK

Any chance this will work in the future, or is already implemented in the Unleashed?

PapaBear out
Oliver
Posts: 1127
Joined: October 9th, 2018, 4:17 pm

November 13th, 2023, 11:47 am

We basically did the opposite ;-)
We implemented the capabilities of this remote in the Unleashed!

The problem is that when you enable Geotagging via Bluetooth on the R series cameras, this disables the possibility of controlling the Camera via USB. This in turn means that the Unleashed needs to turn off all other functionality when you turn on Geotagging.

We know that for many customers this is an acceptable trade-off in most cases - for example it's not critical to have GPS data in all photos of a holy-grail timelapse! However, being able to do a simple remote trigger at the same time as geotagging is still a very common use-case, so we also implemented being able to trigger the camera via Bluetooth, which does work at the same time as sending GPS data to the camera! The trigger command is more or less the same as the one the BR-E1 sends.

It's an interesting idea to also implement being able to connect the BR-E1 to the Unleashed, but actually that won't work, as the remotes are programmed to find and connect to the cameras, rather than the camera (or the Unleashed) finding and connecting to the remote. The Unleashed only supports one instance of the "periperal role" which is already used for the connection to the App, so we can't create a second one pretending to be the camera, so this idea unfortunately won't work.
Founder & CEO of Foolography, Hardware & Firmware developer.
PapaBear
Posts: 25
Joined: July 18th, 2022, 1:56 am

November 13th, 2023, 1:33 pm

Oliver wrote:
November 13th, 2023, 11:47 am
It's an interesting idea to also implement being able to connect the BR-E1 to the Unleashed, but actually that won't work, as the remotes are programmed to find and connect to the cameras, rather than the camera (or the Unleashed) finding and connecting to the remote. The Unleashed only supports one instance of the "periperal role" which is already used for the connection to the App, so we can't create a second one pretending to be the camera, so this idea unfortunately won't work.
Could it be possible to reprogram the firmware of the alternative Canon remote and let that remote connect to the smartphone, where the smartphone is the bridge between the small remote and Unleashed? Than users can keep the smartphone in their pockets and only use the small remote in their hands.

Maybe an idea?

I have no idea if the Fotolinko remote can be opened easily and have a reverse engineered and alternate firmware overwritten, so that the remote doesn't connect to the Canon camera but to the smartphone mimicking the camera interface? If that is possible, then the Unleashed App on the smartphone can forward the triggering of the camera towards the Unleashed.

PapaBear out
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