Digitize your slide deck with this Arduino-powered slide carousel

If you're over a certain age, you probably remember the feel of a pre-Powerpoint 35mm slideshow. The wobbly screen rolling down, the dim room, the soft hum of the projector fan, the slightly grainy image on the screen, and that unmistakable click-whoosh-clack sound as the projector loads the next slide. These days, you'll be hard pressed to find someone willing to set up a screen and darken the room just to look at a few photos, so if you still have slides lying around, you'll probably want to scan them. If you've also kept your projector, it doesn't even have to be that difficult, as [Scott Lawrence] shows in his latest project.

[Scott] made a setup to directly connect a DLSR, in this case a Nikon D70, to a Kodak 760 slide carousel. Attachment is via a 3D printed adapter that fits over the macro lens Nikon on one side and slides neatly into the carousel lens slot on the other. The adapter also contains an IR emitter which is aimed at the camera's receiver, in order to trigger its remote release function.

The original light source of the carousel has been replaced by a compact LED studio light, which allows precise control of the brightness and of course remains nice and cool compared to the original incandescent bulb. The carousel's light, camera and motor are all controlled via a central user interface driven by an Arduino Leonardo which can automatically drive the carousel forward and instruct the camera to take a photo, eliminating the hard work of scanning huge stacks of slides.

[Scott] plans to make the software and STL files available on GitHub soon, so anyone can go ahead and turn their projector into a digitizer. However, if you've misplaced your projector, a simple 3D printed slide adapter for your camera also works for smaller slide sets.