EOS Utility Command Line

[billfinkri]

I started a project of a time-lapse video using the Rebel and the included EOS Utility.

By the time I'm done, it'll consist of many thousands of photos over a 2 year duration. It's a construction project of a mansion being built. Mind you this camera is mounted inside an all-weather-box on top of a 50' phone-pole - I'm using 150' of USB to our construction trailer going into a laptop that's running the EOS utility.  (Yes, 150' USB via an eletronic extender.)

My scenario is each AM I get up at 6, log into the workstation (remotely)  that's connected to our Rebel via USB, and start a process.

Using the EOS utility I'm taking shots every xx minutes, then at the end of the day I log into the workstation and move/copy the files for the day on over to a secure place.

Everything is working flawlessly and it's all coming along quite nicely. 

If it's possible, I'd like to be able to start the EOS utility from a command-line and be able to supply some parameter options just once. 

For example: c:\>eos.exe /num_pix:400 /interval:90s

Is anything, using the EOS utility, of that sort even possible? I know there are many utilities out there that'll do what I'm looking to do, but for just the ONE drawback of needing to supply parameters on command-line seems trivial to pay, in most cases, a lot of money. Especially when the EOS Utility is working flawlessly for me and I'd rather not try to break a process that's already in place and is working quite nicely for me.

Thanks so much for your time and any advice you can offer in advance.

[Mykolas]

Hi billfinkri,

Thank you for asking about this.  It is not possible to launch EOS Utility and supply it with remote shooting commands and parameters via the command line interface.

If this is a time sensitive-matter, additional support options are available at Contact Us.

[Andrew_D_Cool]

I too would love Command Line access to EOS Utility for automating astronomy photo sessions.

Andrew

[TCampbell]

"I too would love Command Line access to EOS Utility for automating astronomy photo sessions."

You're in luck!  

If you use Windows, get "Backyard EOS"  (backyardeos.com) 

If you use a Mac, get "Nebulosity" (www.stark-labs.com) -- but note that you will want a "Pre-Release" and not the latest full release.  As of Pre-Release version 3.1.6 is when they dropped in support for the official Canon ESDK 2.12 and that's when you get solid compatibility for controlling EOS cameras.

Both of these apps will control long-running astro-imaging sessions... completely controlling the camera to shoot all your subs and pull them into the computer.  They also integrate with PHD guiding and can work with the guider to perform "dithering" between the shots to help detect and eliminate any pattern-based image noise.  (Stark-Labs is also the company that writes PHD -- possibly the most popular guiding software for astro-imaging.)

These are possible because while there is no "command line" utility, Canon does publish an SDK so that developers can write their own software to control the camera.