D3500 woes

Open discussion about photography, qDslrDashboard
Post Reply
Hippie in Hawaii
Posts: 1
Joined: 08 Mar 2020, 08:03

D3500 woes

Post by Hippie in Hawaii »

Aloha all!

I've got a project coming up this summer that is perfect for running a couple of time lapse cameras. What I have access to is an abundance of Nikon D3500 cameras.

If you're not familiar with the camera, it is lacking in, well, EVERY feature that would make it actually useful for this. No wifi. No port for a shutter release. No built-in intervalometer.

After a lot of research, I found two sources that lead me to qdlsrdashboard. I downloaded it for my iMac Pro, and couldn't get it to connect to the cameras. I emailed the support site; Zoltan (what a great name!) responded with a new build. It still didn't work until I swapped USB cables, then it did. However, in subsequent testing, it doesn't seem to be a cable problem, it seems to be something of a question of perseverance. I have to try turning things on and off, unplugging and replugging, sometimes 3-4 times before it will connect. Once that happens, everything is relatively fine. I can crash the system with 100% effectiveness by trying to use LiveView, but other than that, I can reliably do time lapse.

Which is fine, so far as it goes, but I can't haul multiple iMacs along for the summer project. I do have a few old WinDoze laptops sitting in the closet, so I dusted one off today and tried to get the app running there. It's a Dell, core i5 processor, running WinDoze 7. I checked the system report; it's a 64 bit system, so I downloaded the x64 version. The archive opens into dozens of files. There are only two executable files I can locate. One seems to install a C++ interface; the other (which seems like it should be the one to use) fails and says I'm missing a .dll file.

How do I get this to run on the WinDoze laptop?

Because the project involves day-long sessions, I think that mobile devices aren't an option because of battery limitation. Assuming they would work, the one-and-only USB port on the mobile device would be tethered to the camera, not to a charger. Would that even work? And if it did, could it operate for 8 hours?

I do have a plan C, which is to use Nikon's free SnapBridge app. It has almost no control of the camera, but can do a remote shutter release via bluetooth. That, paired with an auto-click app does function. Which leaves me looking for mobile devices I can dedicate to the project for several days.

Sigh.

I am doing a lot of work trying to make use of what I have. If i can get qdslrdashboard running on my old laptops, the project is at least tenable. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Mahalo!
Post Reply