Setting up the ultimate timelapse camera.... Help request!

[Nicolò Moioli]

Hi everyone.

I have a lot of questions and I would really appreciate anyone can halp me.

I'm building the "ultimate Timelapse machine", based upon a Huawei P30 PRO smartphone. The mission is to have a camera which can shoot in RAW, capable to switch focal lenght, to manual focus, to realtime auto-backup every picture over a NAS (or FTP server) through LTE connection and tobe remotely controlled. It will operate for a veeery long timelapse (about 1 and a half year)

These things are quite easy to do with the P30 PRO, with the original camera app, with Qsync app from Qnap and AirDroid app.

Now, here are the problems (many!):

- the P30 camera app has got a timelapse function which only create a 720p movie with no control over speed, duration, picture profile, DRO etc;

- the P30 PRO doesn't support Camera2API so i can't use any convenient third party camera app for RAW capturing;

- the only way to get a RAW file is to set the original camera app in PRO mode (not the standard mode of the app so it requires user interaction);

- the original camera app goes to stand-by after just 60 seconds with no way to modify it so I can't use any auto-clicker app;

- restarting the camera app requires the user to re-set the right focal lenght.

Now... I found in "Automate" a powerful tool to control pretty everything: I can open the camera app, setup the delay time between every picture, control (and alert me) if the power supply goes down. But the only way to control the camera app features is with the "interact Touch" simulator wich is not so reliable because, randomly, it stops to work and requires to reboot the phone to work again but rebooting the phone makes me loose the root privileges for AirDroid to remote control the phone. Another, more reliable way, is to use the "take picture" module but I can't control which one of the 3 cameras to use and I can't shoot in RAW.

So I war wondering if there is a way to control the original camera app through something like a shell command.

My idea is to push software commands to the phone to:
- open the camera app,

- set the app in PRO mode,

- set the focal lenght i need,

- take the picture.

Thanks to anyone can help me!

Nicolò

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

Apps aren't started using shell command, you'll have to use the App start block, possibly with some "Extras" that could change to PRO mode and set focal length. But you need to ask the P30 camera app developers for the that info.