Smartphone Apps

Leave The Details To The Device

Photography is fun! But fiddling with the dials and all the little details is not. Rather than rooting through your camera’s forbidding menu, with the Cubic Trigger app the preset modes are only a flick away. Just set it and forget it, and Cubic Trigger will do all the legwork for you, leaving you to enjoy the scene around you. But don’t worry about your phone being tied down; Cubic Trigger can run in the background, keeping your phone free to make calls or surf the internet while you wait for your masterpiece to come to life. 

Keep Your Eye On The Prize

One of the guiding principles when designing our app was to allow the photographer the freedom to focus on the subject instead of operating his or her phone. To this end, we made the function as natural as possible with a simple press, drag, and release action.

The Basics

Despite all this functionality we didn’t forget the simplest things a camera can do. With basic mode, you can take a single shot, set a self-timer, and control exposure time. 

Two Methods Of Dealing With Tricky Lighting -- HDR

Two methods of dealing with tricky lighting: Shooting a subject with huge variations in brightness can sometimes be a headache, but we came up with two painless solutions: pre- and post-exposure manipulation. First, bracket mode will take a series of photographs with different brightness settings and stitch them together to form one optimal HDR photo.

For our second solution, we’ve taken the guesswork out of dodging and burning (as called as black card photography). Using only a black card, you will now be able to do this advanced photographic technique by yourself. The Cubic Trigger app will calculate the best exposure time based on input from the photographer and at the appropriate time will sound an alert to remove the card from the frame. This saves you from having to buy expensive filters for shooting high contrast scenery.  

You can find the technigue guides of black card photogrphy on youtube. 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=black+card+photography

Time-lapse And Star Trail

Cubic Trigger can easily handle time-lapse photography, even up to very long exposure times. Time-lapse can also be coupled with bracket mode to take HDR photos for HDR time-lapse videos. 

The star trail function is another incredibly useful setting. When set to this mode, Cubic Trigger will take a series of long exposure shots which turn the stars in the sky into long streaking lights. The series is then stitched together to form one cohesive image.

Lighting Reflexes

Because sometimes your trigger finger is not quick enough to capture the action, we designed a sound trigger mode into Cubic Trigger that will keep an ear out for any noises that may mean something exciting is going on. It’s also useful as a remote trigger when taking selfies, group photos, or anything else you can think of. Now when you say “cheese!” it will really mean something!

Scheduled Photos

Become the master of time with the schedule photos mode. What would you do if there were a solar eclipse happening right over your town but your boss won’t let you take the day off? Cubic Trigger’s got you covered. You can set a date anytime up to 7 days in advance and your new photo sidekick will make sure you don’t miss the big event.

Keeping Tabs On Your Location

With the geo-tagging function you’ll always know just where your photos were taken. This Nikon-only feature will update your coordinates and send them from your phone to your camera once a minute. And with GPS and A-GPS, even when taking photos indoors you won’t need to worry about your GPS receiver losing signal. 

Geotagging function demo on iOS with a Nikon camera indoor.

Remote Dongle

Independent Shutter Button

Cubic Trigger can act as a stand-alone wired shutter trigger. The button has a 2-stage action to first focus, then take the photo. We have also taken the texture of the button into consideration, making sure it feels as good, or better, than the shutter button on your camera. 

Compact Size And Light-weight Design

An accessory is not useful if it takes its own bag just to carry, so we shrunk it down to a dimension of 53.6 x 31.2 x 13.6mm -- even smaller than the average car key or garage remote! Just slip it into your camera bag or pocket and away you go. And comparing Cubic Trigger to traditional electric camera triggers, it weighs in at a mere 14g without its battery. 

Detachable Hot Shoe Mount

Cubic Trigger can be affixed to the camera using a standard shoe mount or, for those that like to hang loose, the mount can be removed to allow the device to be operated at any angle. After much trial and error, we found the perfect material that is flexible yet holds snugly on to Cubic Trigger.

Long Distance Operation

Bluetooth 4.0 has a range of 25m (85ft) when used in an open environment. Now you can put yourself in your photos without having to set a timer, use a selfie stick, or ask a stranger who, let’s be honest, likely has no idea how to operate your camera. And when taking photos of something else, you now aren’t tied to your camera but instead can move around freely to better control your subject.

Energy Efficient

Bluetooth 4.0 technology’s economic use of power means that under normal use conditions, Cubic Trigger can continue to communicate with the app for more than half a year before the battery runs out. And once that happens, if you have opted for the CR2032 single-use coin battery, all you need to do is buy a new one. 

Hardware Specs

Dimensions: 53.6 X 31.2X 13.6 mm (without hot shoe mount) 

Range: 25 m / 85 feet (open area environment)  

Weight: 14 g / 0.5 ounces (Without Battery)

Battery Type: CR2032 battery 

Battery life:  

        Approx. 6 months (4 hours/day, Geotagging off) 

        Approx. 1 month (4 hours/day, Geotagging on)

Interchangeable Cable

Cubic Trigger connects the camera by a interchangeable cable. Simply replace the cable, and it is ready for different camera(s). Currently the cable is available for Canon, Nikon, and Sony. We're planning to make cable for other brands in near future.

Cable Length: 15 cm / 6 inch

Camera support:

• Nikon 10-pin remote terminal : D1, D1H, D1X, D2, D2H, D2Hs, D2X, D2Xs, D3, D3s, D3x, D4, D4s, D5, D200, D300, D300s, D500, D700, D800, D800e, D810, D850 and later.
• Nikon DC-2 cable : Df, D90, D600, D610, D750, D3100, D3200, D3300, D5000, D5100, D5200, D5300, D7000 and D7100; CoolPix A, P7700, P7800 and later.
• Canon E3 type : Digital Rebel, EOS 1000D, EOS 100D, EOS 200D, EOS 1100D, EOS 1200D, EOS 1300D, EOS 300D, EOS 350D, EOS 400D, EOS 450D, EOS 500D, EOS 550D, EOS 600D, EOS 60D, EOS 60Da, EOS 650D, EOS 700D, EOS 70D, EOS 77D, EOS M6, EOS M5, EOS 800D, EOS 80D, EOS 760D, EOS 750D, Kiss Digital, Kiss F Digital, Kiss N, Kiss X2, Kiss X2, Kiss X3, Kiss X4, Kiss X5, Kiss X50, Kiss X6, PowerShot G1 X, G1 X MK2, PowerShot G10, PowerShot G11, PowerShot G12, PowerShot G15, PowerShot G16, PowerShot SX50 HS, SX60, Rebel SL1, Rebel T1i, Rebel T2i, Rebel T3, Rebel T3i, Rebel T4i, Rebel T5i, Rebel XS, Rebel XSi, Rebel XT, Rebel XTi, Pentax 645D, 645Z, ist D, ist DL, ist DL2, ist DS, ist DS2, K-3, K-3 II, K-30, K-5, K-5 II, K-5 IIs, K-50, K-500, K-7, K10 Grand PrixK100D, K100D Super, K10D, K110D, K200D, K20D, MZ-6, MZ-L, and ZX-L, Samsung GX-1L, GX-1S, GX-20, NX-10, NX-100, NX-11, NX-5, Contax 645, N, N Digital, N1, NX, Fujifilm X-E1, X-E2, X-T1, X-T2, Sigma SD1, SD1 Merrill, SD15, Hassleblad H, H3D, H4D-200MS, H4D-31, H4D-40, H4D-50, H4D-50MS, H4D-60, LYTRO Illum, Olympus E-M1 Mark II
• Canon N3 type : EOS 10D, 20D, 30D, 40D, 50D, 7D, 6D, 1D Mark II, 1Ds Mark II, 1D Mark III, 1Ds Mark III, 1D Mark IV, 5D, 5D Mark II, 5D Mark III & 5D Mark IV and later
• Sony Multi-terminal : RX100 II, RX100 III, RX100 IV, RX100 V, NEX-3N, A3000, A3500, A5000, A5100, A6000, A6300, A6500, A7, A7 II, A7R, A7R II, A7R III, A7S, A7S II, A9, A58, A68, A77 II, A99 II, HX50, HX50V, HX60, HX60V, HX80, HX90V, HX300, HX350, HX400, HX400V, WX500, RX10, RX10 II, RX10 III, RX1R II and later.

Package includes

   1 x Cubic Trigger Unit

   2 x Camera Connection Cable  (Only one cable for Sony)

   1 x Hot Shoe Mount

   1 x Loop Strap

   1 x CR2032 Battery

Timeline

About the Creator

Hi, I’m Simon Yeh, an amateur photographer and software engineer with more than a decade of experience in designing software specifically for smartphones. Being a photographer myself, I always felt daunted and annoyed with all the complicated manual settings on cameras needed to take stunning photos like the pros. And these issues are only compounded when adding a traditional electronic camera trigger to the mix. Not only are they big and clumsy, their small screens and limited button functions can make setup a real pain.

But with the advent of Bluetooth 4.0 technology in smartphones, everything changed. That’s when I got the idea to turn our phones, something we all use everyday, into a simple tool to make photography much more intuitive and rewarding for everyone. To meet this challenge, I used my expertise in software engineering to design the simplest, most user-friendly interface I could. My goal was to come up with an app that is streamlined, reliable, and responsive.

What’s more, living in Taiwan I had access to some of the leading hardware tech companies on the planet to bring my designs to life. In the beginning it was slow going, but now I entering the opening stretch. The first run of mass production is out of the way, as well as FCC and CE certification. The Android and iOS apps are now both up and available for download. But for the final step, we need your help.