MaxStone Kickstarter will turn your iPhone into an IR control for any camera

 

 

While you might not use it too often, most DSLRs have an infrared port, one that'll allow you to at the very least fire the shutter using a small, inconspicuous remote control. But the new Kickstarter MaxStone wants to put a lot more power in your infrared control, by tying them to your iPhone.

Rather than using your iPhone directly as an IR remote control, the MaxStone is a small dongle that you hang from your camera, which does the IR section of the heavy lifting. It, in turn, is controlled over Bluetooth 4.0 from your iPhone, and can be used to simply trigger the shutter, shoot with a delay, on bulb mode, or for a timelapse — from up to 100 feet away. It can also be used in the opposite direction, triggering the iPhone using the MaxStone directly; or for security purposes, as the iPhone can tell how far away the MaxStone is, and will alert you if it goes too far away from you.

This isn't the first attempt at a widely compatible iPhone control scheme for cameras. There's the TriggerTrap Mobile (though that needs a wire). Or you can but the IR trigger for DSLR Bot (or make your own), but the range on those are a lot more limited.

While the first round of super-cheap early backer MaxStones are gone, you can still grab a Christmas themed one for $29 — and yes, there are talks of an Android version in the works. The project is around half-way funded, with 55 days left to go, so there's a fairly good chance of this one at least getting enough backers to come to production.