This is the actual circuit board that was pulled from the Panasonic video camera’s remote control. It’s got this gray and black surface that is conductive when the pads embedded in the rubber of the remote’s buttons are pressed. Unfortunately it was not conductive with metal, solder, anything useful… which meant that I ended up sanding the black and gray material off the surface of the circuit board in order to reveal the small copper pads located beneath.
Although maybe tedious and certainly not the easiest way to hack a circuit, drilling a couple of small holes through the remote’s circuit board in order to thread the wires through and make a connection between the remote circuit and the transistors wired to a separate circuit board that then connects to the Arduino.
It’s a simple and easy hack, clean and works quite well. The only downside is that the way it’s being controlled with the current setup, both in terms of hardware and software, results in the wide angle/telephoto adjustment speed is “full-on”. Adding resistance to the circuit or the software settings would be a helpful way to make an adjustment to how this circuit works.
More on this as it continues to be modded and developed further.