Added, September 5, 2025: This is a detailed overview of the Afidus ATL-230 and ATL-800i, app, features, settings and camera capabilities. Watch on YouTube for a detailed topic index, in the description.
Long Term Time Lapse Basic Concepts
It's always better to capture too much footage than not enough. Proper camera set-up is critical, but not complicated. Consider most video is played at 30 frames per second, YouTube, TV or your time lapse. 30 frames per second playback is a fixed number. The primary variable is how often you capture a time lapse frame. Let’s work backwards for a better understanding.
If you capture one frame a day, 30 days would be one second of video.
If you capture one frame an hour, 30 hours would be one second of video.
If you capture one frame a minute, 30 minutes would be one second of video.
If you capture one frame a second, 30 seconds is condensed to one second of video.
With these examples a time lapse calculator makes accurate camera settings easy to determine. The Afidus camera has a calculator within the app similar to this. The camera also has a start/stop timer, typically we use the number of working or project hours as a start. Whether 40 or 400 hours this is the primary variable to enter first. Then add the capture interval, it’s okay to guess, but we rarely go above 5 minutes, 1 minute is generally a good starting point. Note the storage space required is low, even on long projects a large card may not be necessary.
An Afidus exclusive feature, Image Alignment allows you to remove and replace the camera in the exact position.
Capture the action and exclude nonworking hours and weekends. New firmware allows up to four time slots each day.
Within the Afidus app, simply enter the number of project hours and an interval to determine your video length and card space required.
The Afidus camera's optical zoom lens is capable of extreme macro focusing less than an inch from the lens to subject.
