I was thinking about buying a remote control for my Canon 350D in order to be able to experiment more with long exposures. Of course, the camera's build in shutter timer is very helpful, but it gets quite annoying to wait 10s for each shot. Canon offers an official shutter release cable (Canon RS-60E3) which looks quite good, but besides the price it also comes with a very short cable.

It seems that the remote control mechanism is very simple - it's based only on connecting the cables with a few switches. After following this guide, here's what I've come up with:

Of course, it doesn't look that fancy as the official remote - but I kind of like how it turned out. I used a film canister for the case, probably it would look a lot better in a very small plastic case (maybe from some vitamins?). I've bought all the parts for 3 € (including the solder, since it's been some time since I've played with DIY electronics) - but with some luck, one might be able to find all the parts from old appliances.