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Home / MISC Areas / Cameras Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera Info and hacks

Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) hardware1 Profile Continued from the News area. http://www.linux-hacker.net/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/UltraBoard.pl?Action=ShowPost&Board=bnews&Post=831 Some of the web pages for info are: Starting Wiki info page for this: http://revjim.net/wiki/DakotaDigitalCamera Windows, Mac, Linux programs: http://www.cexx.org/dakota/ Linux: http://www.maushammer.com/systems/dakotadigital/DakotaDigital.html Linux Motion Program: http://motion.sourceforge.net/ Original Slashdot Article: http://slashdot.org/articles/03/11/12/2354206.shtml?tid=152&tid=185&tid=188 Deer cam using Canon dig s100's and regular 35mm film cameras using Radio Shack PIR detectors and PIR's out of motion detection lights: http://jesseshuntingpage.com/homebrew-cams.html Camera insides: http://pavleck.com/ritz/www.eetimes.com/ http://frutsel.terrainhost.com/frutselapp/dump/dakota/index.htm Walgreens Pure Digital Info: http://earth.prohosting.com/puredig/ Check all around inside your local 99 cent store for Palm M100, III, VII connectors, "serial sync cable" they are all the same from those PALM models. USB cable and connector for 99 cents for handspring or other PDA, look around the store, on end of isles etc... 11-25-2003 22:57:01

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) hardware1 Profile Some quick notes: There's no difference between the Palm M100, III, VII connectors, I got both from the 99 cent store (serial sync cable). All the connector pins are there, and you simply pop off the cover with a small flat head screwdriver, slip it under near the *back* side of the connector pins and it just pops off. Solder tabs on the connector pins make it easy, just un-solder all the wires and reconnect them color coded as per the USB connections, using yellow instead of white. Then strip and connect all the colored wires to your USB connector (99 cent), tape or shrink tube all the wires and be happy. If you have a long USB cable, then you could just solder it right to the connector. See pinout below. Always talk to the manager of the camera store, they are cool. The news as of 11/25/03 is that the wherehouse has none and they are on order from the factory. Get what you can now. We also don't know if they will be modifying them to *try* to prevent this. (we know how that goes from the I-Opener, watch for epoxy!) A store can ask another store to send them some and hold them for you for no extra charge, try that first, the manager should be happy to call other stores around to find some for you. A store will order one or more for you and have them shipped directly to your door at the same price when they have none, but if the wherehouse has none, you are screwed for now. Follow the instructions exactly for the windows driver, it's *not* like a normal driver install, but it does work in the end. Linux drivers, well.... Try the link below. Personally, I would like to be able to use this as a security camera under Linux using the "motion" program that detects motion from most web or video input devices. This camera has the RAM to hold one shot and then should be able to transfer that over the USB just like a web cam. Pinout: 1. : R57, not stuffed 2. : GND (battery neg) 3. : R18-via-r68-r47-left switch inner contact and delete button 4. : r25 not stuffed 5. : r5 (1K ohm) to sunplus pin 33 6. : 5v in (from USB) (red usb wire) 7. : GND 8. : USB data (green wire) 9. : USB data (white wire) 10. : GND (black usb wire) Pins are marked on the printed circuit board - pin 1 is nearest the shutter release and pin 10 is at the bottom of the camera. The info for the pins came from: http://revjim.net/wiki/DakotaDigitalCamera Linux: http://www.maushammer.com/systems/dakotadigital/DakotaDigital.html Motion Program: http://motion.sourceforge.net/ 11-25-2003 22:58:34

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) zmoz Profile Just picked one up today, they had quite a pile of them at the store. Couldn't help but think "sucker" as she explained the $11 processing to me. :) A waterproof camera would be GREAT for me to take along with me in my boat, rather than worry about my $400 camera. :) How do you guys plan on waterproofing? I was thinking some sort of plexiglass box... 11-29-2003 17:46:25

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) zmoz Profile Also, if anybody that can't find one is interested, I will pick one up for you for $20. 11-29-2003 20:15:49

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Kudzu Profile Is there any difference in the pinout between the $10.99 version and the $16.99 w/lcd? 11-30-2003 00:42:08

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) zmoz Profile Where did you hear about a $16.99 version? I didn't know there was one...but the $10.99 has an LCD. 11-30-2003 02:09:03

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) BigDog Profile | Email Kudzu.... Any chance the $16 one has a preview LCD or bigger storage/higher megapixels? I heard on some web page that there was going to be a better quality camera coming out, I would be willing to pay a premium price to get one of those $16 cameras as long as they aren't the Walgreens type assuming it's a better camera and not just a change in marketing price. EMAIL ME (edit the spam out) The $10 ones yes do have a lcd but it's only for viewing the numeric info of the camera as pictures taken.. 11-30-2003 09:15:28

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Kudzu Profile Where did you hear about a $16.99 version? I didn't know there was one...but the $10.99 has an LCD. From the store manager, who looked it up. He saw the second model, and told me about it. Any chance the $16 one has a preview LCD or bigger storage/higher megapixels? It does have a preview LCD, but he didn't mention anything about higher resolution. They're supposed to be in tomorrow, so I'll let you guys know. 12-03-2003 14:09:11

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Powercntrl Profile MEEE TOOOOOO!!!! Whoops, bad AOL flashback. Yep, I'm interested in the new model with the LCD and am really anxious to purchase one new-in-box if you get a few extras you don't mind parting with. 12-04-2003 18:39:49

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) hardware1 Profile For the USB cable, get the "handspring" USB cable, or some other long USB cable at the 99 cent store. The handspring one makes a much better cable, you just unsolder it from the handspring pins and solder to the palm connector, leaving the strain relief on the cable, very nice clean looking job. My local store got 15 more cameras in, just call the store near you every week, they will tell you when they typically get their shipment in. It takes them about a day before they know what's in the shipment and unpack it all. The manager said he will get the new $16 cameras as soon as the wherehouse gets some. Hope soon! I have seen a few of these have darker pictures no matter what you do, and slight blurryness around the edges, so always get a few more than you need (spare parts?). I have also seen the pics be sort of off white, but if you take about 5 pictures of a white wall it seems to then balance the white and pictures are much better after that. 12-05-2003 08:16:31

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) zmoz Profile So, Kudzu, any word on the other camera?? That would be GREAT! 12-05-2003 21:53:21

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) hardware1 Profile Update to last post, those 15 pcs came from another store, there are still none at the wherehouse. 12-06-2003 04:39:50

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Kudzu Profile It looks like they are backordered. He didn't get his lot of Dakota cameras, new or old, in either of the two shipments he got last week. The next delivery date is Wednesday, I'll have to check back then. 12-08-2003 16:55:36

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) wfg97079 Profile Anyone figure out how to make one of these a "deer cam" ? Is there a place to get these online? 12-10-2003 14:59:52

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile I just picked up two of these cameras, I wanted to get the Walgreens ones, but unfortunately I don't live anywhere near Wisconsin. I asked the cashier when the new cameras with the preview LCD would be in and he said "next year." How precise of him. Anyway, I was wondering if anybody had tried putting a USB "B" port (downstream) on one of these, instead of fooling with all the Palm cradle connector hooba-jooba. I was thinking that would be useful, since then you could use a standard USB A-to-B cable instead of needing a proprietary one, in case it got lost. I'm attempting to find a decent source of "B" ports, although I'll probably just end up cannibalizing one from a dead USB device. 12-17-2003 12:29:31

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile Oooo, just thought of more! I can't remember where I read it, I think it was here somewhere, about these cameras having enough ram to store a pic in and then it could be uploaded over the USB cable so it could be used like a webcam? Anyway, I was thinking if that would work, maybe you could attach it to an LCD of some kind and use that as the preview. Not that you would really want to use it that way, but it opens up many different uses. Also, I was reading about removing the focus glue-blob and adding a manual adjuster, and that seemed pointless to me unless you had a preview function... but what about adding a servo of some sort that could do the adjusting for you? If you could send the preview to the computer via the usb, maybe you could send messages to the servo and control the focus manually via a control prog? That reminds me of another topic, what about re-flashing any firmware these cameras have in order for them to use something more substantial than FAT12? I realize it wouldn't do much good on this model, but the Walgreen's model could then use larger flash. And then maybe you could integrate the "manual-focus servo control" function so that commands could be sent natively over USB. Finally, anybody have any suggestions for filler material for the connection slot? If I add a USB "B" port I want to fill in the open slot that is there now. I have some autobody filler, but that would just be for finishing. I don't know what to fill the big hole with first. Epoxy? I'm quite fond of hot-glue, but it's not very permanent. 12-17-2003 12:43:00

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) zmoz Profile Shouldn't be that hard to put in a USB B connector, I was thinking of doing it but didn't want to bother looking for the connector. I ended up using the power connector from an old floppy drive. 12-17-2003 12:45:59

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile I was taking a look at the datasheet for the CPU in the cam: /http://files.gentlenews.com/pdf/spca504bv01.pdf And I noticed some interesting features... >The USB interface supports the following pipes to the PC: >-- Video ISO-IN pipe for video data transmission to the PC >-- Audio ISO-IN pipe for Audio data transmission to the PC >-- BULK-IN pipe for uploading images from the camera to the PC >-- BULK-OUT pipe for downloading image data, audio data, firmware, and MP3 data to the camera >-- INTERRUPT-IN pipe for reporting camera status and events to the PC> > >The SPCA504B has five camera operation modes including IDLE, >DSC, PC-CAM, Video-Clip and Upload/download modes. >The mode transition is controlled by the firmware. Register 0X2000 >defines the camera operation mode. The SPCA504B enters the >designated mode immediately after the Cam mode register is >programmed. All unfinished tasks are abandoned once the mode is >changed. > >-- PC-camera mode at 30 frames/sec fof CIF size, 20 frames/sec for VGA size > >PC-Camera mode - While operating in this mode, the SPCA504B >acts like a PC-camera. The image is taken, processed, >compressed and passed to the PC via the USB bus continuously. >The audio data can be sent to the PC at the same time via another >USB pipe. USB ISO pipes are used in this mode. The firmware >does nothing except AE/AWB adjustments in this mode. > >Storage Media Interface > >The SPCA504B supports NAND-gate flash memory, nor-type flash memory, ATA >interface, SPI interface, SD memory card and the NextFlash serial interface for the >storage media. These interfaces share the `fmgpio" bus. The pin definitions >depend on the type of the storage media selected. If some pins of the "fmgpio" >bus are not used in a specific type of storage media, they can be used as GPIO's >for the system control. In the 128-pin application, the fmgpio[19:8] is not bonded. >The SDRAM data bus is shared with the storage media bus. So the cam supports webcam mode right out of the box, you just need to set the register. I believe the VIDEO-IN pipe they speak of is just an isochronous transfer mode? And there are GPIOs to control a focus servo, although no INTERRUPT-OUT mode. You could probably control the GPIOs some other way, though. So I'm going to do more research on how to change the mode. I'm sure a new driver will have to be built for this, but I think that applies for anything else that you would do with this project. At least their are other people I can ask that know how to do it! NOTE: I found it interesting how the camera has a native ATA interface. Seems like you could attach the thing to an IDE bus and send the video data that way, allowing you to bypass the USB bandwidth limitation. Then you could use "Video-Clip" mode and maybe use a higher resolution than VGA. 12-17-2003 14:31:02

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) zmoz Profile Wouldn't that be funny...hook it up to a hard drive and end up with a digital camcorder. 12-17-2003 14:41:37

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile Heck yeah! Throw an ide-1394 bridgeboard on it and make a DV cam! (Well, without the DV part of course) 12-17-2003 15:06:37

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Drmn4ea Profile You guys read my mind - I was just looking for this in the firmware the other day. Turns out you can set the mode with either of the control commands 0x31 or 0x32. (0x31 messes with one of the 8051's timers first, and 0x32 just sets the mode, but I'm not sure what exactly the timer stuff is all about.) The set-mode routine does something wierd; it subtracts 1 from whatever mode you specify (e.g. to specify mode 3, you have to send a 4). It's actually a little wierder for invalid modes, but that's the gist of it. The mode values are as follows: SPCA50X_CamMode_Idle = 0, (sitting on your USB port doing nothing) SPCA50X_CamMode_DSC = 1, (Digital Still Camera; e.g. taking pictures the normal way) SPCA50X_CamMode_VideoClip = 2, SPCA50X_CamMode_PcCamera = 3, SPCA50X_CamMode_Upload = 4 (bulk transferring pictures) Anyway, if you... usb_control_msg(cam, 0x41, 0x32, 0x0000, 0x0004, NULL, 0, 5000); (that is, Out (host -> device), bRequest 0x32, wValue dont-care, wIndex 0x0004) the camera will be set to Mode 3 (PC-Camera) and the 'Ready' light on the back of the cam will start blinking on and off rapidly. It will stay this way until another mode is set (or you unplug, etc.) You can just as easily set VidClip mode (mode 2) with usb_control_msg(cam, 0x41, 0x32, 0x0000, 0x0003, NULL, 0, 5000); but I'm not sure how you'd actually use this, since the only apparent way to set it is thru the USB, and you can't take pictures while the cam is plugged into a computer. Away from its tether, it will revert to still-camera mode as soon as it's turned on. Obvious question now is, how do you get at the webcam data? Some of the opensource webcam drivers I've seen use a fair amount of bit-bashing, fiddling with camera registers, etc.--it doesn't look as simple as 'slurp data off the USB' (though it still might be). I haven't tried anything yet with this, since I'm NOT a Windows driver developer (and barely even a programmer and the only way I know to touch the USB port on my machine is thru libusb-win32, which (like regular libusb) does not support isochronous transfers. But we do have some programmer types here, right? 12-18-2003 00:50:55

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Zodiacal Profile | Email will a palm pilot cradle work? i have the original palm cradle. it seems like the same connector 10 pins etc.. whats so special about the palm m100 connector? or should i just send my palm cradle to a museum? 12-18-2003 11:23:49

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile Well, from what I know about USB, which, as they say, "is just enough to get me into trouble," isochronous mode is a "lossy" transfer mode. There is no error correction or re-sending of lost packets. The idea is to use this mode for things like audio/video transfer, where you don't really care if you lose some of it, you just want it to keep streaming, not sit around and wait for the data to be resent. So, I think the idea of "slurping data off the USB" may be quite close to reality. The main problem I see here is the the "libusb" library doesn't support isochronous mode. I take it this library is the one that was used to connect to the camera in bulk mode? Basically, I think step one is to find a lib that supports isoch mode... because without that functionality we can't really go any further. 12-18-2003 13:43:14

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile *Drmn4ea: where did you hear that libusb doesn't support isoch mode? On first glance at the docs it seems to support isoch just fine. http://wwwbode.cs.tum.edu/Par/arch/usb/download/usbdoc/usbdoc-1.32.pdf Pages 19-22 specifically describe setting up an isoch transfer. I will attempt to look at some demo source to get an idea of what's going on here (I am not a programmer, either, actually I *detest* programming except in the most dire situations, although device drivers are close enough to hardware for me to attempt it.) 12-18-2003 13:58:21

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Drmn4ea Profile That looks like documentation of the Linux USB system, not libusb (or are they the same?) I was going by the documentation here: http://libusb.sourceforge.net/doc/ and google. I can say for sure that it's not in the win32 version though; the raw URB-type stuff isn't even in its export table. Libusb is what the Linux and Windows programs have been using to communicate with the camera so far. It's used by gPhoto, and I also used it (win32 port) in the Windows cam-reader at http://cexx.org/dakota/sucr.htm since I know relatively little about USB, driver-writing, etc., and this just makes it too damn easy. Unfortunately the usb-capable Linux machine I was using for Dakota testing has been returned to its owner (and no longer a Linux machine), so I'm stuck testing in Windows 'til I can scrounge another machine. 12-18-2003 16:31:21

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile I love Linux, but at this point I think the development will need to begin on the Windows side and be ported. I am significantly more familiar with Windows driver development, and due to the lack of a cross-platform lib that does isoch, I'll just jump the gun and say we start from that side. Here's a link to peruse: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/stream/hh/stream/usbcmdds_6pt3.asp 12-18-2003 17:17:48

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 1 times) hardware1 Profile The reason for the $2 (total cost) palm cable is that it's only $2 : ) The main reason is you don't have to modify each camera at all, so you (or other people) can just go buy more and give them to other family members! I have probably made 8 or more of these cables for family & friends so far. It takes less than 10 minutes to make a connector with the 99 cent store ones I talked about. You pop off the cover of the handspring USB cable, unsolder the wires, pop off the cover of the palm connector and put it in a desktop vise to hold it, unsolder all wires, then solder the USB wires to the pins, snap the cover back together and you are done. The worst part is trimming the plastic cover down so it fits right. I just do a bunch all at once, setup is the time consuming part, once you have a vice set to hold it it's not too bad. I use a ice cream bar wood stick to shim the connector up at a angle so the part you trim is flat (it's at a little bit of a angle if you look at it). I remove the connector pin part from the cover, then snap the cover back together (it's now a empty shell) so it can be clammped into the "flat" vice I have. The resulting cable is very professional looking and strong so you don't get everyone coming back to you for re-solder. (if you use the handspring long USB cable) 12-19-2003 06:48:28

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile Anybody found a dollar store in the Seattle area that has cables? The only I knew of off-hand was the one up by Northgate, and they didn't have any computer cables at all. They had a 20% sale though! 12-22-2003 10:25:36

I put a USB B port on the dakota (modified 0 times) dorkwadicus Profile Nothing too original here, but I put a B port on my dakota and it was indeed easy. I got the connector from a dead inkjet printer and epoxied it to the PCB under the lens so it peeks out the non-connector side of the cam. A little case-dremeling and it was all done. I used twisted pairs from ethernet cable to run through the cam's interior to connect the proprietary connector to the B port. No special cables anymore! I don't have webspace but I do have pix if anybody wants them. (I gave them to John at http://www.maushammer.com/systems/dakotadigital/DakotaDigital.html so maybe he'll put them on his site) Happy hardware hacking, folks, and lets keep our eyes peeled for the mythical preview LCD version! 12-22-2003 15:08:35

USB Port pix are up (modified 0 times) dorkwadicus Profile I just put my pix on the web. http://fire.prohosting.com/2agnst1/dakotausb.html ENJOY 12-22-2003 16:10:25

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Zodiacal Profile | Email i can conferm that an orignal palm pilot cradle works with this camera. altho it has no cover for the connector once removed from the cradle so i would guess that a hotsync cable would work cleaner. just wanted to let the people know that it does work tho. 12-22-2003 17:42:31

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile Just a note, if you live in the Seattle area and are not new to these type of hacks, you are probably familiar with Vetco Surplus in Bellevue. Unfortunately they didn't have any bare B-type USB connectors, but they had a female-female gender changer that has two B-type female receptacles. It was $5. The covering was easy to strip off with a razor-knife, and now I have two of these receptacles to add to my Dakotas! 12-23-2003 13:37:18

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Lincoln_man Profile I was just a Walley World and the have a digital for $19.97 with a usb cable and CD. 12-23-2003 13:51:41

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) zmoz Profile That camera probably isn't even 1 megapixel, let alone 1.3. 12-23-2003 18:46:26

Windows Driver development (modified 0 times) Drmn4ea Profile Does anyone want to try adapting the Dakota Windows software (http://cexx.org/dakota/sucr.htm ) to use an actual WinDDK-style driver? This will be necessary to take advantage of the 'Webcam' mode, since it will require ISO transfer. 12-24-2003 02:19:33

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) YouBecha Profile Here is the wally world camera...100,000 pixel ...so that is 0.1 megapixle? http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=2394064&cat=4468&type=19&dept=3944&path=0%3A3944%3A3959%3A4468#long_descr http://www.geocities.com/mr_bubba_zanetti/ 12-24-2003 07:44:08

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile I think whoever wrote that spec page was drinking gasoline. At the top it says 1.0MP and that it has a compact flash slot, then under the description it says 100,000 pixels (which is 0.1MP, yes) and no flash slot. It also says it only has 2MB of flash. My favorite part tho: "Low 100,000 pixel resolution helps reduce memory needs" Haha! 12-29-2003 14:07:53

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) 02U2 Profile >Here is the wally world camera...100,000 pixel ...so that is 0.1 megapixle< IMHO that AIPTEK camera is pretty much usless. I have had one setting on the shelve collecting dust for about a year, played with it for about an hour when I first bought it. Was going to return it but never found the lost receipt. Poor picture quality, Max. Resolution: 320 x 240 Just a usb interface. CF? memory is fixed internal. 12-29-2003 16:54:33

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile >Does anyone want to try adapting the Dakota Windows software (http://cexx.org/dakota/sucr.htm ) to use an actual WinDDK-style >driver? This will be necessary to take advantage of the 'Webcam' mode, since it will require ISO transfer. I just had a thought. I'm going to attempt to contact SunPlus and see if they have a reference driver available for this chip... ...but an even better idea would be to find a webcam that uses this chip and has a Windows driver and reverse-engineer it to work with the Dakota. 12-30-2003 18:19:49

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile Well, that wasn't too difficult. Looks like the Intel CS330 uses the SPCA501 chip. (Not the "B" version, but maybe it's close enough.) And I found a Win2000 driver at driverguide. Unfortunately, I don't have my other Dakota finished yet, so will somebody else try this out? 1. sign up for driverguide (it's free) 2. download from here http://members.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=84555 3. run the installer 4. when it asks you which folder to decompress to, unpack to a folder you can get to easily (like c:/temp) 5. STOP! 6. go copy that folder to your desktop (just so when you stop the installation it doesn't delete the files) 7. edit "icam3usb.inf" 8. replace all instances of "VID_0733&PID_0401" with "VID_04FC&PID_FFFF" You may need to do this on a machine that you haven't installed the SUCR drivers on. Most likely this driver will just blue-screen your machine, so be prepared. 9. Plug in the Dakota and point it to the hacked inf when it asks. 12-30-2003 19:21:35

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) mriggs Profile Intel has the drivers for other platforms available here http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df/Product_Search.asp?Prod_nm=CS330*&Prod_ty=&Line_nbr=12&page_nbr=1 I don't have a box I can try them on but please post your results if you try 12-30-2003 19:48:15

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile Whoops, scratch that. The one we're looking for is the SPCA504B, not 501. 12-30-2003 19:48:26

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile Found it. Looks like the "Aiptek MiniPenCam 1.3" uses the SPCA504A chip. Download the driver package here: http://www.aiptek.de/index.php?mapid=24&main=21&PHPSESSID=20c24930277e7966626c6e564441627e It's the one labeled "megacammanager_vs1511.exe" Now unpack like the other one, but don't install. You need to get Zipscan to be able to open the CAB files: http://www.zipscan.co.uk/download.htm Now open DATA1.CAB and extract "ca504a.inf" and "ca504av.inf". There are several, get the newest and largest, I guess. Do the VID/PID swap thingy. When you try to install you will need all the .sys and misc. files it calls for in the .inf. You'll have to extract them one-by-one. I don't know if their viewer program checks VID/PID IDs, but from what I saw you can use it as a viewer for the webcam. SOMEBODY TRY IT OUT AND REPORT! 12-30-2003 20:41:10

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) mriggs Profile Working on it as we speak... 12-30-2003 20:57:00

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) mriggs Profile I'm having with my XP machine currently, but it looks like CA504A.inf is USB, CA504AV.inf is for Video, and the CA504AI.inf is for bulk... 12-30-2003 21:07:52

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) mriggs Profile No Luck :( When you install the program a folder called setup504 get stuck under the windows directory, It looks to part of the SDK for the SPCA504A chip. I am not a driver programmer by any means but there may be some useful stuff under there (looks to be a bulk driver, camera driver and USB driver, some AVI and webcam stuff) I also found this on google cache ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Download the PenCam SD driver: http://www.aiptek.com/driverfiles/pencamsd.zip Install it as normal, click Yes twice when asked to install a driver. Now find the 3 .inf files it installed into \winnt\inf (or \windows\inf) by searching for the string "VID_04FC" or "PID_504B". There should be 3 files called oemX.inf where X is a number. Open all three files and change all the "VID_04FC&PID_504B" into "VID_04FC&PID_FFFF". This should occur at least once per file. Now plug in the camera and let Windows search for the driver. It should find it without problem. It should install 2 drivers. One is for access to the pictures, the other is a video capture device for using the chipset as a web cam or something. Now you can fire up the PenCam SD Manager program, and it will load and not balk at you until you try to do something.... Other drivers and applications have similar results (and procedures - just change the VID_XXXX&PID_XXXX to VID_04FC&PID_FFFF), but the apps may fail at slightly different points. On a USB snooper you can see the driver load and send a few initialization packets and get responses. Same goes for the application - though the response must not be what the app is expecting, and/or the program isn't sending the right commands. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Will keep messing around with other drivers and try not to break my box 12-30-2003 22:21:10

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile Nice catch on the "setup504" folder! I hadn't noticed that one! So it looks like all we need to work with right now is the "ca504av.inf". I believe you will need to remove the "CatalogFile=MegaCamera.cat" from the 13th line... when we edit the .inf the driver is no longer signed anyway. What I'm curious about is the "MI_00" tag at the end of the VID/PID IDs. In "CA504A.INF" there is no "MI" tag, and in "CA504AI.INF" it's set to "01". I think this "MI" tag denotes which state the camera is in.... unfortunately I'm betting the Aiptek camera has a physical switch on it that changes the camera state to "webcam" mode. ...on looking at the wiki, this is what was dumped from USBSnoopy: > USBSnoop - Loaded for USB\VID_04FC&PID_FFFF&REV_0100&MI_01 So my conclusion is that we will need to switch the camera state to "webcam" before the driver will function. Drmn4ea: do you think you could write a little app that flips that function bit using libusb-win32? I only ask because you've worked with it before... if I sat down with it, it would take me a while to accustom myself. 12-31-2003 13:01:36

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile I just noticed mode "00" is "IDLE" not webcam mode. That is strange. Maybe it sits idle until an app asks for video data? 12-31-2003 13:03:40

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) morcheeba Profile The linux video driver for the SPCA50X series cameras does all of its control of the camera by using low-level registers, not by sending standard USB commands that tell the camera to go into webcam mode. I'm guessing it's done this way because some windows version did it that way, too. It makes a little sense actually - why put firmware in the camera when you don't need to - but it does make the pc software more complicated. http://freshmeat.net/projects/spca50x/?topic_id=101%2C103%2C126 01-02-2004 10:00:41

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Drmn4ea Profile >Drmn4ea: >do you think you could write a little app that flips that function bit using libusb-win32? I only ask because you've >worked with it before... if I sat down with it, it would take me a while to accustom myself. I can whip together a program that will just 'unlock' the camera and send the webcam command, then exit. Hopefully, the mode setting and unlock will survive releasing and re-claiming of the USB interface by another program (e.g. Aiptek/Intel webcam driver). It looks like some people have tried similar Windows webcam drivers already, without success--this might be all that's needed to get them working. Unfortunately, libusb(-win32) doesn't support the ISO (isochronous) mode required for the camera's webcam data, so actually grabbing the data will have to be done another way. 01-06-2004 18:45:21

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) morcheeba Profile That probably won't work dreamen... the only thing that that code protects is the 0x54 command, and that appears to be picture-only related. But, there is one 0x54 sub-index that I don't know what happens, so that might be the magical thing. Go ahead and give it a shot, but the the locking mechanism seems pretty narrow. 01-06-2004 22:37:18

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) mriggs Profile Well... The best luck I have had so far on XP is with the Intel CS780 driver, I had to change 2 inf files to reflect the correct USB ID, and had to change a file named icm12twn.pro to look like this -------------Begin File-------------------- [TWAIN_DS] MANUFACTURER= "Intel" PRODFAMILY= "USB PC Camera" PRODNAME= "Intel(r) PC Camera CS780" VERSION_INFO= "Version 1.0 7/15/2001" [USB_CAMERA] VID_PID= "VID_04fc&PID_FFFF&MI_00" DEVICE_NAME= "Intel(r) PC Camera CS780" DOWNLOAD_DSC= "1" VIDEO_CLIP_WIDTH= "320" VIDEO_CLIP_HEIGHT= "240" BURST_WIDTH= "320" BURST_HEIGHT= "240" [VIDEO_FORMAT] WIDTH= "320" HEIGHT= "240" FOUR_CC= "I420" [SNAPSHOT_BTN] CAM_SNAP_BTN= "0" [RAW_DATA] MODE= 2 FILE_NAME= "SnapRaw.dat" RAW_DATA_TYPE= "1" [REGISTRY_ENTRY] KEY_NAME_HDR= "Software\Intel\icm12\" -----------------End File--------------------- I get two entries under My Computer, one called Intel(r) PC Camera CS780 Image Storage which appears to be access to the flash, when I click on it I get two folders, one named Internal Flash and one named external flash both are empty even though I have pictures on the camera The second more exciting one is called Intel(r) PC Camera CS780 it appears to be a video device, when I click on it a get a succession of beeps from the camera then the led starts flashing fast. but no video. :( This is where I am stuck, if anyone with a little more experiance can help out I would appreciate it! 01-08-2004 10:31:08

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile Drmn4ea, If you could just make an app that does the unlock when it launches then have two buttons, one to set the mode register to 0 (because that's what the driver seems to be looking for) and the other that sets it to 3 (actual webcam mode). The docs say that the mode change happens instantaneously, so I don't see why it would be messed with by USB hooba-jooba. As soon as that register changes it will be seen by Windows as a different device and it will start looking for a driver for it. Course I could be completely wrong.... 01-09-2004 18:21:37

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Zodiacal Profile | Email Anyone know of a online store where i can buy one of the palm sync cables? or if radio shack will order them? know the part number? 01-10-2004 18:46:44

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) mriggs Profile Radio Shack has them, I am not too sure of the part number but I think it is in the Brick and Mortar only and not online... They had the palm 3 (off brand like belkin) serial cable on clearance for 4.97, it made a nice hacked cable as it was not a "crade based" type of connector more of a jack type connector. 01-10-2004 21:42:05

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Drmn4ea Profile As morcheeba has pointed out, there is a good chance that it will actually help us not at all, but I have put up a special build of Single-Use Camera Reader with mode setting options -- http://cexx.org/dakota/sucr-pb.zip . Modes can be set via the Advanced > Mode menu. This all should work, (the changes were very minor), but I have not actually tested it on a live camera--recently gave away my last one, and haven't had the chance yet to hack a new one. It's worth a shot, anyway - set the mode, close the program, then see if one of the existing Webcam drivers will talk to it. Or if you can think of something more creative, try that too (If you already have a copy of sucr.exe installed, you can simply copy the executable from the above over the existing file.) 01-13-2004 19:36:39

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile Great news! Thanks a bunch! 01-14-2004 17:12:35

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Drmn4ea Profile Released a new private build, you can grab it at http://cexx.org/dakota/sucr-pb2.zip . I've added a feature that allows you to view the changing contents of the camera's RAM/registers in realtime. This might be useful somehow to any driver-writing geniuses out there. There seem to be surprisingly few memory locations that change when the image in front of the camera does. It's obviously not buffering the image in that little piece of RAM, but I'm not quite sure what it IS doing. To assist homing in on memory locations that do vary, you can do the following: Set the appropriate mode. Dump the memory / register space to a file(s), then dump them again to new files while e.g. waggling your fingers in front of the lens (or whatever way you choose to generate a changing image). Finally, run the DOS/Windows command line utility fc.exe to find the differences in the files, and put these to a text file. (e.g. fc /B dump1 dump2 > diff.txt). This will produce a file listing the hex addresses (relative to the *dump file*) where the data has changed. (May need to repeat this a few times to catch many of those addresses). This is probably still a lot quicker than using the Memory Watcher to manually look at every address starting from 0. 01-17-2004 23:05:45

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) gust0208 Profile How to get my hands on a couple of these cameras? I tried calling the order number listed on cexx.org/dakota/, but I was told that they (apparently the order number and the website have the same catalog) do not carry the dakota single-use camera. What areas are people able to find these cameras in the brick-and-mortar store? The closest large area for me is Minneapolis, MN. Even better, if anyone has had luck ordering these on-line, I would be very grateful for any help so I can try out this slick mod! Cheers 01-21-2004 16:35:14

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) strae Profile | Email I am in NJ, which seems to be one of the first areas to get them - However, I am closer to Tarrytown NY and, even with the toll bridge it's probably cheaper than running the 30 or so miles to the nearest NJ store. I have to call the store back - the manager was going to try to get me some of the $17 units with preview LCD - a stupid buy for regular consumers, but if this cable works it will be awsome. I was looking at the focus mod - the lens has a plastic cone thingy in front of it - it can be popped off the camera easily and gives good access to the lens and its focus ring - I am going to try to drop some kind of ring into it to turn the lens - should make closing the case a real bitch - maybe it can be pressed down after assembly. 01-21-2004 23:59:42

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Lincoln_man Profile http://research.microsoft.com/%7Ezhang/calib/ A little something for you guys to try. Microsoft Camera Calibration Program Good luck. 01-22-2004 07:35:48

RE:Dakota - i 'd like some .... (modified 0 times) CthulpiSS Profile | Email Hi all, well - first of all - good work and second - i'll be extremly thankful if someone would help me with purchasing one Dakota. My main problem is thst I live in Europe so it must be send as gift to avoid additional fees. I'm opened to any resonable offers. Thanks again for all the info you put here 01-26-2004 17:05:47

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Zodiacal Profile | Email How can i make this camera automaticly download the picture(s) on it and then automaticly erase all the pictures on it? im using windows xp. how can i programicly open a usb port to send commands too. other usb devices seem to create virtual com ports but this one doesn't appear to do that. 02-02-2004 15:30:10

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) oldman Profile | Email anybody/everybody: has the Dakota with the preview screen been seen in stores yet? tx, oldman 02-03-2004 20:50:12

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) mriggs Profile I just called Wolf and they still don't have them :( 02-04-2004 10:53:19

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile Finally got my second camera modded, so I'm back to work on the webcam thing again. Just a few notes: 1. i talked to the guy at the camera place and he said they still didn't have a definite ship date for the preview-screen cams, but that you wouldn't be able to miss them because they would be *RED*. 2. i was looking at the libusb drivers for the cam, and i noticed that the third driver (ISO) has the tell-tale "&MI_00" ID. so if that ISO driver is for isochronous transfers, then it's just a placeholder? so i'm thinking that we could replace that driver with the aiptek one.... you would still need the other two libusb ones so that you could download pics, and change the mode bit with sucr-2pb. i verified that the mode bit doesn't reset when you quit sucr and relaunch it. i've got more playing to do... 02-04-2004 14:21:38

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Drmn4ea Profile I ponder... http://spca50x.sourceforge.net/spca50x.php?page=cams Anyone tried this, with or without some mild hacking? (It's been said that the spca50x.sourceforge.net stuff doesn't work with the Dakota, but that was referring to the still-image code with the unlock sequence and all. Webcam should be a different animal entirely, and there are definitely some supported "SPCA504b"s...) 02-04-2004 23:41:20

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) hardware1 Profile Wherehouse is always out and I would say that we should have seen more cameras by now, so I bet the corporate "heads" pulled the product, or they will waste a lot of time trying to make the connection more secure somehow and thereby kill the product because of engineering cost. Too bad they couldn't just think a little bit and realize that not everyone solders, or wants to machine or file down plastic connectors, and since they are getting something for the camera, it would probably even out after a few months when all the "geeks" got their cameras. On the other hand, thanks all for the great work on this, my 13 yr old kid is having a blast taking all sorts of crazy pictures of anything and everything, and I don't have to worry if he smashes the thing. I put the other one in my car in a ziplock baggie and have pulled it out a few times when I saw something I wanted a pic of. It saves me having to worry about theft or high temp on my "better" digital camera. I will be pocketing this during the next disneyland type trip and won't have to worry about leaving it in my hotel room when I go out to eat, or dropping it while on a ride. I am sure someone will start selling something like this direct at $25 soon anyway, Office Max had a USB still camera for $25 when I was there, it didn't say what res it was so I passed it up, (don't ask me who made it, it wasn't dakota) but I can see how this will be the norm soon. 02-05-2004 05:20:42

PC Mag review of Dakota (modified 0 times) PeeWee Profile This just in. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1485668,00.asp At the end of the article a tip of the hat to the hackers...and "bad news" from Pure Digital: "As you might expect, we discovered several sites dedicated to creating a USB connection for the camera, letting you reuse it and eliminate the cost of image processing. This is one way to get more for your money, but Pure Digital claims that images it processes will be of higher quality, and that, in any case, it will shortly release a model that incorporates stronger security measures aimed at preventing this sort of hacking." 02-06-2004 11:50:03

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) zmoz Profile Buy 'em up now...because it might be a month or so before we figure out how to hack the new version! 02-06-2004 15:27:00

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Linuxguru Profile | Email At some price point, say $20 or so, the price of a reusable camera with built-in security measures to prevent downloading will exceed the price of an entry-level consumer digicam. We're not there yet, but when that happens, interest in the reusable camera will die out except in niche applications for their original purpose. Meanwhile, let's make the most of the units we've harvested so far. 02-06-2004 21:55:36

Webcam mode - getting closer! (modified 0 times) Drmn4ea Profile I have found I am able to successfully read a continuous stream of data from the camera's ISO interface while in Webcam mode. It appears to be in a raw format (no JPG/JFIF or other headers), but there are some slack bits making it easy enough to tell where each new sample begins. I will poke at the dumped data some more probably tomorrow; but for anyone interested, here is the method I am using at the moment: There is a "USBIO Development Kit" available from http://www.thesycon.de/usbio/eng/usbio.htm . It is a commercial product, but there is a demo version there as well (it works only for 20 minutes at a time between reboots). You can set Webcam mode on the camera from sucr.exe and exit, even while the USBIO test program is running. The USB configurations may take some playing with; I am using the 'obvious' choice (Config 0 Interface 0 Altsetting 7, seems to be the 'fattest' ISO pipe [max. packet size]) at the moment. All left to do now is figure out this data format, and find a decent free / non-commercial ISO driver / source to suck the data out with It might be instructive to look at the sources for the Linux webcam drivers mentioned earlier, to help with interpreting the data. 02-07-2004 00:53:34

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) strae Profile | Email I am still told the preview model is widely available in larger stores in NY and Conn. Unfortunately, the closest to me is over 50 miles. My "local" Ritz store (10 miles, 1 state and 1 toll bridge away) is expecting them this week - he says they have a regional meeting and plans on beating the rep on the head until he releases at least a case to his store and says he wont leave the meeting until he gets some. DRMN4EA:I was wondering if that commercial USB library was appropriate to post - guess so. I actually tried to post about it like 3 days ago, but weird things are happening here lately regarding posting. Any chance of getting your INF - for some reason I am missing something and the ones I make will not install. Did you look at the freeware driver? Any use to us? - I just hate rebooting. If need be, I will run a VMWARE virtual PC to install the drivers in, eliminating the need to reboot (using the always revert mode) Also, as a side-topic; I just received a Walgreens model which I am sending a Ritz in exchange for. It actually looks like a better camera. It LOOKS nicer, it has anti red-eye (double flashes - this is a mixed blessing) and less disgusting stickers. I am going to try my hand at manually re-codeing your sucr and recompiling - but my grasp of c++ should result in some pain. Any chance of that "developer" version? I have a camera to kill :) I wonder what would happen if we simply loaded the Dakota firmware in it??? I recall someone saying the "chipset" was different - was that accurate, or is it just a variant? It also seems to be initialized differently - the PC display goes away almost instantly, as if it disables without some kind of unlock. My guess is that this version already incorporates the "tighter security" that Dakota is saying will be rolling out in the Ritz version soon...I still insist that these guys are nothing, if not LAZY. Perhaps the fact that the WG version has not been "hacked" yet makes them think that they can simply use it again, just change something tiny so they wont be cross-compatable between the 2 chains, although IMO that is stupid, the more processing facilities available, the more the cameras will be accepted. Any "loss" from the camera being developed at the other chain will be offset by the increased sales and the migrations in the other direction. -S 02-07-2004 16:05:17

Ring a ding ding.... we have webcam (modified 0 times) Drmn4ea Profile Poking at the ISO data with a hexeditor was getting me nowhere, so I finally broke down and swapped an old harddrive into my computer and put Debian on it to test the SPCA504x driver mentioned above (http://spca50x.sourceforge.net/spca50x.php?page=cams ). What do you know? Instant webcam. I have a sample image here (http://cexx.org/dakota/stuff/webcam.jpg ) for the un-believers :) I don't remember the image being quite this crummy (with the lines and all) in gqcam; but it has gone from (presumably) raw-jpeg -> png -> jpg, so it doesn't surprise me. Long story short, at the moment it takes a Linux box and some dead chickens to wave during all the compiling and setup, but at least we know it's possible. Looking at the spca50x driver source confirms my suspicion; the data must be as raw as a hamburger that's still chewing grass. Reconstructing headers from scratch and educated guesswork, it looks like. The obvious step now is to finagle this into Windows, since that's what most people are running. Is there any such thing as a "generic" isochronous (ISO) USB driver? Are there any commercial camera/scanner/etc. drivers that pump out raw ISO data, and rely on a user-land program to do all their finagling? 02-08-2004 02:20:28

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) MAeslin Profile If this keeps going on we'll soon end up with a working complete WIA implementation. :D Rock on! 02-08-2004 12:44:27

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) morcheeba Profile This is one way to get more for your money, but Pure Digital claims that images it processes will be of higher quality, I don't really get how they can claim this.. All that's stored to flash is a lossy jpg file, so you can't more data out of it. They can upscale and and/or fiddle with the contrast/brightness (and maybe even do dodge & burn), but unless they're talking about a different camera, I can't see this. and that, in any case, it will shortly release a model that incorporates stronger security measures aimed at preventing this sort of hacking. There is a lot they could have done to prevent the original hack and I'm surprised they didn't do it. They left a lot of back doors in, and used just a simple secret-algorithm for security instead of public key encryption. Higher security woudn't add any cost except software development cost. They are almost out of ROM space for this, but it looked like there were messy areas that could be optimized easily. (actually, there were more slow sections of code than large sections of code) I just called my local store and they said that the LCD version was out in the "northwest", but not in my area yet. If anyone gets their hands on one, I'm sure that guy who hacked it would be very happy to reimburse you for one or two! 02-08-2004 13:47:07

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) 02U2 Profile >just called my local store and they said that the LCD version was out in the "northwest", but not in my area yet. If anyone gets their hands on one, I'm sure that guy who hacked it would be very happy to reimburse you for one or two! I just happened to be parked in front of Kits camera in North seattle when I read this earlier today...(Wireless access just about everywhere . I had sales dude check some other stores and no preview cameras in yet, but one sales due said they are on there way and should arrive soon! Northgate store evidently has a few of the first models (non preview lcd) in stock. I did not go there. 02-08-2004 19:32:50

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) strae Profile | Email This is a cross-post from the walgreens thread. It has been said several times that there is more memory in the camera the 25 shots can account for - it has also been said it is inaccessable. Perhaps the memory IS more accessable than we have previously though. Also of note: I have tried to get the PT display again and cannot. (in the following I am referring to a walgreens model camera) anyway - here's my "interesting" note. I was playing with the camera using my already-functional palm cable for my Ritz. Of note here: The WG camera has a slightly larger opening and a snug-fitting Ritz cable will be somewhat loose on the WG model. This lead to my discovery. I was not getting a solid connection - by wriggling the connector I was able to get the PC status on and off - I also got something else once or twice - I believe it was P and then a backwards "7", almost like PT or something, but I was not really paying attention and was mostly playing around. I recall turning the power on/of several times and I got the above symbol at least twice (I believe exactly twice). When I looked at the camera display, it sai 31 pictures remaining - based upon my earlier theory - I assumed I had killed the camera. I shut it off, turned it back on and it still said 31 pictures remaining. I am NOT sure if there was one or more pictures on the thing before I started playing, but I believe that I took a single picture. I tried snapping a pic and it seemed to work and the counter went to 30. I filled the camera with pictures of my floor and stuff and the camera acted perfectly normally, except it seemed to have accepted 32 pictures. The awsome part of this is that it would seem that we can get 8 more pictures by simply doing smething at the connector - of course, I have no idea if what happened was that I was overwriting some pictures, or maybe scrambling all of them? I am hoping that someone that knows a little more of the programing and schematics will be able to explain what happened and maybe we can re-create this at will. doing it on a ritz would be realy great (since we have a downloader for them) Anyway - I will quote this in the Ritz area - I think it's interesting enough to cross-post and potentially applies to both versions anyway. -S 02-10-2004 09:27:31

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Linuxguru Profile | Email If true, one of the unused pins (or combination of pins) relates to the picture counter function that the Walgreens/Ritz staff would have to reset to 25 after downloading all the pictures. Perhaps if this is decremented past zero it rolls over and goes to 31 (-1 in 5-bit 2's complement binary). Just guesswork, I don't have a Walgreens unit with me. 02-10-2004 21:48:33

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) cfowler Profile | Email Does the USB cable provide enough power to keep the camera on? I would like to use gphoto2 to take a picture every 30 minutes and upload it to my website. 02-14-2004 22:13:39

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) strae Profile | Email As far as I can see, the camera is fully powered by a USB connection 02-15-2004 01:15:47

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) cfowler Profile | Email I'm thinking of doing a case repaing to extend my mod. I only want to paint the part that is dark blue. Has anyone does this and have some pointers? 02-17-2004 11:24:24

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) strae Profile | Email cfowler: Paint don't like plastic. 2 possibilities: Home Depot sells Spray paint "primer for plastic" - makes regular enamel stick to plastic - works very well. You might want to add a top-coat of clear after youre done. There's some stuff from Krylon called "Fusion" - this stuff is a hybrid between enamel paint and plastic solvent - limited colors, but used as a base you can coat it with any normal enamel - again go for clear coat. Fusion actually eats down into the plastic and you will probably not see any peeling with this stuff. The Fusion is really potent - test before using because it might turn the camera into a blob of goo (I havent tried it on the camera's yet - this stuff keeps eating the plastic for like 2 or 3 hours after application - you were warned) By the way - these work great for making matt-black cases out of custom-bent plexi for those tiny and unusual PC-like critters we are fond of. -S 02-17-2004 19:01:02

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) cfowler Profile | Email Does anyone know if the case can be complety disassembled so I do not have to tape stuff up? Chris 02-17-2004 20:02:48

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) cfowler Profile | Email I think I will need clear coat. I plan on printing out a small linux logo on paper and glueing it to the enamel coat before I clear coat the case. Hopefully that will work well. 02-17-2004 20:04:58

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) strae Profile | Email Hmm. Paper sounds kind of icky. What about clear inkjet film? Also, the high-end P-Touch's do nice little graphic labels. On that same note - they make an ink "stamp" pad making kit; It's really a really small silkscreen device - the labelmaker makes some fairly detailed little screens. -S 02-18-2004 01:47:07

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) cfowler Profile | Email I've taken my first pictures and developed them at the local Wolf Camera. Take a look at this picture and comment: http://66.23.198.2/test1.jpg I'm not to crazy about the quality I'm getting. It is what I expected with 1.3mp but I'm curious as to the market they wish to sell. IMO one-use file cameras are cheaper and have better quality. Wolf will develop at a lower cost. If you purchase one of their sponsered cameras then you get a free CD with pictures on in. I'm not sure how the Dakota beats this model. Maybe to dumb customers who believe that digital produces images far superior to film. The only appeal that the Dakota can possibly offer it offers after the hack we've been doing. Maybe I'm missing a bigger picture in PureDigital's plans. Chris 02-19-2004 07:03:11

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) morcheeba Profile exact-a-mundo. I feel quite the same way as to the marketting problems. The only things that could help save the camera are two ancillary functions it serves: 1. draw customers to store to buy other products (maybe the margin on a digital 8x10 is excellent). 2. Eventually, people will want a real digital camera (but given the experience with these pictures, they may get turned off.... or taking those first few pictures on a simple camera may build up confidence in unsure customers and they may buy the more expensive one). Also, I figured out the command to command a picture-taking. It's implemented in the mac version only right now, and I'll get it into gphoto. looking for beta testers... http://www.maushammer.com/systems/dakotadigital/DakotaDigital.html 02-19-2004 12:59:36

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) cfowler Profile | Email I could not imagine an 8x10 with this quality. I envision that it looks like crap. 02-19-2004 14:55:23

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Drmn4ea Profile Nice! I used the USB-request method to take 58(!) pictures on my Dakota cam, unntil its memory *actually* ran out and it wouldn't record any more. The USB command morcheeba found to take a picture is 0x51 (out), wIndex=0. The wValue parameter determines how many pictures it will take in succession (one about every three seconds) - with wValue=0, it takes one picture; wValue=1, it takes two, and so on. The camera likes that magic number of 25 pictures. Reach it in normal use, and it won't let you take more. It won't even let you use the USB-request if the number taken is exactly 25. However, if you (for example) take 24 pictures, then send a USB-request to take 2 more, this check at the 25th picture is never done and you now have taken 26. (The LCD at this point reports 35 pictures remaining). Now it WILL take more pictures, either via USB-request or by disconnecting it from the computer and using it the normal way, until the memory actually runs out. If there's not enough memory left for a new picture, the camera beeps as usual and the flash goes off, etc.; the picture just never gets recorded and the pictures-remaining count doesn't get updated. 02-21-2004 20:54:14

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) strae Profile | Email This we can work with :) I would be even happier if we could figgure out how to kick down the compression for better pics, but 58 pictures might make up for the quality. Does anyone know how to disassemble the firmware? I load it in windasm, but have no idea what the offset should be. If this firmware looks for that magic 25, there cant be very many references to that value. If we could hack it to 63 we could remove the limit - I am not afraid to try a firmware upload - if I kill the thing I will simply return it for exchange. It's also possible the numbers above 65 will translate as negatives - which may or may not be good for us. Either way, the fact that we reached ovr 50 probably means we can enter at least 63 and unless we plan on upgrading the chips in the camera, that should be plenty. Of course - evidence from the Walgreens camera indicates that a memory upgrade might not be impossible - maybe one of those cool stacked-chip setups? Anyway - I want the ASM dump from the firmware and if anyone has an idea on how to attempt to force a change in the firmware (changing that 25 to 63) I will be more than happy to try it. -S 02-22-2004 00:50:38

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) morcheeba Profile I found where the 25-picture limit! It's in the ram memory at 0xfa0, and it's stored as the maximum number of pictures to take - 25 (0x16) - not plus or minus one stuff needed. But the bad news is that's in RAM and if we were to change it, it'll just get reset from FLASH ROM when you disconnect the PC. And Drmn4ea already found how to take lots-o-pictures when connected to a PC. So, to fix it correctly, we'll need to change the FLASH memory. It would be cool if we could just alter that byte in the ROM, and since we can access that memory, it wouldn't be hard to just bit-bang it in. Unfortuantly, the program FLASH erases to 1's -- we can only program bits to 0, so we could change the 25-picture limit to 6, 4, 2, or 0. Not much help. To increase the limit, we'll need to add '1's, and that can only be done by erasing some of the memory. Unfortuantly, this memory is optimized for code, so the page size is relatively big - 4K. That wouldn't be too bad, but I think there's a good chance that the camera may accidently try to use some routines in this area, so bit-banging seems out. We'll have to figure out how to use the code update function ... It's special because it copies 4K of the rom into ram, and then executes from there. But, it also erases all the FLASH memory at once, so we get only once chance to update the code before toasting the camera. It doesn't look like there's a mode that lets us do a partial erase. I'll have to look into the code update more before I get up the guts to try it. (I've looked at a lot of it, but I want to nail *every* detail so that I don't miss a byte) Still no idea on how to control the compression level per picture... 02-22-2004 22:00:37

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Kudzu Profile The new LCD camera has been at least 1 store that I know of, but the manager took the two home that they got in and they haven't had another since. You'll be able to tell the two apart by the color if nothing else, the new version is red instead of blue, with the LCD integrated into the back. I'll be checking with other stores this week, to see if I can't wrangle a few before they get swiped by the help. 02-25-2004 02:43:29

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) scribble Profile Is the jpg compression level really a problem? With the camera I've been using-a modified walgreens with a 32 meg card if that makes a difference--I'm getting on the average .5 meg jpgs. This corresponds to photoshop grade 10 jpgs--the photoshop default--and as far as I can see this amount of compression doesn't introduce any significant jpg artifacts. With a little photoshop work--some level and contrast adjustments, a bit more saturation to bring out the colors, and a touch of unsharp masking--I've able to come up with some decent 4 by 6 prints. scribble 02-25-2004 08:06:19

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) cfowler Profile | Email I've got my first mod up on eBay. The plastic is a bit*h to cut but I've got around it. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3800307362 I have totally disassembled the case of another one and picked up some paint. Also did some mods on the holes so they would look better. This one will probably look erally good when I'm done. 02-25-2004 18:51:48

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) morcheeba Profile Actually, scribble, the compression level isn't bad -- it's just the challenge of the hack! Also, it might be cool to get 200 low-res pictures on a camera, and then take the camera back to ritz and see if they'll print them all for $11. Or, there might be some other use someone could think of. kudzu- what part of the country are you in? I'll have to call around again tomorrow - the "red camera" will help a lot in describing it, even though more and more salespeople are learning about the LCD version. 02-25-2004 22:53:08

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) cfowler Profile | Email I must say that the batteries in this camera suck. I've barely used my and it is complaining about low battery power. 02-26-2004 08:54:19

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) scribble Profile I've taken over 350 pictures with the batteries that came with the camera. Now the camera display says I've still got a 1/4 to a 1/3 power left. No complaints here. scribble 02-26-2004 14:41:33

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) zmoz Profile I use NiMh batteries in my Dakotas. I put the batteries that came in it in my mag lite..so far it's lasted about 4 hours... 02-26-2004 19:45:06

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) morcheeba Profile ... and the second camera I bought came with basically dead batteries - it was pretty dusty. I haven't opened the third camera i bought, yet. 02-26-2004 19:49:04

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) scribble Profile My guess is that when they recycle the camera they don't always recycle the batteries. Another possiblity is that they use some supercheapie battery when the do recycle them. All three cameras I've obtained had japanese made panasonic alkaline batteries which seem to hold up well. scribble 02-26-2004 23:12:00

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 1 times) MAeslin Profile Contacted Aiptek to see if they would be so kind as to release the source code for some of their cameras (which use the SPCA504b) Windows drivers for educational purpose (me being an electrical engineering student and all that). With some luck I'll have access to them. Would that be of any help? ;) 02-28-2004 09:17:48

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) cfowler Profile | Email Check out the new model http://www.linuxiceberg.com/y/ 02-29-2004 19:11:17

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) morcheeba Profile looks good! (you had me fooled for a second) 02-29-2004 21:13:13

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) strae Profile | Email Nice - what kind of paint and have you given it the fingernail test yet? Not sure I would have gone with that color - but it will decrease the chances you will be run over while taking a picture <g> 02-29-2004 21:33:06

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) cfowler Profile | Email Fingernail test is fine. I used a plastic primer. I then used yellow and finally a clear coat. I could have choosen any color but I've not seen a yellow digital camera. 03-01-2004 05:27:11

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) strae Profile | Email JamCam model 1 was yellow - what was it, about 4 years ago? maybe 3? I had some bad results recently with that "Oxidation"-based name brand spray paint which recently added a plastic primer - paint peeled too easily. at the risk of crossing a line - what brand was the primer? As I said, I have had some amazing results with Krylon Fusion - although I don't like the high-gloss and use a matt acrylic clear top coat (which sticks better to the Fusion than it does to regular paint -IMO) OK, now WHO can take a good guess at how I can upload a hacked firmware and where do I hack? I am willing to give it a shot if someone will pont me in a direction here. -S 03-02-2004 00:55:25

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) cfowler Profile | Email It was the Oxidation name based brand. I used the Plastic primer and it seems to work great. I may try the Krylon Fusion you talk about on the next unit. It will not hurt to try. I also use a simple clear coat to protect it. 03-02-2004 08:54:00

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) morcheeba Profile strae - do you mean *download* a firmware file? As in, get a copy for you to play with? Both the mac and windows picture-reading code have firmware-download options, so it's easiest and legalist to get it from your own camera. There's a disassembler on Maushammer's site; that should be a start... 03-02-2004 17:58:41

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) strae Profile | Email No, I mean UPLOAD it after I hack the 25-pic limit byte. I have the downloaded binary already - I have tried running it through windasm but at minimum I have the wrong offset because I cannot locate any of the code snippets that people have referenced. I will look for the dissassembler of which you speak - I am not sure that windasm should even be expected to disassemble this file, it's not even x86 based, is it? No I want to re-flash the camera with hacked firmware to see if we can kill that 25-pic limit - it has been shown that the camera can clearly hold more than double that number. I imagine that attempting to flash using libusb will probably be a very bad move though... -S 03-03-2004 23:16:51

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) strae Profile | Email Hey - you know what? The memory chip is listed as 64M on the manufacturer site, but they also list a 128 with identical pinout and specs. If we can kludge he firmware limit what do you think would happen if we changed the flash to a 128? - not like I can even dream of soldering those little pins, but would it work? 03-04-2004 00:43:48

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) strae Profile | Email scratch that - I am losing it when I cannot tell the difference between sdram and flash :) Trying too hard to watch those damn hex bytes change and the location contains 0x19, not 0x16 03-04-2004 01:17:22

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) morcheeba Profile Yep, my bad- 0x19, not 0x16. (I was doing the hex conversion in my head and messed it up). 25 decimal. The code that inits it is at "8dcc: mov a, #0x19". It stores value in 0fa0. There is no "mov DPTR, #0x0fa0" ... this is in the middle of a whole lot of initialization, so it starts with "8dbc: mov DPTR, #0x0f9c" and increments DPTR (storing data along the way) until it reaches 0fa0. I've got another idea on flashing the rom... since it's a lot easier to write 0 bits rather than 1's, I'll look and see if I can modify the check-code. Cool thing is that an 8051 NOP instruction is $00. 03-04-2004 12:52:49

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) strae Profile | Email Really? Now THERE'S a bit of great luck - there's a don't delete more than 1 picture check too that we could do without. Here's another thought: Rather than NOP-out the check, what if we check for 00 instead? While I am fairly sure this will result in an instantly-full camera, depending on the code, it might not check on an EMPTY flash. Since the remaining pics indicator goes back up if we pass the 25 limit, maybe starting with a 00 limit will give us 60 on the LCD. Of course, if it does create always full then we have wasted $10 - but I am fairly sure I could return the camera as "DOA". Another topic, mostly for scribble: I tore apart the Dakota lens by unscrewing the retaining ring - despite your warnings, I wasn't paying enough attention and now have a pile of parts who's order and orientation I have only an educated guess at. But, the thing is, there are 3 pieces of glass, no "filter" but the very last lens (closest to the CCD) has a coating which seems to be higher quality than the "chip" filters you have on he WG. The lens has a definate blue tint when you look directly through it, but it looks red from any side angle where you can see reflected light on it. It is clearly a lens and part of the main optics - so removal of the IR filter in the Dakota will require replacement of the lens or finding a way to remove the optical coating - neither seem very promising unless there's some type of solvent for the coating. Does anyone think it would work if we replaced the flash chip with a bigger one? Getting this thing to hold 116 pictures (assuming 58x2 by using a chip twice as big) would be awsome - I don't want to even hope the next step would also work (232 pics) OK, while I am ranting - why does the display go to 35 remaining when we hit 25+1 pictures (damn I need that dissassembler) Morcheeba, If I load C++ on my XP system, can I compile that disassembler in a useable form or do I still need Linux support? 03-05-2004 03:18:30

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) scribble Profile Another topic, mostly for scribble: I tore apart the Dakota lens by unscrewing the retaining ring - despite your warnings, I wasn't paying enough attention and now have a pile of parts who's order and orientation I have only an educated guess at. Two of the three lens--if they look identical--make up a doublet. If one side is less convex than the other they probably should be assembled facing each other. And if you have two spacing rings the thinner of the two rings probably goes between the two lenses of the doublet. But, the thing is, there are 3 pieces of glass, no "filter" but the very last lens (closest to the CCD) has a coating which seems to be higher quality than the "chip" filters you have on he WG. The lens has a definate blue tint when you look directly through it, but it looks red from any side angle where you can see reflected light on it. From your discriotion this coating maybe to make the colors come out right by ellimating the blue color cast. It may not be an IR filter. I'll mail you a corner of the wratten filter we discussed earlier. Take a few IR pictures in brignt sunlight and if the shutter timing is around 1/125 sec there is no IR filter. If it falls to below 1/10 sec there is one. It is clearly a lens and part of the main optics - so removal of the IR filter in the Dakota will require replacement of the lens or finding a way to remove the optical coating - neither seem very promising unless there's some type of solvent for the coating. If I had access to a chem lab with a hood I'd try desolving it in a 10 percent solution of nitric acid. And please don't try this in your kitchen sink. If the fumes don't get you, your kiddies and your mother-in-law the acid could do interesting things to your plumbing. 03-05-2004 08:10:58

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) strae Profile | Email OK got it, I use the 90% fuming in the bathtub? - mix with a little h2so4 for extra cleaning power and put cotton towels in the tub to catch any spills? (NOT!!!!!!) The lens might do both - it seems to be REFLECTING light near red. oops, I just looked at my parts again, I have FOUR lenses - the 4th is convex on both sides - based upon it's size, I would say it goes with the front lens. 03-05-2004 10:38:45

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) morcheeba Profile Morcheeba, If I load C++ on my XP system, can I compile that disassembler in a useable form or do I still need Linux support? strae- Yep, any C or C++ compiler should be able to handle it. It's just text-based and pretty simple (although ugly code). 03-07-2004 21:48:37

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) cfowler Profile | Email Here is my yellow one: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3803255279 I should have a real good black one done soon. 03-14-2004 16:28:09

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) gorn Profile >The code that inits it is at "8dcc: mov a, #0x19". > It stores value in 0fa0. There is no "mov DPTR, #0x0fa0" What is in your entries file? the mov A, #0x19 after DPTR play is at 9327 for me. (Maybe my firmware is different, maybe my entries file is different? I just have 0000 in there) Also check out 41eb and 41ee (for me at least): 41eb: 90 0f a0 mov DPTR, #0x0fa0 41ee: 74 19 mov A, #0x19 So it seems the count is initilized more than once or at different times. If any of you could point me to some more info about this firmware I'd appreciate it. -gorn 03-14-2004 16:53:31

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) morcheeba Profile just an update on the picture limit (from memory, so it's a bit vague): I changed two areas where the counter gets initialized, but that didn't do anything. There is a third place where it's initialized with the value stored in another location, but the only place that seemed to init that location was with a USB command. I'm thinking of changing that init too (to load a value from another memory location that I'm pretty sure has a higher value), but I don't want to modify my ROM too much. I double-checked the code and it looks like 0xfa0 is correct, so I'm not sure what's wrong. I also looked at disabling the checks, but I noticed that yet-another variable holds the difference between the pictures-taken and max-pictures, and I'd probably have to change those tests, too. I got busy with other projects, so I didn't get to play with it last weekend. Gorn- I'll have to post my entries file ... it looks like we've clearly got different rom revs, though. p.s. anyone else looking to hack the $99 zvue media player? I'm still waiting for mine to arrive, but it looks very easy! 03-15-2004 18:07:02

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) gorn Profile >just an update on the picture limit (from memory, so it's a bit vague): I changed two areas where the counter gets initialized, but that didn't do anything. "where the counter gets initialized" might be key. For me (might be different for your firmware) the number on the pictures keeps increasing, ie I take a picture and it downloads as DSC_0171.jpg then run gphoto2 -D and take another picture and it goes to DSC_0172.jpg. So there might be code in the firmware to initalize that counter to 0 however it is not run by just powering up. Same could be true for the 25 picture limit. But that's just guess work, with nothing to back it up. 03-15-2004 22:06:34

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) gorn Profile Okay I did some tests. (This is using a custom version of gphoto to do some of the things the windows/mac x software lets you do, let me know if you want it) If you manually set 0xfa0 to a number greater than 25, then using the USB method of taking a picture it can go up to that limit. If you set it to 0 then no pictures can be taken, however if one picture is already on the camera when you set it to 0 the limit is gone (I tested taking over 100 pictures and it didn't hit the limit, the register is only 1 byte so I guess 256 would be the next time it hits the limit, but there are issues retriving over 254 files anyway so no worries.) And of course changing the value and then unplugging it will result in it being reset. So the set to 0 trick could be used if one picture was left on the camera, it would be easy to have software delete all pictures, change the limit to >0 (in ram not rom), take one picture. Then you remove the camera, the firmware sets that limit back to 0 next time you turn it on and ta-da, unlimited photos. -gorn 03-15-2004 22:50:47

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Viadd Profile I'm new to this discussion (and this board). My first interest is controlling the camera over the USB port, my second interest is reporgramming it. It appears that there are at least two firmware versions: I have the same version as Gorn: 41eb: 90 0f a0 mov DPTR, #0x0fa0 41ee: 74 19 mov A, #0x19 And Maushammer has a different version, based on comments in his PureRead code. Probably the easiest fingerprint would be looking at the power-on jump statement: 0000: 02 bc 37 ljmp Abc37 (Although if there is a version string or number stored somewhere, that would be more official). Anyway does anyone have a good set of entry points and routine descriptions for this version of the code? Does anyone specifically have the address to which it jumps when the 'take_picture' command is sent via the USB? For my specific purposes, I'd like to a) set the exposure time to something long (many seconds) b) Set the imager gain as high as possible (which probably involves talking to the imager chip via the I2C port at 0x2a08, 0x2a10) c) Take the picture, transfer it to RAM, but don't JPEG it d) Slurp the raw data out of ram via USB Also, has anybody succeeded in writing to program flash yet? The SPCA504B does have the ability to use on-board masked ROM, but the fact that there is a second small flash chip, and the fact that there are multiple versions, implies that the program storage is external. Thanks. 03-21-2004 18:08:48

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) scribble Profile TWENTY FIVE PICTURE LIMIT SMASHED! NEW LIMIT 104 PICTURES AND COUNTING!!! READ all about it in WALGREENS 03-22-2004 11:08:54

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Drmn4ea Profile I've found the 'hard' limit for the Dakota to be 254 pictures. By covering the lens entirely (all black, highly compressible image) I was able to take 358 pictures using the USB-method. I thought that was pretty damn cool. Going to download them, though, quite a few of the files turned out to be corrupted. After the 254th file, the camera starts duplicating filenames (DSC_0254.JPG -> DSC_0001.JPG) rather than stop taking pictures, with disastrous results. Luckily, under normal picture-taking circumstances you will never reach this limit (if you do, it means your pictures are too dark to be any good anyway . 03-27-2004 12:15:29

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) gorn Profile My batteries died today and I decided just for fun to switch from AA batteries to an old (but not old enough to not have a charge) cell phone battery. It's 3.6v but it seems to be working and not frying anything *crosses fingers* It didn't fit perfectly and I still gotta reposition some stuff so the shutter button works a bit better (It kinda sticks) However I didn't build a charger for it yet... I'm thinking I can charge it via USB, does anyone know how to charge a Li-on battery safely? I think I read somewhere that you can use some kind of diode so it will stop charging after it's full. 04-01-2004 21:01:34

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) 02U2 Profile Interesting reading on Liion charging...http://tayloredge.com/reference/liioncharging.pdf 04-02-2004 11:28:42

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) metalfan Profile Maxim has a ton of app notes about battery charging on their site here I am surely oversimplifying, but from what I've read I think that with LiIon cells, the main thing you need to avoid is overcharging the cell, which causes overheating, which in turn causes battery failure (i.e. explosions and such). 04-02-2004 18:49:54

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) anikin_sniper Profile | Email I have found some cameras and was able to build the cable - that was the easy part - the hard part is trying to connect the camera to my computer..i am runing windows 2000...i tryed the windows program but it doesnt seem to detect the camera...but windows is able to dectect the camera...and goes to install its drivers..i remove those and go to the winlib drivers but windows doesnt want to recongize those...i have tried the pencam drivers with the modification..those work but when i load the program it gives me an error stating that it cannot dect my camera ... the camera beeps once and shows pc on the lcd.....any ideas on what i am doing wrong? 04-07-2004 08:28:38

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) scribble Profile ....any ideas on what i am doing wrong? Go to http://cexx.org/dakota/ and download the program and driver package. That ought to fix your problem scribble 04-07-2004 17:10:02

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) anikin_sniper Profile | Email Tried the software and the driver from http://cexx.org/dakota/ windows didnt want to install that driver and the program didnt dectect the camera even though the camera displaied pc on the back 04-07-2004 19:04:45

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) glyphon Profile I had a problem getting the camera installed to. i installed the libusb-win32 drivers but when i connected the camera it kept asking for a file that wasn't installed. i downloaded http://cexx.org/dakota/sucr-pb2.zip and the file that was needed was in that folder. so see if that helps. 04-08-2004 20:35:48

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) glyphon Profile quick question...is the smart media hack thats possible on the WG camera also possible on this camera? 04-08-2004 23:23:25

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) shiny_razor Profile No, the Dakota doesn't have the flash ram on a separate daughter-card like the Walgreen's camera does. It seems the Walgreen's camera was originally designed to have a SmartMedia slot, but they replaced it with a non-removable ram card. Also, I've been having trouble with the new "libusb-win32" drivers on Win2k also. I finally realized that you don't actually NEED the drivers installed to use the camera. If "libusb-win32" is installed it talks to the camera through using it's own drivers; the drivers loaded by Windows are simply to keep the annoying "Found New Hardware" dialog from popping up each time you plug the camera in. I just clicked "Cancel" each time that dialog appeared, and SUCR still worked fine. It would be nice to get the .inf fixed for Win2k, but it doesn't really affect usability. OT: Anyone seen the red Dakota's yet? I would have thought they would be available by now. 04-09-2004 12:36:30

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) anikin_sniper Profile | Email Got the camera to work..it may have been my poor soder work or luck but it works...my only question is with the the scr.exe it has webcam mode...anyone know what software will work with it? oh and the red camera should be in my camera store next month the guy said i will keep you guys posted on when they ship in 04-09-2004 17:14:03

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) glyphon Profile i had no problems getting everything working on my parents win2k with the supplied .inf. heres what i did installed libusb-win32 1.7.10 downloaded the sucr-pb.zip plugged the camera in. chose have disks on the hardware install when asked pointed the install program to the sucr-pb folder for the .sys and .dll files that it asks for. reboot. program worked perfectly. and AFAIK, there is no webcam software that works under windows. if you want that, there is a program for linux. 04-10-2004 15:34:34

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) MinidisQ Profile | Email MACRO: I took the camera apart. Dug/chipped/scraped the hot glue from the lens and spring. I then removed the external silver painted ring assembly on the case cover. With this removed, I re-assembled the camera. Now I can adjust the metal lens housing from outside of the camera to focus and take macro pics as close as 1" away from the lens. WRIST STRAP: I cut two small holes in the edge of the battery door and tied a wrist strap to the door. CONNECTOR: I soldered USB connector to an old Palm III corded connector and found that stress had broken one solder connection. I re-soldered and then applied a TON of hot glue to the USB cable connector on the Palm connector. Once the hot glue was cool to the touch, I formed it so it would be a finger hold. Thanks to all who have contributed. I spent about 6 hours on this project. 04-17-2004 22:29:24

Flash ROM Fiddling (modified 1 times) rangita Profile I'm unclear how to go about fiddling with the Dakota's flash-based program memory. I can download the firmware using SUCR-PB2. I can disassemble it using Maushammer's modified dis8051 (tweaked to compile under MinGW) with an entries file containing simply 0000. Editing the raw firmware image with the help of the disassembly is easy, as well. What I don't see how to do is to reprogram the camera with a modified firmware. There was some mention of zeroing out individual bits of it earlier, but no clear information on reprogramming the whole program memory. Is this process possible/known? Also, is there any interpretation of the content of the firmware disassembly already? Finally, should anyone care, I've been able to physically wire an Atmel AVR microcontroller to take pictures automatically (after a delay, for example). The chip just lowers the green wire from the shutter button to ground for 2 seconds every 20 seconds or so. Some friends and I attached a Dakota to a bundle of balloons and took several aerial photographs. (The tether later broke on a tree; the red and white balloons with camera were last seen heading northeast out of NC State University in Raleigh, NC, USA.) 04-18-2004 15:24:23

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Steveo Profile Rangita, You said you got the the camera to take a picture by lowering the green wire. Are you using the Green USB wire? How are you able too keep the camera from turning off after the built in 2 minute timer? I tried grounding the green wire when the camera with the camera powered by the camera's battery but no luck. Are you powering the camera with the usb conector then triggering the green wire low? I like to know more of your setup with a microcontroler. Thanks Steveo 04-19-2004 03:11:21

Autoshoot with microcontroller, expanded (modified 1 times) rangita Profile The setup is really simple. Connect the green wire coming off the shutter button (not the USB one) to one of the outputs of the microcontroller. Power and ground for the chip also come directly from the battery casing power and ground. Thus, the controller is always on. Every 20 seconds, the controller lowers the output connected to the shutter button to ground for 2 seconds. If the camera is on, it takes a picture. If not, the input is ignored and irrelevant. The camera time-out doesn't occur because photos are being taken continuously. For the purposes of aerial photography, the flash daughterboard was removed. After all pictures are taken, the balloon was lowered and dumped to a laptop. On a related note, Atmel does make an AVR microcontroller with USB communication ability, so it could be theoretically possible to rig one to do USBish things to the camera. For example, get an AVR to listen to a button. When the button is pressed, the USB picture-taking command is issued, but when remaining pictures == 1 the chip sends the USB command to take 2 pictures. This way, the 25 limit would be skipped in the manner discussed earlier. USB communications are entirely unknown to me, and I'm an amateur at using even regular microcontrollers, so this is beyond my ability. Other microcontroller things I've thought of: Provide intelligent timed pictures, such as "wait 2 minutes, then take 10 pictures in 20 second intervals" Provide a smart flash detector/override. Default state (flash indicator): Have the controller take the photoresistor's voltage as an input and light an LED when it believes the flash is needed. Override state: By setting a switch, the controller can be told to set the photoresistor connection to be an output, and either set it ground to force a flash, or high to force no flash (or vice versa, I'm not sure). I was going to implement one or both of these ideas, but I can't think of a compact interface for the former, and the latter is a lot of work for a feature that would only be of mild use. In addition, I keep being paralyzed by the expectation that the mysterious red cameras will come out, and I'll have to re-mod one of those. Unrelated tip: a bit of scotch tape over the buzzer makes it much quieter (the loud beep was bugging me). 04-19-2004 13:41:01

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Steveo Profile Thanks for your reply Surely thier has to simulate the "Takepic" command without using a USB microcontroler. Anyone have a DSO that they can see if there is some kind of pulse-string that we can use with a Pic are Amtel? A long time ago I seen something using the soundcard and an Optoisolator to view serial commands. I'll have to do some checking for it. Thanks steveo 04-19-2004 17:32:29

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) crazy4divx Profile Question for everyone: Today I ordered the Dakota Pure Digital $10.99 camera over the phone from Ritz directly. They said it was backordered and I would receive a newly manufactured one in a couple of weeks. I asked if anything about the camera had changed and I was told nothing did. Do you guys think that the manufacturer has redesigned the connector to make the current hack obsolete? Thanks. 04-22-2004 18:15:21

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) zmoz Profile I doubt it, that would mean they would have to change how the cameras are read at all the stores. 04-25-2004 23:54:37

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) virtualas Profile | Email and were I can buy it online? I need that it bring me to lithuania. 05-02-2004 04:13:41

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) zmoz Profile I don't believe they are available online - except ebay. 05-04-2004 20:09:44

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Squarepants Profile Hello, everyone on this board seems very helpful and I was wondering if anyone has any idea what my problem is . . . Okay so I'm really poor and my computer (a hand-me down) is still running windows 98. It's not second edition but it has all the updates so technically it is. Anyway I've got it all to work perfectly on my parents computer running XP, but I get a bluescreen anytime I try to run the SUCR.exe or the libusb test exe. It's not the problem with windows installing its own composite USB, I just think that my USB driver doesn't want to work with the software. I can write down the exact exception error code if that will help at all but I now it was something to do with 'VXD USBD(01)' Any help would be very much appreciated. Maybe I just need a computer that actually has a working USB . . . Thanks. 05-13-2004 16:01:16

Red Dakota with Preview LCD in catalog (modified 0 times) rangita Profile I stopped by a Wolf Camera in North Carolina today, and inquired about the Dakota with preview LCD. The clerk showed me the most recent catalog (Ritz Blitz Summer 2004), which shows both the old blue and new red Dakotas on the back cover. I scanned this ad; it is available at the link below. I noticed that both the blue and red cameras are called "Dakota Digital PV2". The blue PV2 is NOT the same as the currently hacked Dakota, at least in appearance. It has a redesigned outer shell, but the location of the components seems to be the same, causing me to assume that the innards are unchanged. The new red matches the blue for the most part, with the obvious change that it has a preview LCD. I asked the clerk if these PV2s were "developed" in the same way (i.e. on the same machine) as the older models, and he indicated that they were. However, I'm concerned that they may have implemented a firmware change to invalidate current end-user dumping tools (the change to the in-store dumping machines could be made electronically). According to the ad, the blue dakota's features include "delete and retake last shot", whereas the red one has "delete and retake shots", causing me to infer that you can pick and delete arbitrary images on the red, which would obviously be good. Finally, and most importantly, is the blurb in the lower right of the red: "Available June '04 at many locations." If this is true, we should have red Dakotas to attack within one month. Horray! Catalog scan: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tkbletsc/dak/wolf-catalog.jpg Does anyone have any other information on the PV2 series? 05-13-2004 18:37:27

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) zmoz Profile Geez, those new ones look alot cheaper. They actually look disposable now... 05-16-2004 15:56:04

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Linuxguru Profile | Email I have to second that - the PV2s look cheaper. Perhaps this is another countermeasure to discourage hacking - if it looks cheap, why bother expending time and effort hacking it? However, it's still worth checking out the LCD preview version for hackability. 05-23-2004 09:19:07

PV2 sighted in wild! (modified 0 times) morcheeba Profile Thanks for that scan! I got an email from someone in St. Petersburg, FL who found the LCD PV2 on the shelves and is sending it to me!! (He's looking for a hackable version, so he was going to return it otherwise). I'll post pics as soon as I get it. 05-24-2004 14:24:30

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) MastaChef Profile | Email I stopped at a Ritz today and noticed that the newer version of the dakota digital was on sale (pv2) with the lcd screen but i was afraid to invest in one because i wasnt sure of its hackability. has anyone been able to get pictures off of the newer version and is it the same connector? i will gladly pick one up for anyone interested in experimenting with it. i would pick one up for myself but im just low on cash. 05-24-2004 19:14:55

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) morcheeba Profile I've got a disassembly of the LCD version! 05-26-2004 20:52:45

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) codeman Profile | Email morcheeba very cool ... i was wondering how the lcd quality would be. nice data sheet on the lcd . now i just need a few !! codeman 05-27-2004 16:26:01

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) mako Profile That looks real nice -- thinner than the original? If so, it'd be much better to carry around. I should've checked this thread yesterday, because I went to an area with a Ritz today. Hope they don't sell out before I get one. Oh, and how about starting a new thread for the LCD camera? 05-27-2004 23:22:04

RE:Dakota / Pure Digital $10.99 Reusable Camera (modified 0 times) Scapegoat Profile Hello, I am new to this board and I'm still struggling with the first Dakota disposable camera. I bought it almost a month ago; I soldered a wire with a USB cable out of an iMac mouse and the connector from a Palm M100 serial cable (just like everyone and their granny.) I plug it into my PC, and the LCD reads "PC" and it beeps twice. I've installed every different version of SUCR that I can find, yet it has yet to detect my camera. I even downloaded the latest 1.8 driver libusb from it's maker site (it has an installation wizard and everything) but it still refuses to be detected by SUCR. My PC (running XP) pops up and says "USB device not recognized", says that a USB device has malfunctioned and Windows doesn't recognize it. Everyone else seems to say SUCR has worked "smooth as silk" for them. You don't think Dakota already bothered to change something on the inside? I've tried SUCR on my PC downstairs running 98 and it doesn't work there, either. I run testlibusb-win on either, and it will read out the keyboard and printer, but never recognizes any camera. Heck, I even took the MAC version of whatever (PureRead...?) to school and tried it on an eMac running X and it didn't see the camera. What's a girl to do?! Help!!!! feel free to email me if you know what the heck far is going on!!! : ( scapegoat2004@excite.com ps-- is the new Red camera showing promise? if so I may go ahead and upgrade anyway and give up on this rotten little blue demon. 05-29-2004 15:04:16