Well, well. This is interesting. Anyone on the BBS live in Winsconsin and would like to pop down to their nearest Walgrens and pick up one of these things for me? A 2 megapixel digital camera for sub-$11 is just what I'm looking for for model aircraft use, even if I have to hack it to get the images out. I can paypal the money for it.

A little more information: From a Yahoo news article;

The Dakota Digital Single-Use Camera is available beginning July 28th at Ritz Camera and Wolf Camera locations in more than 14 cities, including Washington, Baltimore, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Dallas.

pca

And while we are on the subject can someone explain who the market for these things is? Who (besides somebody like pca who wants to hack it for some other purpose) is going to spend $11 for a one time use digicam when they can spend less on a one time use regular cam that is going to take better pictures?

-Mike

I think you're missing the point. It's DIGITAL. That means it has to be better, right? Right? Am I wrong? Am I wrong? You're out of your element here, Donny! PCA, they are saying that Ritz Cameras also have them, I'll call my local store tomorrow and see if they are going to carry it.

They should also send some cheese curds along with the camera. Yum Yum...

There's also a massive thread on it on slashdot. Most of the comments are the usual slashdot junk however.
A few brought up interesting points like how severe would the compression be? My IXUS 300 is 2MP as well and with the highest quality settings I get about 800-900k per picture. So we're looking at max of about 24MB of Flash in this as well. Added together with the CCD and other misc parts, they can't be making much profit on these???

Anyway, if anybody can get some, I'd like one or two as well.

I guess they're banking on the fact that most people have had the idea that digital = better drummed into them. The real advantage I'd say is that if you know that you've screwed up a picture then you can delete it. Everything else you get you can get with a standard film camera.

Then again, I still want one to play about with

Keep me posted if you get one. I will be in Boston next weekend and will pick up a couple there if you still need them.

If I were going into work tomorrow...or Monday...or Tuesday...I could drop in the Ritz camera that's only a couple doors away and check. I'm in Washington DC (I assume that was the Washington you meant).

If you still want one on Wednesday, and they have them, I can pick one up for you

hey rob,

what dates are you in Boston?

Only the evening of Friday the 8th to do dinner at PF Changs, then off to Vermont for a Saab run the next day. If you have nothing to do, it would be cool to meet up at Changs. I will be meeting a friend, although I'm not sure why since we both live in the same town in NY and have a PF Changs only 40 minutes away. Whatever.

Even if you don't join us, we should definitely have another boston meet. As long as it doesn't conflict with stuff on SaabRun.com, I'll be there.

The advantages are as follows:
-Digital, so you can delete pictures that suck (though no LCD, so hard to tell)
-They are reusable for the retailer, just download, and re-"rent"
-The price of the prints is included in the camera purchase/rental so the $11 or so includes the use of the camera and the prints, and a photo CD (usually 10 bucks by itself)

When you factor in the cost of a normal 35mm disposable and developing, you are usually talking more than 11 bucks anyway especially with a photo CD, so it DOES have some advantages. I personally wouldn't use it, but i can see why some people would.

I'll have a couple and split the transatlantic postage with pca. I'm sure there would be a few more UKers along in a minute to add to the list!

Gareth

I'm returning to Paris on the 28th. If you don't get one before then, I can grab you one if the store near my folk's house stocks them.

If there's a group buy of those cameras, count me in for one!

/Michael

Atlanta? I'll see if I can score one also.

my favorite slashdot quote for today

I work in a photo lab. Please, bring in the camera shell. I just need 3 more capacitors to finish my tazer.

OK, after calling five Wolf Camera locations I finally found this thing. I will be making a road trip this afternoon....

Huh...should have read the other requests for these before I went to Wolf; didn't realize there was that much demand. Anyway I currently have 1 in my possession which will go to pca if he still wants it.

I think he wanted two anyway.

-The price of the prints is included in the camera purchase/rental so the $11 or so includes the use of the camera and the prints, and a photo CD (usually 10 bucks by itself)

Well, it doesn't include free prints only "FREE index print with your prints" and "FREE Photo CD with your prints" so it looks like you may have to buy "25 high-resolution prints...at everyday low prices" in order to get your free index and CD.

I think he wanted two anyway.

pca with no depth perception? Never!!

Well, now that I've been thinking about it two might be useful, so I could build something else I've wanted to do for a while, a digistereogram camera.

pca

I guess you were right... I'll have to swing by and pick up another this weekend.

Edit: What the hell is a digistereogram camera?

What the hell is a digistereogram camera?

#1) A camera that takes digital pictures of a stereo

#2) A camera that takes picutres of a digital stereo

#3) A digital camera that takes stereogram pictures.

I was going to do some balloon photos (a-la the /. ) with my (infamous) Kodak DX3700 but reckoned two of these will be *ideal*. I will probably mount them at different angles to get a range of photos.

For stereo imagery I think the excellent "Panorama Tools" can do all that:

http://home.no.net/dmaurer/~dersch/Index.htm

I think it can do those autostereograms where you go crosseyed and pass out before it pops out.

Gareth

Oddly enough, I've never had any problem with viewing any of the naked eye stereogram systems, they just go 3d almost instantly. I know several people that can't make them out at all, though.

pca

I never can (make them out)

Same here. It's funny to watch someone who just can't seem to do it try for a long period of time though.


/me has a Mallrats flashback...

"It's a scooner!"

I can't make them out at all no matter how much squinting and unfocussing I do. I've been told that because I have quite bad astigmatism they won't work? I guess my glasses don't totally correct my eyesight.

Never works for me. I suppose it has something to do with 20/20 for the left eye and 20/10 vision for the right eye..

Me neither. I reckon they're just a hoax.

Pittsburgh apparently isn't one but the guy at Ritz told my wife they expected them "soon".

An update. I recieved two of these cameras (Thanks Shawn), and took five minutes today to open one up.

The manufacturers are, I guarantee you, spending considerably more than $10.99 on these things. The plastic case alone probably costs half that. The lens (a glass, multilayer coated one in a metal housing) easily accounts for the other half. In addition there is a semi-custom processor (Sunplus SPCA5048-P4), 128KB of flash contain the software for same, 16MB of flash (Samsung K9F2808UOC-YCBO), 8MB of sdram (TMTECH T436416A), lcd controller (HT1621) and lcd, and 1.3MP colour cmos imager (Micron MT9M001C12STC-ES), on a 4-layer PCB, along with other miscellaneous discrete crap. There is also a separate sub-board with a rather nice flash unit on, battery holder with two AA bateries, a beeper, various switches, and an edge connector that carries the computer IO port.

The connector obviously has USB on it, and as far as I can tell has the following pinout:

Pin 1 - not connected
Pin 2 - ground
Pin 3 - not connected
Pin 4 - not connected
Pin 5 - not connected
Pin 6 - USB +v (5V in)
Pin 7 - ground
Pin 8 - USB data (-, I think)
Pin 9 - USB data (+, I think)
Pin 10 - ground

I had to take the imager chip (a 48-pin leadless ceramic chip with a transparent top) off the PCB to get the part number, as it's helpfully printed on the bottom

That's as far as I've gotten. It really needs someone to write a driver for the USB device, but that may be difficult without knowing the protocol I could always socket the flash chip, and just take it out to dump the contents, I suppose.

pca

Only you would be able to take the imager off the board and put it back on

The protocol is probably something similar to what those keyring digital cameras use. No point reinventing the wheel. Maybe with a different ID though. If they're really advanced we may get Adobe eBook style encryption with ROT13

Here are a few threads I found about hacking this camera:

http://revjim.net/comments/9624/
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1000&message=5739712

Might be useful.

Ah. This thread is quite interesting since it identifies the processor/camera controller and that it's a common chip. It's only 1.3Mpixel though apparently so it must be doing interpolation.

So... anybody want to pop out and send me a couple?

I'd be interested in some too - perhaps somebody is willing to send over a dozen or so to save shipping? Writing "used lingerie, value $5" for customs is optional.

Gareth

I'd get the postmen sniggering at me forever if I got a package marked like that

If somebody organizes a transatlantic batch, I'm definitely on for a couple of them as well.

/. me too!!!

AOL



/Michael

OK, has anyone volunteered to ship the camera(s) yet? I sent two to patrick and the total cost with tax and shipping was $33.37 via US post 4-7 days so that's 10.99 per camera plus tax and shipping which was just under ten dollars. Is there a cool pub around that has some cool tshirts or something for maybe a like kind exchange? I'm not looking to make any money on this of course but cool tshirts at least could make this a bit more interesting.

I'm not sure when I can get by the store that has them but I'll put you down for two unless you notify me otherwise.

later,

I'll have a look around to see if I can find any cool t-shirts or stuff. There are normally promotions every so often but it does mean I'll have to drink more...

Jerz were you organizing a shipment of these cameras? I've got some that I brought back to France with me. If anyone is still looking for them, PM me.

How many have you got? Nothing sorted yet, but three of us in the UK are looking for two each.

There is a nice consolidation of all the information about the cameras here, and it will have any new information as it becomes available. The image samples linked from there look pretty poor - so poort that I think something must have been up with that camera, because the sample image here looks very, very good.

Gareth

I've got 9 of them. If Jerz hasn't already bought them, I can send them out this week or next.

I'm also interested in one or two (in Netherlands).

Cool, no I haven't bought them yet. Thanks!

w00t!

http://www.maushammer.com/systems/dakotadigital/DakotaDigital.html

Cool. Last time I played about with the camera was when they had worked out how to do the low level reading. It worked but was slooooooooooooow. Really should get around to buying a Palm cable though, having a 2 metre USB cable dangling out the side isn't very portable

Nice... Just downloaded my first pics.

I used an old Palm III docking cradle and disassembled it to get at the connector and the small circuit board the connector is attached to.

Since I didn't want to destroy the cradle (I'm waiting for a sync cable to make a permanent solution) I left the original serial wire attached, as well as the small board that houses the sync button. I simply soldered the wires from a USB cable to the relevant pads (at the back
of the board where the pins from the connector show). There is also a small ceramic cap attached at one corner of the board - since I didn't feel like investigating exactly to which pins it was attached and/or whether it might interfere, I simply snipped one of the leads and gently bent it away. When time comes to reassemble the cradle, it'll be a piece of cake to
bend it back and solder the snipped lead back together.

One should note that the pins on the connector on the small circuit board are numbered in reverse compared to the camera... According to the board, I have ground (black) connected to E1, white (USB data) to E2, green (USB data) to E3 and red (+5V) to E5.

The connector and the circuit board it's attached to is just the perfect thickness to give a nice friction fit in the camera.

Now I just have to look at why my XP Pro box claims there are no driver installed and insist on popping up the Install New Hardware wizard all the time when the camera is attached, and get around to install gphoto on the Linux box...

/Michael

Did you install both drivers and reboot?

Yup, twice...

/Michael

You tried removing the camera entry from the device manager and then unplugging and plugging in the camera?

Nope, been busy with some other stuff . but will check!

/Michael

This page was linked to from Techbargains.com today.
http://www.maushammer.com/systems/dakotadigital/DakotaDigital.html
Seems like quite alot has happened in the past year.

Yup,

the hardware hackers are currently busy with the newer PV2 version (red, with display - still limited to viewing/deleting only the last shot picture though).

The "classic" blue (there's apparently a new, also as of yet unhacked, blue version w/o display) works fine. Fairly recently a guy figured out how to replace the firmware, which allowed raising the 25 shot limit and also display actual shot count instead of shots remaining. Still need to open up one of them that I have and play with the focus, possibly adding adjustable focus to it.

Quality isn't anything to brag about, but it's definately worth the $11...

/Michael

Looks like the CVS disposable camcorder has now been nicely hacked by some smart people. Is anybody near a store in the US that has some in stock and who is possibly able to post a few to the UK? I can post to others over here if they are still widely available and there is some interest.

At first I thought it was a bit crap because it was 1/4 VGA res, but it seems that full-VGA is possible with a reduced frame rate:

http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/08/cvs_camcorder_u.html

Gareth

Neat. I'll be up for a couple of units if they're not too expensive. I've still not done anything with the original "disposable" digital cameras however...

I can check CVS today. How many were you looking for?

I bought 2 today, but I may keep one. There were about 10 on display.

Oooh great, might be worth waiting a few more days in case there are a few more people interested.

Gareth

I took video of my drive to work today. Unfortunately I hit some sort of limit of 25 minutes recording time eventhough I adjusted the camera to record 51 minutes. It seems like it could have done 51 minutes based on the file size of the 25 minute video and crappier video quality. Anyway, check out the video if you want. It's encoded in XviD (camera's native recording format) so you will need the codec. Enjoy!

http://www.spmicro.com/temp/CVS09202005.avi (54.1 MB)

Not bad quality for a basic camera, but not exactly something I'd be recording my home movies in.

It looks a little better when using the normal recording mode, but still nothing you would want to preserve once-in-a-lifetime moments in. That's the standard resolution of the camera, but can be bumped up to 640x480. However, at 30fps that only gives about 7 minutes of recodring time before running out of memory. Someone needs to develop a memory upgrade for this thing.