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...