New Disposable Digital Cameras with LCDs

del_ctrl_alt writes "Pure Digital Technologies are set to introduce the world's first ever disposable digital camera [ed. note: see below], retailing in the USA for $19.99. Ritz, CVS, Disney World and Longs Drugs are all going to stock the 2-megapixel camera, which somewhat amazingly has a color preview screen and allows you to delete images before you take it to the store for processing (where you will receive a free picture CD along with your prints)." It's not the first disposable digital camera, which was hacked shortly afterwards, but these include a LCD display (they're made by the same company which made the first ones). Have fun!

cexx.org: the last link in the article, pre-/.ing

[jhoffoss]

Controller
SMaL Camera Technologies

Numbering on controller chip:
AIC0021B
02TWN5103
C68051.00
Memory
16M x8 NAND Flash memory: Samsung K9F2808UO8-YCB0

4Mx16 SDRAM: Micron Technologies MT48LC4M16A2TG-75E
Preliminary stuff of interest
The edge connector of the PV2 electrically matches that of the classic Dakota, at least as far as the USB pins go; whatever cable/contraption used to access the classic should work for this one without modifications.

Holding down ALL the buttons at once (shutter, Display, Delete) while turning on power will display a diagnostic screen showing the camera's serial number, firmware revision and similar information.

See John's Dakota page with an update for the PV2, including some USB info, datasheets for the more interesting parts (including the LCD) and a gallery of good dissection photos.
USB info
Here is the dump-out from SUCR commandline, walking thru the device properties. (All versions of SUCR do this, in case the manufacturer decided to get clever and move the devices/interfaces/endpoints/altsettings around). This gives a good idea of the 'organization' of the camera's USB interface.

usb_set_debug: Setting debugging level to 3 (on) LIBUSB_DLL: usb_os_init: dll version: 0.1.8.0 LIBUSB_DLL: usb_os_init: driver version: 0.1.8.0 LIBUSB_DLL: usb_os_find_busses: found bus-0 LIBUSB_DLL: usb_os_find_devices: found \\.\libusb0-0003--0x058f-0x9254 on bus-0 LIBUSB_DLL: usb_os_find_devices: found \\.\libusb0-0004--0x0dca-0x0027 on bus-0 Looking at device with USB id 058F/9254 Looking at device with USB id 0DCA/0027 Found camera... This device has 2 possible configuration(s). Looking at configuration 0...This configuration has 1 interfaces. Looking at interface 0...This interface has 1 altsettings. Looking at altsetting 0...This altsetting has 2 endpoints. Endpoint 0: Address 81h, attributes 02h (Bulk) (In) Endpoint 1: Address 01h, attributes 02h (Bulk) (Out) Looking at configuration 1...This configuration has 1 interfaces. Looking at interface 0...This interface has 1 altsettings. Looking at altsetting 0...This altsetting has 2 endpoints. Endpoint 0: Address 81h, attributes 02h (Bulk) (In) Endpoint 1: Address 01h, attributes 02h (Bulk) (Out) Set config: 0 Found bulk endpoint 129 on Configuration 1 Interface 0 Altsetting 0 Set alt. interface: 0 [...]

The camera has 2 configurations, one is for 200mA and the other is for 100mA, but "seem" otherwise identical. (See the testlibUSB dump-out below for additional details.) When the configuration is set by SUCR, the camera emits a 2-tone ascending beep, and the LED comes on. However, regardless of which of the configurations is used, all control transfers produce a CRC error message from Windows: LIBUSB_DLL error: error sending control message: win error: Data error (cyclic redundancy check).

Here is the output from testlibUSB: DLL version: 0.1.8.0 Driver version: 0.1.8.0 bus/device idVendor/idProduct bus-0/\\.\libusb0-0002--0x0dca-0x0027 0DCA/0027 - Manufacturer : SMaL - Product : Digital Camera wTotalLength: 32 bNumInterfaces: 1 bConfigurationValue: 1 iConfiguration: 3 bmAttributes: 80h MaxPower: 100 bInterfaceNumber: 0 bAlternateSetting: 0 bNumEndpoints: 2 bInterfaceClass: 255 bInterfaceSubClass: 0 bInterfaceProtocol: 0 iInterface: 0 bEndpointAddress: 81h bmAttributes: 02h wMaxPacketSize: 64 bInterval: 0 bRefresh: 0 bSynchAddress: 0 bEndpointAddress: 01h bmAttributes: 02h wMaxPacketSize: 64 bInterval: 0 bRefresh: 0 bSynchAddress: 0 wTotalLength: 32 bNumInterfaces: 1 bConfigurationValue: 2 iConfiguration: 3 bmAttributes: 80h MaxPower: 50 bInterfaceNumber: 0 bAlternateSetting: 0 bNumEndpoints: 2 bInterfaceClass: 255 bInterfaceSubClass: 0 bInterfaceProtocol: 0 iInterface: 0 bEndpointAddress: 81h bmAttributes: 02h wMaxPacketSize: 64 bInterval: 0 bRefresh: 0 bSynchAddress: 0 bEndpointAddress: 01h bmAttributes: 02h wMaxPacketSize: 64 bInterval: 0 bRefresh: 0 bSynchAddress: 0
Some dissection pictures
Back of the PV2. The case is held together by 3 screw

How much memory?

[Ianoo]

It doesn't mention how much memory is inside one of these things. Presumably, it could easily be enough for a couple of hundred 2MP pictures. If this is the case, combined with the preview/review LCD (one of the biggest advantages of digicams when on the road, IMHO), it could certainly be successful.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[rost0031]

It's an interface similar to the old Palm III cradles. It's hidden behind a removable plastic tab on the side. For my hack, I used a piece of a Centronics cable connector attached to a USB cable. Google for "dakota camera hack" and you will find the details.

Re:How much memory?

[VoidWraith]

128M. From the last link.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[nacturation]

Of course, in this case Disposable == Recyclable. Or do you really think they simply pitch the 2 megapixel CCD sensor, LCD display, internal memory, camera body, etc. in the garbage after you bring it in?

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[jdreed1024]

For exactly which economic bracket is $20 considered "disposable"? I consider myself middle-class, and I'm not going to throw anything away unless it cost under $8, if I can help it.

Well, you said you're trolling, but I suppose there might be people who have never used disposable cameras. They're not throw-away. You're basically renting them. You're paying for the convenience of not owning a camera or not having one with you. The camera doesn't get thrown away when you're done. You just don't get to keep it. More like leasing than renting, I guess. You take it to the processor, and they give you pictures and then refurbish the camera and sell it again.

Relax! They're not really "disposable"

[Dzimas]

Even with amazingly inexpensive Chinese labour, you can't make a camera with LCD panel for $12 (the probably wholesale cost to the shop). Instead, they "refurb" and resell the camera to the next person - even if they replace the plastic case and battery, it'll probably only cost a couple of dollars to do. SO, they're amortizing the cost over a longer expected life-span. I wonder how many times these will get recycled. And I wonder how they work after being tossed around at a dozen or so frat parties...

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Kenja]

Take a look at some of the images [maushammer.com]. You can see an edge connector along one side of the PCB. Odds are this is there data is pulled from. Since they (the hackers) claim to have been able to update the firmware, I would assume that they are close to being able to pull data off as well.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[Coneasfast]

Like we need more things filling up landfills.

im suprised the mods didn't see this!
the cameras do NOT, i repeat, do NOT go in the landfills, they are resold back to the public from the store after use.

My PV2 page

[morcheeba]

I did the original hack on the old camera, and, of course, I'm working on the new one... here's my web page on it. [maushammer.com]

The next step is a ROM dump -- then we can see if there is any code in the flash memory, or if it's stored on the ASIC. I suspect that there is a bootloader on the ASIC and the bulk of the code (certainly the pre-programmed images) is on the flash. Don't know if it's encrypted or scrambled yet.

We're still working on the resolution of the sensor. I read the part number last night, but didn't return any google hits. We can't really rely on the size of the pictures one would get back from processing because, in the past, they've upscaled it.

Careful! It's not really 2 Megapixel

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the fine print on the box it's "Interpolated" to 2 Megapixel.

Don't expect it to look better than the 1.2 Megapixel camera it really is.

Disposable != One-time use

[Anonymous Coward]

Another unfortunately titled /. article leading to hundreds of pointless conversations by people who do not RTFA. I blame /. editors more than /. readers for this one though.

The cameras are meant to be used once and returned to a printing facility, whereby the images are off-loaded and then the camera itself is put back into circulation.

Re:Quality

[narcc]

... i'd rather have a 35mm disposable than a digital the quality will always be so much better.

That's not [about.com] exactly [photo.net] true [moose395.net]

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[AKAImBatman]

I wonder if they *really* wipe the memory, or just delete/dealloc the memory. It'd be very mildly entertaining to see if you could wait a bit and find someone else's pics in the memory.

I can see it now. "This is Marge waving with her left hand. This is Marge waving with her right hand. And for the big finally, this is Marge waving with BOTH hands!!!"

Most people's pictures are terminally boring. Trust me. ;-)

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[poot_rootbeer]

"Disposable" is quite a bit of a misnomer here. A more descriptive term might be "open-term rental".

You "buy" the camera from your shop, carry it around for as long as you want, take some pictures with it, then you return to the shop to hand the camera in and get the pictures on it developed. The shop doesn't crack open the camera like a walnut shell and toss it in the trash -- after extracting your pictures from it, it's refurbished and re-"sold" to the next person.

These aren't contributing to landfills any more than any other digital camera -- they only get disposed of when they've been damaged so badly that they cannot be repaired.

Re:Processing

[jhoffoss]

Not to deflate the humor here, but I believe processing/prints/photo CD is include in the price of the camera.

Re:cool....nah

[Mateito]

The LCD is detailed on the Maushammer pages. DataSheet for the LCD is here. [nildram.co.uk]

Re:cool....nah

[jpmkm]

It must suck to be blind. I feel sorry for you.

From the article:

Pure Digital is a $19.99 digital camera, with a color preview screen and the ability to delete pictures.

The slashdot writeup also mentions that it is a color lcd, though I know some people are too busy to be bothered with reading the writeup.

Whitesheet on LCD

[Launch]

Whitesheet on LCD:

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/%7Edisplaze/PDF/L CD /AU%20Optronics/A015AN02V1.pdf

looks like it should be very easy to use for other projects.

nonsense

[rebelcool]

how do you think film "disposable" cameras work? If you RTFA, it already says the industry average of reuse for disposable cameras is 5-8 times. They dont just throw them away!

"illegal" indeed.

Re:2MP + 16MB != 50-60 pictures

[p3d0]

Are you shooting at the highest quality setting? My 2MP got 45 pictures per 16MB card, but that was at medium resolution, which isn't 2MP any more.

But you do have a point... If they compress like crazy they could get a large number of pics. That falls into the "you get what you pay for" category.

Re:I just want the LCD

[Launch]

DOH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/%7Edisplaze/PDF/L CD /AU%20Optronics/A015AN02V1.pdf

and just for fun:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/08/18/bear.b eer.re ut/index.html

Try this link

[jaaron]

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~displaze/PDF/LCD/A U%20Optronics/A015AN02V1.pdf [nildram.co.uk]

(to parent: you have a space after LCD in your original link)

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[Politburo]

Is it really a lot though? Let's say that 1/2 of the shots you get from an analog disposable camera are throwaways. That's generous, imo. I haven't bought one in a while, but the disposable cameras are generally $5-10? With this, you can go on a whole vacation and come back with 20 shots that you know are good quality for $20. With the current method, you have to shoot 100 shots and hope a few come out nice. Assuming developing costs are the same, and if you need 2-3x the analog prints to get the same amount of usable shots, the 'disposable' digital becomes cheaper in the long run.

Film is much worse!

[Kombat]

LCDs are manufactured using an resource-intensive process, AFAIK, with large volumes of contanimated water as a waste product, and large volumes of dangerous chemicals being used/reused/disposed in the process.

These cameras are reusable. Sure, there may be some waste during manufacturing, but the fact that the exact same materials can be used for hundreds of photos makes up for it.

Film, on the other hand, uses equally nasty chemicals and byproducts, if not worse, and is a 1-shot deal. You can't "delete" a film photo and take it again - its commited to the silver halide crystals, like it or not. And the stuff they use to turn that film into prints is much, much worse than the ink in a digital printer.

Get your priorities straight, bud. This is good for the environment.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[morcheeba]

No, that's the EUCD (european union copyright directive), which is far worse than the DMCA. Here's my DMCA analysis on the old camera. [maushammer.com]

film disposable cameras arnt actually disposable

[axelbaker]

Actually most labs don't throw away disposable film cameras either. They are designed to be easily opened with out damage and get sold back to remanufacturers for about $0.25 each. Same thing on the waste from most of the photo processing. The developer and rise chemicals are degradable organic chemicals, and the fix, which has all the heavy metals in it cannot be dumped legally and is full of silver so it is processed and the metals are extracted.

In the end conventional film cameras and processing are friendly on the environment than electronics manufacturing for a digital camera. Admitted there are processes out there that aren't, but not too many people out there shoot Kodachome or use pyro developer any more.

Re:cool

[svferris]

FYI, Canon just announced their next generation camera today:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0408/04081909canon_eo s20d.asp [dpreview.com]

Quick summary:
Canon has today revealed the EOS 20D, the eight megapixel successor to the EOS 10D. The new sensor is however only half the story the EOS 20D has a slightly smaller and lighter body, a brand new 9-point AF system, near instant power on time, 5 frames per second continuous shooting, support for EF-S digital lenses, true RAW+JPEG, a B&W mode and USB 2.0. In total we've counted approximately 30 noteworthy improvements on the EOS 20D. Naturally we have a detailed eleven page hands-on preview of the EOS 20D and will have sample images available in a few days time. Price on the street around US$1,500.

Run C code on it! I'm surprised no-one mentioned..

[BillX]

Granted, this is a discussion of the *new* Dakota cam with LCD, but I'm surprised the newest hacks of the old one haven't been mentioned:

(All of these can be found on Rodrigo Balerdi's page [balerdi.com.ar])

1) Run your own code on the camera
A code loader has been written that allows you to nondestructively load your own executable code into the camera's 8MB (slightly less of it usable by you) DRAM. A small demo program from his site demonstrates the concept by blinking out a pattern on the 'Ready' LED, but programs of arbitrary complexity could be written...subject to the limitation that you can't access/execute any of the onboard firmware in this mode. (Bracing for the inevitable Beowulf-cluster comments...)

2) Bye-bye 25-picture limitation
Another clever hack lets you reset the 25-picture limit to an arbitrarily high number. This allows you to take pictures until the camera's FLASH memory actually fills up completely (under "real-world" outdoor picture-taking conditions, I've found this to be about 50 shots, but it will vary with how compressible your images are).

3) Firmware updater and miscellaneous updates/bugfixes
Balerdi's patchfile for an existing Dakota firmware corrects several nits/bugs with the original. It makes the number-of-pictures display count upward from 0 instead of downward from 25 (very useful in conjunction with the previous hack), ensures picture numbering starts from 1 everytime the camera is cleared and always remains consistent (even if you delete shots), and fixes a bug in the original firmware that could result in 2 pictures having an identical number/filename (making one impossible to download).