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!

cool

[JoeShmoe950]

I really hope it is hackable. I mean, a 2 megapixel digital camera with LCD for $19.99 would be a pretty good deal, even if it takes a day or two, and even 1 or two broken cameras first. I hope someone comes up with a hack!

Gauges

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm looking foward to sticking LCD gauges all around the house with these babies! :)

Re:This seems strange to me...

[FooAtWFU]

They sell it more than once. To the consumer, the "disposable" angle is that they only use it once, and return it when the pictures are developed.

With a 35mm camera, you don't get to delete pictures and review pretty screenshots before you print. It's just not the same.

Worth the extra $? Perhaps, perhaps not- depends on how much $ you have to throw around. But I'd hardly call this a "futile" attempt. It will make the next round of similar cameras even better and cheaper. There's money in it.

How to make a digicam unhackable?

[argent]

Is it possible to make something like this that's more trouble to hack than it's worth? How much work would it be?

Embedded CPU with built-in mask-programmed or fusible-link ROM. Encrypted images in the flash, with the key in the CPU's ROM so it can't be read out. It shouldn't be impossible to lock something like this down hard enough that it'd cost more than the value of a cheap digicam to unlock it.

Not a bad move

[JOhn-E G]

This looks cool, not that I would use it as I have a digital camera [dpreview.com] that I am happy with already, but the retailers can reuse the cameras making it a little cheaper for them, and the disposable camera market seems to do pretty well. I think they can replace the disposable 35mm cameras with these fairly well. However as an end users more than maybe 7-8 uses of this becomes pointless as you can get your own one for that much. Though if they are hacked and they turn into $20 digital cameras then I think the company will have to go back to the drawing board. It will be interesting to see if these become mainstream soon or not.

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

[zerocool^]

It depends... from the site, it appears to have a 16MB memory capacity, which at 2 megapixel is something like 50 or 60 pictures. Considering a decent disposable camera that takes 24 pics costs $5, this is less than twice as much per picture, and gives you the ability to preview and delete pics you don't want developed. Add to that the possibility of modding/hacking it and the potential environmental friendlyness of not using film, and you're not talking a huge cost for the value.

Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

While digital camers are great for features and useability you still cannot beat 35mm film for quality.

My college course in photography demands students have a 35mm camera, no digital allowed. And thats for a pretty good reason as well.

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

potentially dumb question

[enrico_suave]

that I should google first but... I haven't had my quota for abuse today:

Has anyone done any cool hardware hacks to utlize a digital camera's LCD for other purposes? (thinking case mod, mp3 jukebox (like a real jukebox [jukeboxcontrols.com] (friend's site), not an ipod) display.

my understanding that trying to use an old laptop's LCD (separate from the laptop) is near unpossible or not worth the effort...

*shrug* some sort of dimented light bulb went off when I saw the post...

e.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Gulik]

How long before "disposable" becomes "free" with a simple hardware/software hack?

It seems to me (and this is admittedly off the top of my head, and I apologize if it can be trivially proven to be stupid) that, if you set the camera up so the camera encrypted the JPEG in hardware before it landed on the memory card using a public key, you'd need a private key to get to the JPEG, and the private key would only be on the developing station.

So, sure, someone could hack the developing station, but those are going to be a lot harder to lay hands on than the cameras are. And if the only thing you can ever get from the camera is the public key, and you can't work around the hardware to intercept the image data before encryption, I would think you're pretty well stuck.

Environmental disaster in the making

[FFFish]

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.

The same goes for CCDs and the electronic guts.

How the fuck can anyone conceive this as a good idea? What an utter disregard for the inheritance of our children!

That said, I want one, just to hack. But, shit, surely we humans have *got* to get a clue one of these days.

Re:cool

[ackthpt]

I really hope it is hackable. I mean, a 2 megapixel digital camera with LCD for $19.99 would be a pretty good deal, even if it takes a day or two, and even 1 or two broken cameras first. I hope someone comes up with a hack!

Perfect also as a low cost camera for attaching to radio controlled plains and kites. All that's required is figuring how to trigger the exposures.

I wonder if the guts are dipped in epoxy to discourage what happened to the CueCat [air-soldier.com], i.e. they sell/give out several thousand but only half ever come back or are used as intended.

Re:cool....nah

[Traa]

It is not anywhere near as good a deal as you might think. The 2 megapixel sensor (CMOS I bet, from either Micron, Omnivision or the likes) are going to be flooding the market at about $5~$8 in bulk this year. This technology is booming and going straight for commodity prices. The lens technology is desperatly trying to catch up but is still lacking. Trust me that the lens on this thing is tiny and crappy. Good enough for a quicky vacation pic, but not good enough to replace a regular (sub)$300 digital camera. All the other parts are trivial....except the LCD. Can someone tell me how they managed to get a super cheap LCD in there?

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting idea...

However, there has to be an unencrypted picture somewhere to use for the preview screen, though that could be low-res.

Re:Hardware hackers rejoice!

[pclminion]

If the individual parts of the camera are collectively worth significantly more than $20 (which is probably the case), I think you could make a lucrative business out of buying these cameras and parting them out on Ebay.

Eventually, this would probably force the market into a true renting model where you have to return the camera.

Another Option

[iamdrscience]

I know most of the people on here are looking at this as an opportunity to get a usable digital camera for cheap (with a little elbow grease), but even if the attempts to hack it aren't successeful, the camera is still worth more than they're selling it for. You see, for hobbiest electronics people, LCD screens are ridiculously expensive. In single quantities you'd be lucky to get a lower resolution, monochrome LCD display for twice the cost of this camera, more likely three times the cost. LCD screens, more than any other products are given great discounts in bulk and huge price inflations in small quantities.

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

[mrchaotica]

The problem is that IMHO $20 is a lot to charge to rent a digital camera. I'd pay the $20 to buy one and hack it, sure, but not to use it in the way it was intended. I realize it has to be that expensive, to recoup the losses from people like us (and broken cameras), but at that price I doubt the market is large enough to be profitable.

This would especially be great in bad conditions.

[Blimey85]

Last time I was @ WDW it rained a couple times (typical FL weather) and I was worried that my digital camera would get wet and quit working. It's not a really expensive camera... was only a couple hundred bucks, but I don't really want to replace it due to it getting wet and shorting out or getting broken on a ride. I also don't like having to worry about losing it or getting it stolen. If I had been able to rent a digital camera while I was there, I would have done that instead of using my own. The quality may have not been quite as good but @ 2 megapixel they would have been good enough. I wonder if they will offer versions with larger capacity. If you could rent extra memory cards, that would be a bonus. I don't want to have to carry around 10 cameras with me... with mine I had a nice large memory card so I didn't have to swap it the entire trip and the spare I brought was tiny and fit in my little camera bag easily. Fitting 10 cameras into a camera bag would be a bit more difficult, not to mention trying to take all of those on a ride with you. So maybe cameras with quite a bit more capacity for those of us who want to rent one and have it last several days worth of pictures.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[morcheeba]

That was the reason for my original hack of the old camera. I never got an answer, because I never found a recycled camera. One Ritz employee said that they had a box of all of these cameras that they had ever developed (5-6) sitting around and they hadn't sent them back for reprocessing. The scary thing is that the processing machine doesn't seem to clear the pictures* -- it must be done at the reprocessing place. A good reason for that is the accidental erasure of the pictures -- you don't want to give the clerk the ability to accidently erase the camera before getting the pictures.

The old camera wasn't really recycleable. The case was painted, so any scratches would show. Changing the body would require removal of about a dozen screws (of a few different sizes), so it's impractical to do.

The new camera design is held together with three easy screws and it's easy to replace the case. The body is not painted, so scratches will be hidden. I'm excited to find out if we'll actually see recycled cameras.

(* note: that's heresay and I can't guarantee it)

the environmental impacts of technology waste

[digitalgimpus]

this is ugly.

I wrote a paper about how some of this stuff is impacting the environment not to long ago. I thought I had an idea, ends up the actual numbers are WAY higher than I ever would have thought.

http://robert.accettura.com/archives/000380.shtml [accettura.com]

for anyone interested.

It was an Environmental Bio paper, for my gen ed lab requirement. I'm a Business MIS/Comp Sci student, so like all students in the class, you orient the paper towards your field.

You press the button and we do the rest

[Animats]

That was Kodak's original concept. It's over.

This whole thing depends on "taking the camera back to the store". What's wrong with this picture?

There's a desperate, last-ditch attempt by the camera industry to re-introduce consumables into a product that no longer needs them. Expensive incompatible flash memory cards, expensive special paper for inkjet printers, and, of course, the "printer ink" industry all fit this model. They're just delaying the inevitable.

Incidentally, the inkjet situation should open up in a few years. Key patents are approaching expiration. The basic bubblejet patent expired this year.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Lodragandraoidh]

A previous message said they already were able to update the firmware through the data port - which tells me you could wipe the encryption scheme - and save pictures unencrypted (if they are encrypted to begin with).

This looks like a great and cheap hacking project.

I could see hacking this as very useful for 'throw away' applications - where losing a $1000+ SLR would be heartbreaking.

Does anyone know about the power supply - and how easy is it to replace the battery?

Silver prints: the reason I go back to the store

[davidwr]

For 4"x6" prints with archival properties, it's still cheaper to go to the store and get your digital images printed on a mini-lab than to use an inkjet with archival paper and inks.

Even if it weren't cheaper, it's more certain:
Color silver halide prints have decades of history and you can "believe" it when the printer says "will last 80 years under proper storage conditions."

With ink-jet archival materials, the manufacturers have to use accellerated aging to test their materials with. That's good, but not as good as real-life data.

Now, when they get something with the archival properties of silver-halide prints affordable for home or photo-intensive small business users, that will be a Very Good Thing.

Oh, and with many ink-jet glossy prints, you dare not get them wet.