"Disposable" digital Camera mod

There is now disposable digital cameras, they sell for about $13.00. I traveled to seven different electronic stores here in Boise to find one, I was either laughed at or had funny looks when I asked "Do you carry a disposable digital cameras?". Well the joke is on them. Finding out that there are two main companies that actually make (made?) these cameras - Ritz/Wolf and Walgreens. They are only available in select citifies, if you want to see the current cities here is a picture. I had to resort to Ebay and spend about $20.00. However still a good buy for a 1.3MP digital camera.

The basic idea for the single use digital camera is to take your "27 pictures" or so, send the camera in and they send you a CD with your photo's. Kind of lame, but unique.

However, you bought the camera - keep it!

There are three different methods to making this camera "last forever". You do not need to do all three of them, choose the method that will be cheapest/best. You may have a few of the items at your disposal already, so take a look at the required parts for each section, then choose which rout to take. I chose to do the method 1, so the other methods are not my mods. I have supplied pictures and links to the original modders.

Method 1- Palm/USB/PC (easiest)

Method 2 - USB/PC (cheapest)

Method 3 - Add smartmedia card port (ub3r)

Palm Sync cable and USB mod

All parts we will need:

-One time use digital camera
-Palm m100/m105/III/VII/serial hot sync cable or classic cradle - (99 cent stores or RadioShack)
-USB cable (get from dead device. See here for more info on USB)
-Drivers: Windows , Linux , MAC
-Solder

First of all take the 10-pin connector end on the Palm cradle and shave it so it will fit into the camera. It will be much too fat otherwise. I found using this rasp or even sandpaper would work fine.

Once you get it to the correct thickness, you should be able to plug the connector into the camera. Once it goes in far enough, you should hear a click sound - it clipping into place.

Now take this same end and carefully open it up. Use a small flat head screw driver and slowly pry it open. Just to take off the top cover.

Now you have exposed the wires inside the sync cable. The only wire we need to "mod" is the black wire over to the right. We need to take this black wire and move it to that blank spot in between the red and orange wires. The wire falls off with ease if you use a solder iron.

Now re-solder to the other connection.

(my soldering is getting better.. just don't let the connections touch!)

Now just close up this end of the cable, it is now ready. You can use some hot glue or super glue to secure the cover back on.

The next step is to mod the other end of the cable. We just need to make the other end a USB end (instead of the serial that's there now).

Open up the serial cover the same way as we did on the other end. This end is a bit more difficult to open (You could just chop off the serial end and splice the wires.. I'm just saving a extra step).

Rip off the 1980's serial connection.

You will find that there is six wires on this end. USB only uses four. On these Palm cables, you will NOT need the yellow and blue wires. Get out your USB cable and strip it down.

Wire up the colors as in this table. Wire and solder them one-by-one. After one is finished, wrap it with electrical tape or shrink wrap so the wires do not touch each other.

Once you have them all securely connected this way, use heat wrap or more electrical tape to complete the cable. Here it is when it is complete.

Do not plug in your camera before you install the software. Be sure to get the current ".03" software. Then read the readme.txt for installation.

Here is a picture I took. The lighting in my house is not very good, so if you had adequate lighting the pictures aren't that bad. The flash could be better. Here is a large picture of the outdoors. The software is very easy to use all within a GUI. For around $20.00 this is what you get - not too bad. The camera is set for focus on "infinity", however you can mod the focus.

USB to PC

All parts we will need:

-One time use digital camera
-USB cable (get from dead device. See here for more info on USB modding)
-Drivers: Windows , Linux , MAC
-Solder

me-

First of all this mod could be done several ways. Basically you just need to hook a USB cable to the camera then to a PC. Remove the sticker on the side that says "Do not remove" (I removed all stickers). Remove the batteries. The camera will have four screws holding it together, these are very tiny phillips screws. Remove these screws. Once removed use a small flat head screw driver to pry open the camera - carefully. The shutter button and battery door will probably fall off while pulling it apart - that's ok, they are easy to put back on.

Once open you will see small screws holding the PCB's in place. Remove these screws and carefully take things apart. Basically - you will see the connections on the side, under the battery tray. A USB cable needs to be attached to four of those pins.

You can attach your USB cable however you want too. In fact, you could mod a USB female port on the camera. Or even a CAT-5 female plug and wire up the four wires you need.

dorkwadicus-

Here is some example photo's. These where taken from dorkwadicus at Linux-Hacker.net

Using the other side of the camera (where there is room) and attaching a "port" of some sort would work just fine. You just need the four wires for USB.

Add a SmartMedia bay = No driver/PC needed.

All parts we will need:

-One time use digital camera
-SmartMedia socket
-Solder
-SM memory card

me-

Ok, I really wanted to do this mod. I couldn't get my hands on a SmartMedia socket to solder to the camera. I will update this section if I ever get my hands on one for a "walk-through". The beauty of the smartmedia socket is that it lines up perfectly (it's made to) inside the camera. Just take the camera apart and solder the connections. This way no drivers are needed and no battery juice is used for uploading pictures.

codeman-

Here are some example photo's. These where taken from codeman at Linux-Hacker.net

Here are some helpful sites for tweaking, modding and tuning your camera.

Linux-Hacker.net
RevJimWiki.net
Cexx.org
Maushammer.com

<----- owned

Since you paid for the camera, it's legal to do with it as you wish. I hear they will be making these with an LCD screen on the back soon, expected in early 2004.

Burke~