Slashdot Mirror
Disposable Digital Cameras Have Arrived
damiangerous writes "American chain Ritz camera has begun offering disposable digital cameras for $10.99. The price includes 4x6" prints and a Photo CD of the camera's 25 photo memory. Pictures can be deleted, but there's no LCD."
It's not _disposable_ it's _reusable_. The camera is returned to a
Ritz Camera store where the pictures inside are downloaded to a CD
or printed. The camera itself is kept by Ritz and recycled to another
customer. In other words your $10.99 is a _rental_ of the camera
with processing of the pictures included in the rental price.
There's a picture of one of these cameras here.
The USA Today article has some more details
on the camera and its use including the fact that it is likely to be sold at Walgreens
and Walt Disney theme parks (seems like a good idea to me).
The camera has a 2-megapixel sensor.
John.
Seems pretty cool although disposable is a bit of a misnomer because they are really just recyclable, not like Ritz is throwing all the bits in the trash after processing them.
:)
Not being able to review the pics instantly is a drag too as its one of the main reasons I like using digicams (well that and not having photo guy check out my, um, arty pics) and I'm also a little dubious of their claims that a 2 megapixel camera can give you decent prints at 8x10, all that being said having a self timer is neat and I'm sure they'll be pretty popular.
In fact thinking about the recycling a bit more, I wonder if you could ever grab somebodies old pics off of a recycled unit.... I know you can recover deleted pics from a normal digicams media.... Something to think about..
how hard could i tbe to determine the method used to download the pics, and then sell a cable & driver for 20$?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Now, this is digital, so there has to be a way for the Ritz folk to get the photos off of the camera.
10 000 points to the first one to figure out how to do this on our own. Release the info anonymously, of course, so they can't get you on DMCA ballyhoo.
I mean, I'd pay that little for a decent digital camera.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
How is this any different from a standard 35mm disposable camera? I can get one of those, and get the same features but for half the price. Its not "Digital", but I can get a PhotoCD, index prints, etc for about $7.
until these are hacked up like cuecats so that people never have to take them back to ritz.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
My Nikon D1H has a 2.something MP CCD and I can easily print up to 16"x20".
Just use a spline-based Photoshop plugin to enlarge your prints.
I'll take it! Just don't expect me to return it...
Why are these called disposable? Won't Ritz just check the battery and put it back out for sale until the mechanicals wear out or electronics fry? Or maybe they'll advertise those as "previously-disposed" cameras? Isn't this actually a form of rental? Maybe consumers feel they are getting a better deal if they "own" the camera.
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
...a clever individual figures out how to download the pictures and reset the camera at home? That way you could basically get a basic digital camera for $10. Is there anything that requires you to return the camera within a certain period of time?
where it is real film and they just send you the prints and a photo cd right.
my god, any one who thinks they are doing digital with that is a moron.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Depending on how they recyle these I wonder if it would be possible to recover other peoples pics from the reused memory card ?
So, how long until someone reverse engineers it, so we can buy ourselves a re-usable digital camera for $10.99?
Or do we have to fill out a rental form before getting one? In that case, I think most people will be sticking to disposable film cameras.
An unfounded or false, deliberately misleading story, not controlled by others or by outside forces.
You can just get a regular disposable camera and send it to one of the places that offer digital images with developing (like Snapfish). About three bucks for a disposable camera and three for developing. And if you lose the camera (which is why I get disposables anyway) you're only out three bucks, not eleven.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Wait. That's an MS idea. Damn.
It sounds fantastic. I've used disposable cameras a couple of times and they are definitely a handy thing to be able to buy. And now you can delete bad shots and get a photo CD? This is why I love living in the 21st century.
Anyone know who actually makes these, what hardware they run on, etc.? How hard would it be to hack it, maybe take out the chip and dump your pics without ever hitting the 25 photo nuke point?
Anyway, hackable or not, I would definitely choose one of these over a normal disposable camera if I needed one
Build your own website - full service homepage system your m
I don't understand how this is any better than a typical cheap disposable which you can get for about the same price, including developing. 2MP is a little worse than film quality, and all you get is the ability to delete prints (blindly) and the photo CD, which isn't worth much if you're getting prints.
From the NYT text:
Ritz Camera has begun to sell (and in Wisconsin, Walgreens is test-marketing) a single-use digital camera...
And I was just in Milwaukee earlier this week! In a Walgreens, even!!
Oh well, just have to have someone there mail me one I guess.
BTW: As others have surmised, this puppy will be reverse engineered in no time at all. I've got my $5 on September 24th.
--
Sounds like a good source for some inexpensive CCDs.
Now I can build a camera for my telescope cheaply.
It's a "re-usable" camera. Re-usable != disposable.
At first glance I was thinking "oh great, more trash in our land-fills", but it's not meant to be thrown away after a single use.
Bad choice of descriptive words, there.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
2 megapixels won't get you superior 8.5x11 prints. A 300 DPI print would be 2550 x 3300 pixels, which is ~8.5 megapixels. A 150 DPI print would be 1275 x 1650 px, which comes out to ~2.1 megapixels...
People who need good prints for school/work need larger pictures, but then again most of us have cameras already.
Judgment: decent deal for families or people skeptical of digital cameras. Maybe it will encourage the sale of full-fledged digital cameras, who knows.
So does the "rental" store own the rights to your pictures or do you? Can they copyright the pictures of your naked wife and make a calendar out of it?
You can bet that somebody is going to figure out how to open it and extract the images without destroying the camera, and then Ritz camera is going to have a loss leader on their hands.
It's going to be just like the cuecat. Many, many geeks are going to acquire them, and not recycle them in the way that allows Ritz to make it's money back...
Like, when I wanna keep a camera in the car for those shots I always seem to miss... but if I do keep a camera in the car, the film goes bad in no time flat due to environmental abuses of temperature, humidity, and time.
This looks great for something if you get lithium batteries in it... looks like you could get all set up, and if the event you need to capture happens 5 years later, it should still work.
This would be very handy for documenting accidents, as you never know when you will get into one, and the probability is not very often, but when you do, having photos to document your side of the story could be very important.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Obviously, if the camera store can download the photos quickly, it can't be very hard for the rest of us. It's probably got either a hidden/internal USB connector, or some proprietary thing (unlikely, would require new equipment at all the places to print/burn the pics).
I'm a regular digital camera user myself with a full Canon digicam of my own. But sometimes there's a need for a disposable camera. I've been known to leave my camera at home, and sometimes I don't feel comfortable taking my expensive camera to certain events. In these cases I've used a analog disposable camera and scanned the prints. Not great. These disposable digicams sound like just the thing for me!
It's... News for Nerds! Stuff that Matters! La-de-da-de-da-DE-da!
...we have over 200 posts here all asking the question, "How long until someone figures out a way to hack this camera?"
Hmmmm...
:p).
:). :) ).
Asides from being able to delete pictures - even so you can't see if they are good or not, what would be the benefit of digital one-time cameras?
I mean the concept is the same right:
1) Buy camera at checkout line
2) Take pictures
3) Return camera and get printouts or a CD
Nothing which can't be done (or isn't done already) with regular disposable camera. Why would people who buy disposables care if it was digital or not?
I love digital cameras because you can *see* pictures and THEN delete them if they are bad (and 50% of my shots ARE bad
Though I can't wait to see how people are gonna hack these
People will figure out how to read data of the cameras and use them for all sorts of projects I bet (and hope
While its is undoubtably possible that I am the one missing the point, it sure seems like Ritz is off its rocker. The major benefit of digital camera IS the lcd screen. The whole point is to take pictures that you are certain will be good. While the concept is coming, and it sure is fun to delete things randomly (which is exactly what you would be doing with the delete feature), I think there is a lot more ground that needs to be covered before I'll be picking this over a different disposable camera that is cheaper and has comes with a free photo cd.
Burninating the villagers, burninating the country side. TROGDOR!
Well, there's either 2 ways (2 models).
One is properity IR connection. The other is a headphone jack that somehow sends/receives data. And it DOES connect through a usb dongle to either type of camera.
If this is truly a "sale" and I can pay cash for it, I'm getting me one of these. I could use a few cheap optics.
After all -- just because it's on a memory chip rather than film doesn't change the fact that they're your pictures.
An unfounded or false, deliberately misleading story, not controlled by others or by outside forces.
Heh.. Almost EVERY post up till how has had the basic idea of "this is sooo going to be hacked: cheap digital cameras for all!"
Honestly, I love slashdot. As we read, there are thousands of geeks pondering ways to circumvent whatever protection Ritz has installed on these things. Even better, odds are Ritz has no idea. It will probably take them a few weeks -after- the cameras are hacked before they even notice.
Then, the lawsuits will fly, but by then it will be too late. The cameras will be re-released with stronger protection, and shortly-after they'll be hacked as well. Ritz will at this point likely give up altogether and drop the product. End result: every geek on the planet gets a cheap digital camera (or three).
Buy them early, in case Ritz catches on! In five years, these things will be as "cool" and "old-school" as the old Cap'n Crunch whistles.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
It's not stealing. They make a product that can be purchased for $x. They provide value to said product when it is returned to them.
If I can provide said value on my own, I have no reason to return it to them.
Simple economics ^_^
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
so people are saying it's a "reusable" camera, not disposable and that this is more of a rental... (i missed this in the articles, for some reason)
so are there extra charges if i feel like smashing it against the wall after i buy it? or can i do what i want with it after giving up the $11? anyone know?
Why would you be certain of something that hasn't even happen? The damn camera hasn't even come out yet. The worst that will happen is the camera will no longer be made, just like those barcode scanners that came out.
IMHO If the company plays by the rules, we should play by the rules.
If there is no rental agreement then they are the biggest fools ever, falling prey to reverse engineering (just like the X-Box). Think of how easily damaged digital cameras are. Do you honestly think someone will want to sign an agreement making them liable to a loss of several hundred dollars when little Jimmy sticks the camera into the sandy beaches of Florida? Even if there is a some sort of agreement, there will have to be time-limit established. Otherwise, people will find a way to empty the memory and yet keep the camera unmodified, returning it after many uses.
It is doubtful that they could produce these and generate as much profit per camera as disposible film cameras.
[c0d3fu]: jwjb62@umr.edu || james@macrohub.com
Without an LCD, I don't want it- its just not useful!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
why not collect them and make a beowulf cluster out of them...
:)
if it's not been posted it has to be said
I've got my $5 on September 24th.
That long? If they've already released them to a test market, I'd give it about a week. Especially now that Slashdot has mentioned it, geeks everywhere will swarm to Wisconsin to buy a few and see how they work.
Expect a hack for this before they even hit stores outside the test market (likely meaning they'll never hit stores outside the test market, since Ritz will very quickly discover that they've started taking a HUGE loss when people buy these but don't return them for processing and recycling).
Unless Ritz has found a way to literally produce a $10 digital camera, this one won't last long. Say hello to the next NetPC or CueCat.
I bought a digital camera for the convienence of never having to buy and develop film again. Does anyone use a digital camera for the simple fact that it is digital? Seems to me, the cheaper regular disposibles would still be the way to go. Am I missing something here?
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
I have a 2.2 megapixel camera and I print 8x10's of the kids all the time. They are on the wall next to studio prints and you can't see a difference at all. Even to my discerning eye and I can see seep-age (printers) or pixelation no matter how small. I'm very picky.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
That or everyone will figure out really fast it's a crappy little camera and hacks will be only for the novelty of it. And they will throw away their camera (or three) and get a good one.
...sorry I don't see how this works:
...but then I guess noone ever went bankrupt overestimating people's stupidity. And heck, if I was stuck in a holiday place and forgot my camera, I would buy one!
1. You can buy used digital cameras for that money (well and this one would be "used" anyway) and prices of digital cameras keep falling
2. You miss out on the main advantage of digital: choosing exactly which photos you want printed, which ones you don't (either on your computer or LCD)
Combining 1. and 2. this product seems doomed. Why be forced to develop photos at one place when you can go for the cheapest option with your own digital camera.
Despite my immersion in this field, as far as taking pictures is concerned, I'm sticking with film. I like/trust negatives as a storage medium. I also get Picture CDs created when I process my negatives to give me easy access for later PhotoShop manipulation. But long term, I trust negatives.
"IMHO If the company plays by the rules, we should play by the rules."
Ok, but only if I get to make the rules.
Finally, there's a camera for fresh young gonzo web pornographers on a shoestring budget!
If they really think 8x10's will turn out very well on a two megapixel sensor, they must be kidding themselves. Sure, they can enlarge it, but the quality of the camera is minimal and blowing it up will just make it look worse. However, for 4x6's this should be fine, although I'm sure people who are used to regular cameras will be unimpressed.
Seriously, how long?
Does it run Linux?
Someone had to do it.
This may be redundant, but when I followed the link in the NYT article, I could not find said digital camera anywhere on Ritz's site. Givin NYT's sorted past, I wonder if the article is legit.
-TheDawgLives suckitdown
...or you will miss out on the now common "Can I see that" after taking snapshots of girls, and then "I look ugly in that" followed immediately by "How do you delete this" and suddenly you find that girls CAN be good with modern technology if they want to...
I work full-time and earn dollars during the day.
I only steal in my spare time!
http://jesus.everdense.com/
I guess their research showed a low amount of technical people there? Remember the cue-cat came out in Dallas first. "The Silicon Prairie" I guess they don't want people to reverse engineer it before it gets to market. BTW, what happened to the disposable cell phones that slashdot talked about a few years ago? I wonder if they'll use some sort of DRM such as MagiGate or SD to keep people like us from getting our pics without paying?
25 4"x6" prints, an index print, and a cdr of the images?
Walmart runs prints from a digital camera (bring in your own cdr or flash card) for $0.29/print. That runs about $7 for 25. Index print and cd-r will be an extra $1-2.
That's $8 in product, for $11, or only $3 for the rental of a 2MP digital camera, which makes perfectly good 4"x6" prints. (Bearable, but not good, 8"x10"s.)
That's not bad at all, for people that primarily want prints, and not just digital images. Myself, I have a digital camera, and my preferred output is just the cd-r with image files. I get prints made, but far fewer than I keep image files on cd-r.
I'm curious how many rentals each camera has to make to pay for itself. $3/rental, camera probably costs... less than $100. Say about 30 rentals to pay for the camera and related labor expenses?
I can see how this would be a good thing at theme parks, where people are likely to rent and return them in the same day, possibly several times per day... They'd reach break-even in a month, and after that actually start making money.
The nice thing from the business point of view is that the continuing costs are lower. You just wipe the storage card and recharge the batteries, and you rent it again. Don't have to pay a couple bucks in film every time you rent the camera. The battery cost is higher than for a "disposable" film camera because the power draw is higher, but without the LCD, not that much higher.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Honestly, these things are so damn old it pisses me off! WHY WAS IT POSTED???
Let's do this, take your wife's pictures and send them to me, I will check that the copyright gets right to you.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
another product with in built obsolescence - what a waste. Just shell out a few bucks for a product that will last.
Ceci n'est pas une
Okay, the business model is just CRAZY.
I'm sure they were thinking: The cost of a camera is like $60 (I'm guessing), and, we can reuse it as many times as the market will bear. So, we have to rent each one 8 or so times to make up the profit, but people will essentially be renting them, so it isn't a big deal.
But, ignoring the hacker problem, how many people buy a disposable camera, take a few photos, then lose it? 10%? That sorta messes with their model! (or, just as bad, take a few photos, and then "keep it for later". (2 years later, the business model doesn't sound like a good plan))
(unless there is some sort of deposit. But, I have trouble seeing people spend a $50 deposit on a camera!)
I am sure it would be mega easy to hack these things and dnload pix to your comp.. but wut happens when the proprietary battery dies?
C:\earth\humans\del *.m0ronz
What it says. looks like a fairly small camera, flash, plastic, "Dakota" brand?
These sound perfect for doing a "Matrix" type effect. 45 of these could be used to make a nice 3 second sequence for less than $500. If disposable film cameras were used, registration would be a bitch.
Now it's only a matter of time before it pops up in Bar Mitzvah videos.
Each camera has a UUID -- a universally unique identifier, like a MAC address.
Before sending the camera out, I'd create a pair of public/private keys. I store the public key on the camera, the private key at the camera store (or centrally, whatever, so long as it can be retrieved later during processing).
When the camera takes a shot, it is stored *only after being encrypted* using the public key.
When the camera comes back for processing, the private key is retrieved (thanks to the UUID) and used to decrypt the images.
W/O the private key, the data retrieved is worthless. Generate a new key set before sending it out again.
This being the case, I'd use standard USB or IRDA or whatever and not worry about people violating my rights by reverse engineering the system.
Mozo - DVD sharing networks
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
...hacked yet?
No!
Is it hacked yet?
No!
Is it hacked yet?
No!
Is it hacked yet?
Fine! Yes, it's hacked! Are you happy now?
Does it run Linux yet?
Arrrrgh!
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Are you really so broke and so bored that you would actually attempt to swindle an $11 2 megapixels camera? There's nothing insightful about your comment.
Laws are for people with no friends.
You're not legally bound to do shit unless you sign a contract or click on a EULA. ...and they can't use the DMCA on you because you're not circumventing a *copy-protection* mechanism.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
"How long until we have a Beowulf cluster?"
Mother nature beat you to it. It's called a fly's eye.
Ah yes, secured for your protection. That way only the central processing plant's TIA enabled computer and everyone who handles your CD on it's way back can get at the super secret digital record of your love.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A journal entry from this morning
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
heh heh, your parent said "your wife" not "my wife," aka even if he got one of these he doesn't have to worry about photographing a real person.
Wait, plan, then strike!
Here are a couple more tidbits: I believe this is similar to a older kodak camera, in which case the interface is probably a serial to 1/8th jack.
This /. post describes a possible icky drawback (60 bucks down, 39 refund on return ) Hope that isn't the case!
This is a little more detailed about the marketing behind the camera, and it gives the location of the test store.
If this post is not karma-whorelicious, your money back!
Sure, Ritz makes money selling cameras, but the core of their business for years was selling film and development for those cameras.
With digital, that part of the business evaporates. Sure, they can sell printer ink and flash cards, but so does everyone, and they can't sell the 'service' of developing the film and printing, which has a huge markup. Last time I got film developed at Ritz, it was something like $25 a roll. When I got my first digital camera three years ago, I stopped using film -- and stopped going to Ritz. My story is typical, I'm sure.
I see this as the last act of a company clinging to a decades-old business model.
So does it boot to Linux yet?
...doesn't say anything about this product.
http://www.dakotadigital.com/
No doubt. TubGirl is one of the few sites (and the *only* hardware site) where I would even begin to consider paying for a subscription.
They'll just add some sort simple encryption and sue anyone publishes info on how to defeat it. Think Inkjet cartridges.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
There is absolutely no legal or moral obligation to support a business model that doesn't work.
I can see it now, end user license agreements for the Xbox.
...It's not disposible, it's reusable.
Close, but not quite.
Standard framerate for film is 24 frames per second. If you want to slow it down to two seconds, you need to shoot 48 successive frames in the course of one second and then play those back at the standard 24 per second, so to get 3 seconds, you'd actually need 60 cameras.
And 60 at $10 a pop (not counting tax) has already got you up to $600...and that's not counting the equipment to synchronize all 60 of those camera's to fire on cue.
With all this talk of reverse engineering or cracking any encryption that might be on the camera, I began to wonder if Ritz could go after people for DMCA violations. And then it hit me:
***You hold the copyright on the photos you are trying to access.***
It's pretty much legal to circumvent copy restrictions when you're the copyright holder, correct?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
The difference between this idea and the defunct I-opener is that geeks make up a much smaller proportion of the potential market for the camera than they did for the I-opener. Who cares if 10% of the cameras get cannibalized? They probably only have to be recycled 2-3 times for Ritz to turn a profit.
It's hard to decide whether I want to moderate or post...
Coming from an ex-Ritz camera employee, if you want to go through the work of engineering all of that, printing them out and all the rest of that work Ritz does, it will cost you more (in time and materials) then it will to have Ritz do it in 1 hour.
Then again you will spend less money and get better quality images if you buy a 35mm disposable camera (about $5 for 24 exp)and then get them to burn you a CD at 1600x1200 resolution (1.92 mega pixel equiv.) for ~12 dollars.
just my opinion
dave
Much like when the cuecat was released, it'll take until the next issue of 2600 goes to press.
It's not like anyone actually reads the articles or the posts before shooting their mouth off in this place.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
"How long until thats illegal under the DMCA?"
Better question. How long till the "/." crew actually reads and understand what it says, instead of knee-jerking every time something related to business comes up?
With disposable film cameras you don't have to pay more if you never return it. Why would Ritz put this limitation on their digital camera.
I once saw someone accidentally drop a disposable camera in a pond. At least it WAS disposable.
Lawsuits for what? Unless everyone has to sign some sort of contract when they buy it saying they'll return it to Ritz or wherever, it seems like I'm buying an item for $11, and I can do with it as I please. Or maybe they'll have a license agreement inside the package that you agree to by opening the package...that's never been done before *cough*
If each camera has to be uniquely stamped with a individual public key, then you've just lost one of the major cost advatages of these things: that they can be mass produced cheaply. One common way around this might be to use flash/eeprom so that a unique key could be installed via automation, or by a worker trained simply to "place camera in cradle for programming." However, now you leave yourself open to the possibility of someone figuring out how to reflash the stored key with their own public key, so that they can decrypt the pictures. You then might be tempted then to use something like an EPROM, where fuses are permanently blown or connections otherwise severed to create the key's image... But if someone is determined they will figure out a way to create a new public/private keypair based on the stored public key such that this new public key can be installed simply by severing some of the remaining intact fuses.
This doesn't even begin to address the attack methods that involve stealing/obtaining the hardware from one of the thousands of processing locations that communicates to the home base; or hacking the central server directly; or strategically tapping the interconnects between the main ASIC and the key-storage device, and injecting your own public key; or analyzing the power/current vs. time plot of the ASIC during the encryption phase; or any of a number of other existing methods that have been developed to break smartcards / iButtons / embedded crypto.
My point is not that your plan wouldn't be fairly secure. Rather, I take specific issue with your subject line "PKI = unhackable" because given enough motivation, there are heaps of ways to break such a system. I would dare say that no system can possibly be "unhackable" given sufficient motivation from the attacker.
I imagine the disposable chunk is the plastic shell. They will crack it open like an egg and put the edge of a board into some little reader that prints out the pictures and burns a CD. You could make such a system for less than $200 and put it in any store. The guts of the camera wuould be shiped to a boxing plant, where a nice clean new shell is put on and it's crammed into a box. It's the only way to assure cleanlyness.
The price of these shells has come down. They can now be made with multiple plastics is a single mold. It's nifty stuff. I think they can even make them with the lens in place now.
Trust ebay to get you a camera that's easier to use. Compact Flash card cameras are the cheapest and most flexible. I hate those dinky usb wires and special programs many cheap cameras require. This thing, while cheap looking, is liable to have DRM on it's dongle to make usb shit look good.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
well... what's the point of NOT deleting a picture you can't see?
What is this, the latest fad? "Disposable" everything? Instead of filling up the dumps as fast as possible, we should try to get *reusable* commodities. Get a real cell phone, a real camera, and some cheap plastic plates and cups that you can put in the attic after the party. It's amazing what people will do for convenience.
More specifically about this one-time digital camera - They removed the only real advantage that digital cameras have: the ability to preview. In this case, you still turn the stupid thing in when you're finished playing with it.
"I'm trying to figure out what keeps the user from permanently "renting" this camera (downloading the pics to the computer and then deleting them off camera). Anyone want to fill me in?"
Well I've heard that no one's cracked the "going out of business" method. That seems pretty secure, and works even better in bad economic times.
I usually buy a digital camera for the LCD screen :(
Flashing ads in the eyepiece and on your pics, supporting strong crypto and wirelessly uploading your retina scan to the big database in the sky.
That or everyone will figure out really fast it's a crappy little camera and hacks will be only for the novelty of it.
:)
Exactly. For all the "Wow, 2MP for $11!" posts, I wonder how many people have thought about the quality of the lens, or the non-adjustable (and probably very high) jpg compression level used by the camera, or just how crappy the auto-focus probably is? (And that's for the brand-new cameras; what if you get one that's been reused a few hundred times?) For that matter, is this camera a true 2 megapixel camera, or is that an interpolated 2MP?
Once all the costs of hacking this camera are known, it might just be a better deal to get a $30 toy 640x480 camera. For less effort and possibly less money, you might just get better picture quality!
The Japanese have had fairly low-resolution (640 x 480) single use digital cameras since at least Nov 2001. I saw them there on a trip to Tokyo.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Whats the point of encrypting the data? The film you take to your local 1 hour photo place isnt protected at all, and places like CostCo leave the developed pictures in large bins for people to collect themselves.
What are we protecting against here?
A Beowulf cluster of these!
How hard would it be for the camera to have a specific type of rechargeable battery, or special recharger, so that you COULD steal it, but when the batteries die, you're SOL? Or they could just rent it out at $10.99, and if you decide to keep it, you get charged a much bigger amount (like when you rent a movie from Blockbuster, and they rape you for $100+ when you lose the movie)
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
because slashdot readers buy the cameras and never return them in anticipation of a crack...
Here's how it's going to go:
The thing is, it's pretty simple to get around this scenario. Simply:
This assumes that the cost of the retail version is around the same as the cost of a "disposable" plus deposit plus cost of cables and that the deposit is still low enough that it's not a big deal to lose the camera.
If it isn't, this enterprise looks pretty doomed to me.
I'm already thinking here... At $10.99 a pop, I can think of two things that make it worth something... (1) I can buy a bunch of these and have myself a nice collection of 2 megapixel sensor arrays... (2) I won't mind buying a couple to reverse-engine the interface circuitry.
I'm thinking... I could probably hook myself up with a 100 megapixel camera for around $1,000 or so.
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
I'm going to try it out... I have the good fortune to live near Dallas, one of the test markets (info thanks to this link from another poster).
:P
That is, if I can get through the cloud of Clueless Salespeople.
Despite their positioning as photography experts, I haven't had the best of luck at Wolf Camera (part of the Ritz family). We took some film to them one time, in the hopes that they would push-process the low-light pictures, and got no better results than we would have had at Wal-Mart. Having to explain push-processing to the clerk should have been our first tip-off.
So this time, I called the big store in the industrial section of town (Harry Hines Blvd store). They sounded knowledgeable, but said they didn't stock them. I was referred to the suburban Irving location.
The clerk in Irving... didn't know what I was talking about. He said I'd have to hold for the "camera person"... hello, I thought the store was called [Wolf|Ritz] Camera, shouldn't they all be camera people? While waiting, I asked the non-camera person where he was located... he mumbled a bit and gave me a location several miles south of where I really, really thought the store was. Asked him for the store's address... boy, that really threw him for a loop! He found it, finally, and it was right where I thought it would be.
But when I talked to the "camera person", it turned out I didn't need to make the trip. At first, he said "Yeah, we have plenty of digital cameras." Explained the concept of "single use" to him. "Yeah, we have Fuji and Kodak, but we only develop the Kodak". Now, he was talking about the disposable film-based cameras that come with "free" developing to CD. It took a while to explain to him about this new product, big buzz on the 'net... so he gave me the number of another store. That's 15 minutes of my life I won't get back.
So I called location #3. This guy seemed very clueful, and assured me that yes, they have it... yes, they develop it... no, it's not the film-based version, it's the real single-use digital camera.
I'll head over there after work... details will be posted here! Hope my wife doesn't get upset about my new toy...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I'm going to buy one and throw it away immediately!
Instead of "Wait, plan, then strike", how about 1. Wait 2. Plan 3. ?????? 4. Profit
I like using disposable cameras. but I keep throwing them away, and I still havent gotten any pictures back.
I couldn't resist
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
I forgot to mention this. In the article I read a couple days ago (in a newspaper even! gah), the manufacturer is planning on an LCD version within a year or so.
My suspicion is that it'll still be point/click with the LCD only for reviewing pics or a MICROSCOPIC LCD... they won't get 24 shots out of the camera's batteries otherwise.
To which I say "Print them out? WTF d00d?"
Ritz' target market is "Less-technically-inclined people who want to print their pictures out and look at them in photo albums with their friends."
There is another market out there, however: the market for "Ten-dollar 2-megapixel digicams, and who the hell ever prints their photos to dead trees anyways when it's cheaper/faster/easier to just email the pics to your friends?"
The relative sizes of these two markets is what will determine whether Ritz' business plan succeeds or fails.
Netpliance of I-Opener fame made the same mistake - their target market was "people for whom AOL was too complicated and who didn't want to buy a $799 eek-its-scary e-machine computer thingy when they could have a $99 flat-screen appliance that'd give them the ability to do email and teh intarweb for $20/month."
Part of why Netpliance failed was that there was a small - but sufficiently large - market of people who thought "$99 flat-panel PCs that can be h4x0r3d to run Linux! Wow, I gotta get me some of that! The parts alone are worth $500!"
Moral of the story: Don't be nearsighted when it comes to your target market. Think ahead and make sure you're aware of any other markets, particularly non-target markets that break your business model.
I remember reading some message earlier talking about if it was a special machine or some network requirement for the processing of the pics.
Out of curiousity I called a Wisconsin Walgreens to ask, among other things, if they'd ship me a few. The photo person handed me to a manager and the manager said that they didn't have the cameras yet and that this program was going to be implemented in the next few weeks. So they're not yet available. :-(
She was not certain if she could ship me any cameras but would ask her manager and call me back tomorrow. I'll be impressed if that really occurs. In any event she went on to tell me that "...this new program required a new computer and an upgrade to their photo processing network." And that the new computer had not yet even been installed.
So this could be interpretted as (at least from my point of view):
1) The woman is not all that computer savvy and considers a new program on a computer to be an "upgrade" to the "photo processing network."
2) The woman is computer savvy and that's exactly what she means. There's some post processing required to decrypt the image data. Maybe each camera encrypts the image data uniquely and only the network machine contains the right key to decrypt images from any specific camera?
If it's #1 I think we (those that wish to do unto the camera as we see fit) are golden. If #2 it might be a great deal more difficult to "unlock" the thing.
I'm hopeful that she'll call me back and that she'll be able to send me a few of the cameras. If nothing else it'll be a hoot playing with 'em.
Just FYI
Put an array of these around a scene and shoot at once, then connect the frames - you get that cool "frozen in jump" etc effects :)
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What kind of CPU would you need to encrypt 2 MegaPixels of data in a decent amount of time with public key algorithms?
A fast one, but that's not what you'd do. You'd encrypt a random 128-bit key with the public key algorithm, then use the key to encrypt the image with a fast symmetric algorithm. Even PC public key programs generally work that way.
WHAT THE BLAZES ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!?!?!?! Pardon the yelling, but how would that constitute stealing? Why would it be stealing any more than opening up a standard "disposable" camera and developing the film inside yourself? Let's do an example shall we? Let's say that a person, we'll call her Judy takes some photos that she cannot get developed at a one hour photomat for whatever reason, so she takes the photos to her amatuer photographer friend Bob. Bob has the equipment to develop film himself and has some mechanical knowhow. He does not have any sort of contracts with any disposable camera makers. So, Bob pops the thing open in his darkroom, pulls out the film and develops it, gets to keep a copy for himself as payment and maybe even figures out how to reload the thing. Have Bob and Judy just committed an act of theft? Only the most rabid, frothing at the mouth market protectionist is going to claim that they are.
It may certainly be true that the "disposable" camera makers sell them at a loss and only make money by reselling recycled cameras. Or, maybe they actually do make a profit on each camera sold and the recycling is just gravy. Either way, Bob and Judy are obviously doing an end run around their business model and causing the company not to make as much money as they would have. Whose fault is that, however? In a reasonable world, it would be recognized that most people are not going to develop their own photos and re-use their "disposable" cameras. This means that the disposable camera companies are gambling on a pretty sure thing, but gambling nonetheless. If it becomes easy and popular for people to re-use the cameras, then the camera makers have lost their gamble and they do not make as much money or even go out of business. Only in a sick value twisted system could someone who has actually put any thought into the issue claim that it is just and right for people not to be able to use property they have purchased in this manner.
There is really absolutely no moral or ethical difference between doing this with a film based "disposable" camera or a digital one. The trouble is that there is a legal difference. There is a massive blemish on the face of justice called the DMCA, which makes it illegal to break encryption to get at a copyrighted work. Even though the copyrighted work in this case will be your own photographs, the company that makes the camera will set things up so that something that it has copyrighted is encrypted along with your photographs so that you cannot decrypt them without decrypting their copyrighted content (it is actually possible that the DMCA makes it illegal to break encryption on your own copyrighted content when someone else has imposed it. In fact from my non-lawyer point of view, I've never spotted the part of the DMCA that makes it legal for the copyright holder to assign permissions for others to decrypt it or even decrypt it themselves). It's all part of our accelerating march back to being Vassals to the noble classes, never permitted to actually own anything.
My bet: Standard ports, nonstandard pinouts. Standard protocol. Standard format for the data on the media.
Rationale:
1) Nonstandard ports = cost to develop a new controller from the ground up.
2) Nonstandard pinouts = no cost.
3) Nonstandard protocol that can't be trivially reverse-engineered: cost to code and test.
4) Nonstandard format for the data on the media: Cost to develop controllers and firmware.
Summary: "Oh, fuck it, use a two-pin connector and a standard USB controller. We'll supply +5 and GND at the photo lab. Nobody'll ever suspect it's USB with only two pins! Rot13 the bits as they go onto the chip. Nobody'll ever look for permutations of known plaintext like 'JFIF'. Everything else can be the reference design from the chipset's datasheet."
(Alternate: "Oh, fuck it, use a 3-pin headphone jack and RS-232 signals. Nobody'll ever guess. And Rot12 it, just in case anyone looks for ROT13.")
Just makes the hack a bit more difficult.
Flash the encryption memory with "null" key.
Add a circuit to circumvent the encryption.
Since the encryption would work like "fifo" just remove the encryption chip and replace with plain bus buffer.
Get the CCD and attach it to self-made "backend" circuit.
Just hack 'doze box they use to download it and steal damned keys.
Brute-force the encryption if weak.
There's no uncrackable solution.
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I guarantee there will be some sort of deposit required or a clause that they can charge your credit card $100 if you dont return the camera in a certain time period.
They are available in San Jose area Ritz stores. Called a friend there, and remembering how iOpeners changed when hacked, he went immediately to buy 4. Two for each of us, one to use, one to open.
For $10 the main point of digital camera is not that you can make that pity 25 pics without knowing if they came out okay or not. The main point is you can take it apart, play with the pieces, try to make a webcam or whatever you desire, and generally dare to do things you'd never do with a $1000 model! Screw the LCD, the CCD+lens, the flash, the batteries, the interface, all that stuff would cost about ten times that at radio shack!
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"Fantastic! So now I don't have to ruin a $200 camera, I can get one of these to disassemble and wire into my shoes for those "upshots"."
You do and you're going to be taking pictures of your tonsils.
--
A female AC.
This is an EXCELLENT example of innovation over litigation.
Digital cameras threatened to drive film processing stores (like Wolfe cameras where live) out of business. The Wolfe Camera on De Anza even closed down. Yeah, the chain is hurting, but they realize they can't sue all companies that make only digital cameras, as well as some well established film camera brands (Nikon, Canon, etc). What do they do then? They innovate. Sure, we think it'll get hacked (which is inevitable), but they are trying new methods of keeping the money rolling in.
Sure, suing all the users (*cough* telemarketers) may be one way to continue business as usual; but another way is to innovate (*cough* iTunes).
That is All.
This story actually is 'News for Nerds'.
WTF is going on here?
Once you take apart an analog camera you get a handful of useless plastic pieces.
This toy taken apart provides you with a bunch of great electronics you can use in your hacks.
Isn't that great?
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If this camera is anything like a standard digital camera, there could be some bad consequences to this. I lent my camera to someone once, so they could take some pictures. They deleted the pictures when they were done. However using dd if=/dev/sda1 of=~/pictures.iso i was able to get a copy of all the deleted pictures, since it's fat32, and the pictures don't actually get overwritten. Using a Hex editor, I was able to find the headers, then just copy down to what seemed like the end of the preexisting picture file. And PRESTO, lots of nice pictures for me. I'm sure these cameras will be hacked no problem, since, in order to make the price this cheap, i'm sure they would have gone with standard components.
If you're going to be at Disneyland for 12 hours the cheapo camera's batteries aren't going to survive with having to power an LCD screen.
The other thing is that the idea of the disposable camera is to take spontanious shots. If you're serious enough about photography to need an LCD screen to make sure your shots come out, you should just just buy a digital camera. Most people aren't trying to get professional shots and a standard issue view finder is plenty accurate for casual picture taking.
Being digital, unless you really screw it up, the picture can be adjusted.
The complaint I have is the 26 shots. It being a digital camera they should have at least a hundred shots and then charge you based on how many you want to print. I'd rather not have to drag around a bunch of those cameras.
When up in Colorado I took well over 200 shots with a digital camera in about 8 hours. Quite a number of them came out really well. The real advantage of digital is that you can shoot all you want and you don't have to worry about running out of film and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
but it's the computer controls that make it work. I think they'd frown on you ripping it open and wiring up a computer controlled switch.
Unless you've got 45 friends with godlike timing ability.
If you want to play Matrix, Fry's electronics has a super cheap 640x480 digital cam for $17. And you don't have to take it back or pay to have the pics developed. 640x480 is about standard TV resolution (US anyway) which is all you need for homebrew projects.
The interesting thing is that Matrix didn't invent that trick. They only modernized it with computers. One of the first motion pictures was of a running horse. The way they got the motion was by putting a series of still cameras along the track and as the horse ran along it hit the trip wires taking a picture. The pictures were then assembled into one fluid film.
I can't wait for Greek weddings to start having plate cam.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Actually, "stealing" one of these cameras would be pretty damn pathetic. You can buy a camera of similar quality for $40! They package them in blister packs near cash registers these days, no hacking needed!
The only thing that these things are really any good for is getting prints and a photocd in case you don't have the equipment to do it your self (using a regular digital camera).
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Granted, alot of things that are 'wrong' with a picture can't be seen until later. But the people this is aimed at likely won't care about under/over exposure issues.
There are times however when I've taken a picture that I *know* was bad the instant i pressed the shutter.
-
The camera is based on the Sunplus SPCA504B controller chip. There's a SourceForge project in beta for this series of controller. Will keep posted as analysis continues
They informed me at the store that it was a 1MP camera, not 2. The packaging does not say anything reguarding this. Also it does NOT include 4x6 prints, it's includes a cd with the pictures however. This matches what the box says:
FREE Photo CD
FREE Index Print
* Camera price does not include processing
The I/O connector is a PCB card edge with 10 wires. Kind of looks like the cassette port on a C64.
Deuteronomy 13:06-9
These camera's are based on the SunPlus SPCA504B controller. They have 8MB of Samsung Flash, and an 8MB TM Tech RAM. The controller code is an an SST 128 kB Flash. See the SourceForge project for the camera controller HERE. Will post connector pinout/schematic when it's known.
This isn't news. I saw an ad for it a few months ago.
I work at a Walgreens 1-hr photo dept (We don't have the test program). One of the biggest things in the department is speed. So it has to be really easy to upload the images off the camera. Another reason is that not all the employees in photo aren't as my photo manager puts it "Comperterized".
You just have to make it more expensive to hack a single camera than it is to buy a real camera.
Not always. How many readers here besides me have built $1,000 PC based "mock" TiVos? I'd love a ten buck 2 megapixel camera. My time is free.
I was just about to point out Walmarts service and use that as a reason to buy a real digital camera. I print out about 1/10 of the pictures I take, and I suspect that people only use/want 1/10 of the pictures they take with a film camera. So the savings is 10 fold, so 3 dollars a rental is actually 30 dollars -- justifies a 300 dollar camera in 10 sets of 24 pictures actually printed.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
I think we all know who's winning the war against nature. ;)
Just alter the back of some old SLR to house the CCD instead of the film plane backing, and get shutter timing from the winder attachment contacts. (It also seems trivial to just have it "know" when things aren't black.) One back could fit a bunch of similar models (the Canon AE-1, AE-1 Program, and A-1 come to mind, their rear doors are identical). Ideally the CCD would match the 24x36mm dimensions of 35mm film, but they don't in many all-digital SLRs. This is only really an issue if you shoot at extremely wide angles (24 mm) anyhow.
D S.html
Keep the storage and battery in a "winder attachment" screwed to the bottom of the camera.
This would be quite a product for those of us with old SLRs and thousands of dollars in lenses. It also would allow a relatively simple conversion back to film (just put the original door back on and take off the storage unit) for those with just one camera body.
I guess I want something like this:
http://focuscamera.com/cameras/Canon_EOS_1
ported over to old, mechanical camera bodies... and cheaper than $7999. Much cheaper.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
If copying the music 10,000 times is theft on a massive scale, then why isn't taking the camera contrary to Ritz's wishes theft on a minor scale?
It's not theft doofus, it's copyright infringement. Big - BIG difference. One's criminal one's civil. Take a law class to learn why the differences are there, and why they severely make a difference, legally and (some would argue) ethically.
Anyway, if you BUY the camera (if that's what's done and there isn't a contract), then it's been upheld time and time again that you own it and you can do whatever the hell you want with it. Flush it down the toilet after running it through a blender if you want. Mod the hell out of it.
After all, I can make any whacked out business plan I want and then proceed on that basis.
In my opinion, trying to hold pre-existing and once workable business plans to outdated / inferior technology is pretty much along the same lines...
That doesn't mean it's a smart thing to do though.
I just rushed out to the store and got their catalog. I'll just transcribe the best parts:
New! Available in June in selected areas
- Delete & Retake last shot
- self timer
- Return the camera to Ritz Camera or Wolf Camera and get:
-- 25 hires prints
-- index print
-- Your pictures on a Big-e CD
$10.99 Camera Only
Digiprint processing package: $10.99 (Frequent Foto Benefits not applicable)
Avalable at selected stores in the following areas: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Birmingham, Chicago, Dallas, North Carolina, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Tenessee, Washington DC.
I talked to the lady in the store, and she said that only the stores with a Pioneer system would be able to process it (whatever that is). There was only one store in the RTP area that had this, and they were already closed at 7:45 pm.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
The ones I've opened anyway, YMMV. Every cheap photo lab has the idiots open these cameras, so you can be pretty sure that once you take a roll it is trivial to get the film out without a darkroom. Normally you rip the cardboard, and open the bottom with a half twist with a screwdriver. To load new film is tricky, you will have to investigate. Worst case you throw the camera away and develop the film normally. More likely you will discover there is a hidden knob that you turn while pushing some buttom and the film loads. At least that is the one I reloaded 5 years ago.
1) The price for the camera was $9.99 not $11.99
2) Purchase price of the camera *does not* include processing costs.
3) There is no deposit, rental agreement, EULA, etc.
4) The power comes from 2 AA batteries.
5) The side of the camera has a slot similar in shape to (though narrower than) a Playstation memory slot. The top of the slot protects a 10-pin extension of a circuit board. My guess is that there is an adapter that the Walgreens photo technician inserts into the slot, triggering an automatic dump of the photo data. However, this is far from my expertise and this interpretation could be totally wrong.
That's a perfectly logical argument. However, most casual photographers aren't perfectly logical. A surprising percentage of people exclusively use "disposable" cameras, mainly because they're convenient. Some people are also intimidated by anything more complicated; I have customers who have me load their film for them every time they come in to get a roll developed, because they're afraid to do it themselves. This camera is perfect for them, and simpler (read: cheaper) than scanning film if people want their pictures on a CD. Even if they don't, a lab with a Fuji Frontier printer can print digital images on exactly the same archival-quality paper used for printing negatives, which is way better than what they can do at home with an inkjet. The company still saves money because it cuts the film processing out of the equation. Disclaimer: I work for Ritz. These are my personal opinions, not necessarily the company's. Yadda yadda.
IANAL but traditionally, the person that pressed the shutter release is the one that is granted the copyright to the photo. While Ritz may own the "copy" of the photo on the camera, they will not have any right to make and distribute copies unless the copyright holder grants them that right somehow.
...for flash capacitors etc.?
Seems to me that $5 kits to convert them into reusable cameras will probably make this idea economically unfeasible -- unless people are forced to put a $50 deposit down or somesuch.
Unless there's some kind of terms/conditions statement on the outside of the packaging, I don't see how you could be prevented from retaining and reusing the camera after having it developed:
You've bought the camera. Unless they say otherwise when you buy it, it's yours to keep. That's the definition of property; something you buy and keep. IANAL, but if they argue and refuse to return the camera to you, I'm pretty sure they're legally committing theft. Eventually the batteries will run out (barring someone else on /. figuring out a workaround), but you should get a few more runs out of your camera than Ritz probably expected you to.
I worked for Ritz/Wolf for years. If the rest of Ritz's cheap Dakota camera line is any indication of the quality we'll get with these digital cameras, it's probably a better idea to buy a 35mm film camera and let them scan it onto a CD (about 2 megapixel images) and don't have any prints made.
I asked a friend of mine who still manages a Wolf Camera for some more info...
gund: what's with these new Ritz single use digital cameras?
gund: how do those work
rm: SUCK BALLS
gund: Well, I imagine they do
gund: but do they have a card in them or what
gund: how do you get the photos out
rm: you plop the peice of crap into this special peice of crap maching they gave us
rm: it then makes a crappy cd and crappy prints
rm: crap crap crap
rm: worst thing ever
Unfortunately he couldn't tell me much about the machine used to extract the images from the camera. Guess I'll have to go tinker with it next time I'm down there...
There's really nothing that obliges you to return the camera to Ritz to have the pictures developped is there? It seems to me you could just find a way to modify the camera so you dont' need ritz to download your pictures and then you'd have a 11 dollar 2 megapixel digital camera that you could use as many times as you wanted (rather tahn returning it to ritz where they'd simply resell it).
The only flaw with this theory is that they've likely got the pictures stored in some proprietary manner that makes it difficult to extract the images for the average consumer.
Now what happens when I am walking at night and spot a landed UFO with an alien in the bushes - Just how am I supposed to run to a store, stand in line, rent the camera and get back in time to snap a pic before the alien is finished taking a piss???
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
A beowulf cluster of these puppies!
Sweet!
raretshirts.com - cool vintage t-shirts
Come disposable pictures.
They most likely won't give you back the same camera after they download your pictures. They will likely send the cameras back to the vendor (i.e. replace batteries or fix broken cameras) and give you a packaged camera.
As an employee of a major photo company, I can tell you that it doesn't matter HOW good the film in these cameras is (and often it's high-quality 800-speed stuff) - the plastic lenses are made in such a way that you get warping at the corners. Luckily some minilab systems automagically compensate for this problem, but you still lose light.
:)
Get a real camera. A nice film one. Developing film is cheap. Then buy a film scanner and you'll have the best of both worlds.
+++ATH0
640x480=307200
307200*8=2457600
Yes, the marketeers would report this to be a 2.4MP (base 10) camera...
The techie marketeers would report this to be a 2.3MP (Base 2) camera..
So this is a 640x480 (or less) camera.
I have it on good authority that Ritz (and Wolf, and Cord, and Inkley's, etc.) Camera isn't going ANYWHERE anytime soon. They're doing QUITE well.
+++ATH0
strategically tapping the interconnects between the main ASIC and the key-storage device
At this price point ($30-50 cost of goods, payback in 5 "rentals", 8% lossage?), I don't expect there will be many chips on the board. Besides the CPU/DSP, sensor and some regulators, probably external NAND flash, and maybe DRAM, but the code ROM (likely to be masked or OTP with only a bit of e2rom or flash) is likely on-chip.
I like your points about power profiling and I recall the IBM encryption device for banks that was tricked into giving up its secret key, but there are some boxes that do have strong incentive to hack that haven't been comprompised yet. Digital cable boxes (PowerKEY and DigiCipher II) is my best example: they had the advantage of trailing the satellite guys in technology (didn't repeat mistakes) and that stuff is damned well built. Also (ducking...) Divx was never hacked. It has layers on top of CSS. Remember, CSS was weak and the Xbox took a very smart and persistent guy to hack.
If they don't embed the NAND flash in the CPU/DSP, and I haven't seen anyone doing that yet, it'll be easy (for those with Metcals, microscopes & steady hands) to wire on a Smartmedia socket & use removable cards + a card reader. Much easier than figuring out how to talk to the thing when you can't snoop on a legit conversation (unless you have a friend at Ritz boost a reader).
How is it that the camera can store its pictures on regular film (implying a purely optical process), but allow the user to erase a picture after it is taken? What exposes the film?
(Unless the 'film' is really some kind of magnetic media, I'm stumped.)
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
One of the best things I ever got my son (age 4) was a cheap VGA digital camera (Vivacam 20). He's taken about 1500 shots since Xmas (some are really good!) he adores it and we save big time on development costs and can quietly delete the Bart Simpson shots :->
The main problem is the exposure/flash setting interface really sucks, so it basicaly defaults to outdoors shooting only.... Has anyone seen a good kids digital camera ie cheap, camera shaped(1) and turns on the flash if there is not enough light?
(1) the strange shaped cameras are really easy to get little fingers in shot!
All good points. There are even methods described in the literature (I'm told) that involve exotic processes such as etching away the face of the silicon die and then exposing it to a high-powered photoflash, to cause a latch-up condition and allow the contents of memory to be probed; or subjecting the sample to corner-case conditions of temperature/voltage/clocking or otherwise fiddling with the clock rate so as to inspect the contents of memory. We're even into the realm of James Bond-esque devices that self destruct when their casing is breached, and other anti-tampering methods. It seems that most anything is vulnerable if the stakes are high enough.
I also submit that the reason Circuit City's DIVX was never cracked was because the reponsible parties folded and quit approximately 8 months after the rollout. Also, the resistance of Warner and Columbia (accounting for 40% of the rental market at the time) meant that none of their content was available in DIVX format. This might have caused a lesser appeal to hackers, compared to a format that had universal backing (standard DVD / CSS.)
Before taking pictures, I'd create a pair of public/private keys. I remove the '93C46 chip you stored your public key on (or just reprogram it in-circuit) to install MY private key. ('93C46 is the type of small serial EEPROM used to store little bits of 'unique' data in virtually EVERY consumer electronics product: Network cards (MAC address), copiers, printers, some TVs...yes, even CueCats...)
I then store my privatekey wherever I please. E.g. on a USB-capable computer.
When the camera takes a shot, it is stored *only after being encrypted* using MY public key.
When the camera comes back to my USB-capable PC for processing, the private key is retrieved and used to decrypt the images.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
developing film is cheap? sure, if you work for a photo company... the major drawback of film is getting every shot you took developed...when only about 1/2 of them are worth keeping. ( if you're lucky ) while rent-a-digital seems an odd concept, if they added a usb port for viewing the shots you got on a computer (so you could pare down to just the good ones with some idea of what you're deleting before you do it) i'd be in favor of using them in instances where i dont want to risk harm to my 'real' cameras [like that make-it-yourself low-pressure underwater setup]
you forgot one point: with the "$8 in product" equation Wal-mart is still making a profit at $0.29/per photo = $7 total + $1 CD-R = $8. So in reality Ritz is probably making far more than $3/rental, maybe $4 or $5 depending on how much it costs to print 4x6s (not much if wal-mart can profit at 29 cents each).
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
...more bloody land-fill, courtesy of our great throw-away society, when are these people going to take responsibility for their actions? By creating something this cheap, whatever recycling opportunities are presented to appease the greens will still be ignored by the masses and the damned things will still get thrown away. God, it makes me fume!
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.
I suspect that after a few rentals most people would decide that they want one of their own, so I doubt there's much of a long-term market for this.
Now this is the part why I can understand a place like Ritz doing this, but not Walgreens. You drop off the camera and are waiting around for the pics to be "developed" and there's a nice little counter top full of digital cameras for you to look at.
Generate interest, get customer return, and have customer with idle time looking at your product. Sounds like a good marketing strategy to me.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
since when do disposable (s)cameras come with an auto-focus. They all have a 1m=inf lens attached to them, requiring no focusing at all.
Flaw:
Before sending the camera out, I'd create a pair of public/private keys. I store the public key on the camera, the private key at the camera store (or centrally, whatever, so long as it can be retrieved later during processing).
And....
W/O the private key, the data retrieved is worthless. Generate a new key set before sending it out again.
In this case, all I need to do to hack it is generate my own key before I start using it. You could possibly require the old key before adding a new one, and then it becomes a question of how securely you store the key. If the flash is a seperate chip from the processor, you can read out the key pretty easily. I could buy cameras, unlock them and sell them on ebay.
If the key is stored in the chip itself, it probably won't be changeable. This means it will be all the same key for every camera (most likely), or a different, unchangeable key for every camera (probably not worth the effort).
Putting the key on the chip itself is expensive, as it requires an ASIC (custom chip). I suppose if they did this, it's not worth the effort to hack, but that still leaves it far from "unhackable". Everything is hackable, it just a question of how much effort is involved.
It's possible to "hack" some smartcards without even depackaging the chip. Properly controlled transients on the clock and power lines can affect program execution, possibly causing the the chip to give out it's key. If that doesn't work, there's always depackaging the chip. If this is necessary, then they're set, but I still wouldn't call the system unhackable.
Right now, I think only the miltary has "unhackable" chips, and I doubt even their scheme is perfect (the chips self destruct).
Basically, I think you're scheme is a good start, but your subject of "PKI = unhackable" just isn't a good statement to make. It's like saying your encryption is "unbreakable". I wouldn't use it. In order for a system to be sufficiently sucure, you need to know exactly what's required to break it, and then you decide if that's enough. But I suppose I'm nitpicking.
Life is too short to proofread.
Then they can't complain about people hacking 'em & reusing them themselves
I agree with your reason that DIVX wasn't hacked-- it would have been the next target after CSS.
/unable to bribe/blackmail Motorola & S-A employees?
Howver, you didn't comment on the lack of hacks for digital cable, the price of which just keeps going up & up. Is it beyond the reach of people unwilling
since when do disposable (s)cameras come with an auto-focus
You're right. The article says "auto exposure", and I must have read it too quickly.
Does your digital camera have a format option and have you retrieved pictures after using it?
My Canon PowerShot G1 has both an Erase All and a Format option. Erase All erases all pictures not protected where Format clears the entire CompactFlash card.
Who knows; the Ritz system might just format the flash memory.
So, did you friend leave you with any girlfriend goodies?
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
I made it to the Wolf Camera in Richardson (suburban Dallas), and found out what this poster had already discovered: the $10.99 price doesn't include developing. It's another $10.99 for the prints and photo CD -- though it should be pointed out that that's not much different from their regular price, IIRC.
The purchase itself was no problem: walk in, find the single-use camera section, and a cardboard display full of "Digital Single-Use Camera" was perched on top of the original display. Grabbed one, paid the saleslady (who was very sweet, and also very clearly working on commission), and left. No EULA, no strings, just eleven bucks for a 25-shot 2-mpix camera.
By the way, only 4 of the 6 Dallas-Fort Worth "Digital Labs" (out of 35+ total locations) are set up to handle the new cameras (3 Dallas, 1 Fort Worth).
Here are my scans of the packaging. The front is the same as seen before, but the back has the details:
* Tag line: "The only digital camera that's easier to use than film." Depends on your definition of "easier", I guess, but then, I'm a geek.
* A blurry picture of the back of the camera. It's got a typical disposable viewfinder, an unlabelled light that may indicate flash readiness, the LCD "information window", and buttons for "self-timer" and "delete". I haven't opened the package to see how closely the picture matches reality.
* The LCD window appears to have a frame counter, and the words "Wait", "Timer", "D[???]", "Formatting...", and "Return for Prints". I can't make out the "D" word, and I'm not 100% on "Formatting".
* It points out that "Camera does not connect to home computers. Return camera to a participating Big Print Central location for processing." FYI, these are Ritz, Wolf, Kits, Inkley's, and The Camera Shop.
* The "Ritz Camera Recycling Pledge: 100% of this camera (not including batteries) will be recycled or reused when returned to Ritz Camera for processing." Of course, it will -- 'cause it's not a disposable in the first place.
* 9 features listed under "Why Choose Digital?", most of which are basic digital stuff (deleting, no winding). But two of them are a bit misleading: "FREE! Index Print" and "FREE! Photo CD with your pictures", because of the last item:
* "Camera price does not include processing"
The only legalese is the "Limitation of Liability", which is mostly a boilerplate saying "will replaced if defective... except for replacement, you ain't getting cash for your lost pix of Grandma". Also noted, though: "This product may contain recycled parts." And, "Camera made in China", which sparks the whole [explotation|employment] argument.
No EULA, no deposit, no DMCA warnings, no expressed or implied committment to return the camera to anyone. I bought it, it's mine, I can clearly do whatever the heck I want with it. As far as I can tell, it would be perfectly appropriate to keep the two AA batteries for my own use when returning the camera for processing (though I'll probably just swap them out for a couple of dead batteries).
Of course, that's assuming someone on Slashdot doesn't take care of the "processing" part for us.
Here's my little challenge: I'll personally pay $15 via PayPal to whoever comes up with a way to hook up my camera to my computer that I personally can implement with my medium-geek level of technical expertise. I'm a programmer and I can solder, but I don't have access to any fancy testing equipment.
Of course, the Wolf Camera circular advertising the new camera also includes a 2.0 Mpix camera from "Concord" for $79.99 -- less than the price of four "disposable" digital cameras plus processing. But $11 is a small price to pay for this much geek value, right?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
My sympathies. Maybe harass your TSM until he/she gets you at least a Frontier 330?
+++ATH0
It IS possible to get labs to develop film without printing it. You save a shitload on paper this way.
:)
And if they did as you suggest, The camera would be reverse-engineered by someone in a matter of weeks, at best. Not that I would mind.
+++ATH0
Well, FILM is 24fps. NTSC Television (which includes VHS and DVD) is 30fps (actually 29.97). PAL (not used in the United States) is 25 or 24fps.
Besides, if you were doing bullet time, you would probably want to slow it down more than just 50% so it would be nice and slow. The effects in the Matrix movies are a lot slower than 50% of real-time.
I think that this sounds like a good idea!!! It should be great for anyone who likes e-mailing pictures but doesn't use a camera enough to actually purchase one. I hope that it works!
No one's getting anything for free here, friend.
There is a difference between buying something and renting it (although that difference seems to be lost on some of our ??AA buddies).
If I buy a disposible camera, then later decide that instead of taking pictures, it would be more useful as a paperweight, that's just dandy. I have no agreement with the store that I will return the shell of the camera within XX days.
If I pay $10.99 for the camera, it's *mine*. If and when I decide to return it to the store is up to me. They are just banking on the idea that I have an incentive to take the camera back because I don't get my pictures until I do.
MOD PARENT UP!
So they're AA's, huh? 10-pin connector... four pins for USB, two for power, two for ?????.
Just took mine apart. No pictures, but its based on the SPCA504B-P4 chip from Sunplus. This camera chip is SUPPOERTED UNDER LINUX (spca50x.sourceforge.net). Just have to figure out the interface, which likely is a USB or Serial variant, and how to turn it on. There is a 10-contact edge connector I'm tracing now.
What's the point of having a disposable digital camera if there's no LCD? Great, you can delete pictures that you THINK turned out bad, but you'll never know for sure until you get your prints/CD.
As soon as anything gets expensive, you can rent it. In fact, for high end digital video where different scenes require reprogramming --well downloading new code anyway-- of FPGAs, they even rent techs to do the "programming." But that business model only works as long as the things remain pricey enough to make it worth it to rent.
But as for digital still cameras. I think you need look no further than EETimes and the Asian IT trade mags to see that Taiwan is taking over the digital still camera market big time this year and usually that means the prices are going to be falling. So, the disposable/rental thing is probably just a passing idea on the way to low end commodity priced multi-megapixel DSCs.
it looks like the conector is a 10 pin serial interface, and it appears to fit (I don't have one to test) a palm hotsync cable (maybe with a little mod and re wiring. anyone else have any input?
I think you are confused. I know I am. Since when do DIGITAL cameras use *film*? How does 'warping at the corners' correlate to a minilab system that compensates for 'losing light'? Aren't these two completely separate phenomenon? And why would a major photo company use high-quality film in a low-cost market offering? Traditionally, when a company competes for a low-cost product arena, the goal is to make your product 'equal to or noticeably better' , but not 'let's use this nice expensive film'.
Film cameras basically have one major advantage I have found over digital ones (for most consumers , of course) - speed. It's impossible to take 5 or 6 hi-res digital shots in a row without your camera stopping at that point to empty the buffer and write to the flash card.
Film processing is NOT cheap, as other people have mentioned, why pay for a bunch of shots on a roll of film that suck? It may seem cheap when you take it down to the PhotoMat or WalMart (where the employees screw up your prints, not the cheap plastic lenses) to get your DisneyLand pics developed, but then you have to make copies for scrapbooks, you may want that ONE shot of your kid blown up to 8X10, etc... Suddenly, film developing isn't so cheap anymore.
At $5 a pop for a 24 exposure roll of film for my film camera, the digital camera card paid for itself when I offloaded pic #144 at Christmas. Since that was 8 months ago, I can only speculate at the money I've saved since then by NOT buying film. Since I also bought a photo-printer that reads the flash cards the camera uses, I can print a proof-sheet of my shots, select the ones I want and only print those. And frankly, at 4 MP, the pics have more detail than most film photos I've seen of equivalent size, anyway.
Even though the disposables are guaranteed plastic lenses, quite a few decent digicams comes with glass lenses now. The Kodak DX4900, for example. A decent film camera costs as much as a good digital one, so why not go digital? And this only furthers my point earlier too : Why would you put your high-quality 800 speed film into something you KNOW uses an inferior lens? Talk about a bad business model...
Nope. Only 6 of the pins are used, and three of those are ground. It's definitely USB.
Got it:
Pin - Signal
__________
10 - Ground (Black)
9 - Data+ (Green)
8 - Data- (White)
6 - Voltage (Red)
9 and 8 might be swapped. I can't tell for sure. With the wires attached as above, when plugged into a USB port (without batteries) the LCD on the camera says "PC" and the green LED stays lit. Windows gives an error that it can't recognize the device, won't let you install a driver. I haven't made any progress under Linux.
Woops. I was right. The above diagram is backwards for the data signals. Here's how it oughtta be: Pin - Signal __________ 10 - Ground (Black) 9 - Data- (White) 8 - Data+ (Green) 6 - Voltage (Red) Plugged it in, and Windows said, "Hey, howya doin, gimme a driver!" Trying Linux now. Rock.
Way to go Farris!
There are a BUNCH of cameras out there using the SPCA50x chips. I bet if you get Winders drivers for one of them, they will work. $11 2-megapixel digital camera and maybe web cam... w00t!
Ritz has lost their mind, and are about to learn about bad business plans the hard way, just like I-Opener, X-box, and so many others...
Well, we've hit a wall. We got windows to recognize that it IS a usb device, but I know jack shit about drivers. Can't find one that will work. My best guess is that at the store they have drivers that allow this thing to show up as a drive on their store PC. The sad part is that I'm about to leave town for a week and won't be able to screw with it. Hopefully someone will pick up on what I've done so far and help out with the driver issue.
I got this far: lsusb in Linux identifies it as vendor ID 04fc, device ID ffff. Vendor ID is known by gphoto2, but not the dev ID.
Back to Winders. Get the Mustek GSmart Mini2 drivers, edit the *.ini install filed to change VID and PID from 055f and 504a to 04fc and ffff. Upon connecting and pointing winders at the right directory, it loads the drivers and says everything is happy. But I still can't get it to do anything. At this point it's a firmware issue. If we can get a hold of Ritz's driver, or get figure out how to burn firmware from another similar camera, we'll be set. Big IF!
Yeah, we got the 04fc vendor and ffff device IDs, too. ffff doesn't sound like much of an ID. Maybe I should go get a night-job at Ritz/Wolf. ;)
CAE - If you make any more headway, Linux or Winders, holla at farris at gentlenews dot com. Will be out of town for the next week, but should be able to check mail. Bad bad timing. I wish I could stay home and tinker with this more. I wanted to build a connector that fit in the hole so I could try out any new developments from my hotel room, but all my efforts were flaky at best. I'll leave all three cameras I bought (one's destroyed, one's dismantled, but operational, one's still completely intact) with my roommate and he'll just keep me updated on the progress.
i need to go get a hotsync cable - the connector looks like it would fit one. It that is true, we could just plug it in and unplug it, no dangly wires! That would be a HUGE plus!
here is the interface for the camera:
http://earth.prohosting.com/puredig
If anyone with a camera & the 10-pin-card-edge to USB cable is in the SF Bay Area, come visit me (Santa Cruz) & I'll hook it up to the CATC (USB analyzer).
Also, I have an embedded device (another camera of all things) that can act as a USB host, so we could do some USB mass store tweaks on it. That could be attempted with Linux, but those drivers are kind of large & hard to keep in your head at one time. Mine are small & simple, though I guess if I learned driver debugging on Linux, it would be easier than debugging over a serial line.
I'll get a few of these myself in a few days, but if someone's already got the cable hooked up, it'd be nice to save the trouble.
-M
Farris and I tried to make our own connector by slicing the connector part of the destroyed camera board off and soldering to the pins, then using a spacer to hold the smaller PCB firmly against the connector inside the camera. Results were less than consistent, as the heights of the soldered wires vary and wont always all touch the four pins. The connector really needs some kind of spring-loaded pins like the Palm divices have.
Its not a palm connector, as it is way too narrow from all of the retail PDA connectors I saw. Looks like it back to the drawing board to try and make one on our own. If anyone finds anything that will fit the form pse email at ik0n0s at yahoo.com
IT IS A PALM CONNECTOR!!!!!! I just disassembled a palm 3XE cradel and it is a PERFECT FIT! I'll have the wires redone by tomrrow!
Sorry about the yelling, but I was very excited! Now all i need is a windows driver! The mustek mini3 does not even come close (that would have been WAY to simple. Also to clarify my last post - it is a palm 3 or 5 10 pin serial connector. my prototype is WAY ugly, but is does work.
since then I have tried the smart mini, and the smart mini2, no luck.
Thanks to various folks for the pinout...
n de n
To get a USB cable that mates to the unit, I did the following:
Buy a Radio Shack serial hotsync cable for Palm m100/m105; it's the right 10-pin connector, but is too thick.
Carefully saw about 0.5 mm off the back of the connector tongue as I did, OR pop off the plastic cap that forms the back side of the connector tongue and shim the now-too-thin connector to fit. Carefully pry open the connector backshell as well.
Connections: Cut off the square end of a USB cable and strip 3/4" of the wires on the remaining cable, trimming the shield back out of the way (appears unnecessary to terminate the shield at this end); they SEEM to have consistent color-coding on the internal wires. Pinout as follows (if you hold the connector with the contacts facing you and the cord pointing DOWN, pin 10 is at the left):
Pin___Function____Color
10____Black_______grou
9_____Data-_______white
8_____Data+_______gre
6_____USB +V____red
Plug it into a Windows box, and you'll get a "PC" indication on the LCD and a Windows driver search. Until someone reverse-engineers the host software protocol and/or dumps the flash memory, this is as far as we can go for now...
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
D-oh. The Radio Shack part number for the hotsync unit is 250-983, and it costs $9.97.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Sunplus is VERY coy about the data on this chip (doesn't appear on their Web site and can't be searched out there), but from looking at datasheets for other chips in the series that are referenced by Zaram Technology, http://www.zaram.com/zaramweb_eng/product/zr_produ ct_camera.htm, I strongly suspect this chip uses an 8032-compatible uC core, so the flash RAM is likely to contain 8032 microcode that could be decompiled to reverse-engineer the USB protocol. (After all, there's a big SRAM chip in the unit too, so it seems likely the flash is strictly for code). A datasheet on the SPCA504B would be really nice, but seems hard to obtain. A word of caution: The Linux spca504_flash driver developers on SourceForge warn that you can toast the camera's flash RAM if a driver does something wrong; this suggests the flash RAM can be reflashed via USB, which could be both useful and dangerous...
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
That is WAY different internally than the Ritz camera. The blister-pack is the same, the form-factor and control positions are the same, but the internals are much different.
The Ritz camera is far more integrated, without the piggy-back board, jumper cord, and wrap-around flash module. I suspect the Walgreen camera you have is version 1.0, and the Ritz I have is v2.0. The fact you have a different PID suggests a different main chip too, though I suspect it is still a diguised/private-label Sunplus chip.
This help?
http://spca50x.sourceforge.net/devices.html
I just got a some links and a few words together about the internals of these cameras. I think that it won't be long before they are fully deciphered, so I don't plan on investing much time. If you would like to see what's available and contribute, please visit http://www.geocities.com/q_128