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Disposable Camcorder
shamowfski writes "CVS Corp on Monday began selling a disposable digital camcorder. The $29.99 pocket-sized camcorder was developed by Pure Digital Technologies Inc., a San Francisco-based start-up company. The camcorder weighs under 5 ounces and holds 20 minutes of digital video and sound. It features a 1.4 inch color playback screen and an ability to delete video, and it saves video on a memory chip instead of tapes. Can't wait till they hack this one."
My camcorder is already disposable.
Its just really expensive to replace.
air and light and time and space
A camcorder that records onto a digital card is disposable...how? Does it just die after 20 minutes? Who needs a camcorder like that?
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
How long before this is hacked ala the digital "disposable" cameras?
I'm trying to checkout the CVS camera, but no luck:
cvs co disposable_camera
cvs checkout: No CVSROOT specified! Please use the `-d' option
cvs [checkout aborted]: or set the CVSROOT environment variable.
Can anyone help me check out the camera?
With something so cheap and disposable, it is just a matter of time before these start to become part of the soldier's standard kit.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
been used much?
I mean, how many people actually did the hack and got a cheap, reusable digital camera out of the deal?
I'm betting it wasn't enough to have a large effect on sales.
Yep, we're going to be seeing a whole lotta fresh amateur porn over at Livejournal from this. Man, I love PureDigital.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I for one welcome our new Upskirt overlords
That's enough space to capture the entire life-span of sexual escapades of most of the people posting to this thread.
http://cexx.org/dakota/pv2.htm
Might... get one myself..
I imagine this would be trivially easy to hack, but with only 20 minutes of what is probably lo-res video, why would anyone bother?
As pointed out yesterday on engadget, these cameras have been out a few months -- it's just that the press release came out recently. Yep, it's from the same company that made the hacked still camera.
p ?f=13
The community working on hacking this new camcorder is located at:http://camerahacks.10.forumer.com/viewforum.ph
These cameras seem to have an external program memory, so it might not be too hard to hack. The forum above also has dissection pictures.
BTW, last summer PureDigital came out with a still camera called the PV2. Unlike the one that was previously mentioned on slashdot, this new one has an LCD post-view screen and it's based on a completely different chipset. It has also been hacked. I figured out the authentication mechanism on this and most of the communications. Others got the camera to work with standard drivers and are figuring out the proprietary raw format. I wrote a disassembler and have published commentary on the built-in firmware, but you'll need a camera & firmware file to make sense of it. The firmware is protected by a checksum, but that was easy to find and correct.
main pv2 forums
PV2 FAQ from the forum - a great starting place
my FAQ's
unofficial devkit for writing your own programs.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
better change that link, some spammer will think its christmas with all this traffic
Is it one time use or reusable?
I think it's a great idea for motorcylists. I like to go crusing alot. I can give one of these to my biker babe sitting in the back so she can film the rest of the posse without worrying about losing an expensive camcorder.
So if you play by the rules - you spend 30 bucks to rent it, then another 13 to get the burned dvd. $43 for a 20 minute DVD. Seems a bit steep in my book.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
There is no real reason (well, apart from making you go back to the store where you have to pay an extra $13, and it's not like you can avoid it) why these cameras have to be disposable. You can delete and record again, it's a memory. One can argue that it's the same with disposable cameras, but at least in those you actually ran out of film... This one has no mechanical parts to switch or run out of or anything.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
But more importantly:
I hope they are doing a through job of erasing them before they recycle them . .
-Peter
Remember the disposable cell phone?
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
This post intentionally left blank.
Wasn't that sort of thing (soldiers with cameras and camera-phones) cracked down on after the Abu Gharib thing?
I think so, but that doesn't mean they won't get smuggled out into the field.
There are probably still alot of cameras working in the field without approval from Central Command. Once they get *really* small and portable, they start showing up at all kinds of events that the commanders would rather they didn't.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
This is not feasable. I'd pay $20 for a 1.4" color screen to play with on its own. There has to be a deposit to make sure they are recycled by the right people. So the $20 includes the ability to get the data back out? Pay $80, get $60 back when you turn the case in, that I can see happening.
Realisistically, how long before the average cell phone has basic video recording capabilities? Most phones now have still cameras, and the main limitation on video is just storage capacity. So, I should think that within 5 years, video cell phones will be standard and then this device is totally irrelevant.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I just hope that they will do a good job erasing the previous owner's video from the memory card. Otherwise, if this gets hacked, your 'special moments' may have more viewers than you intended!
You can get decent camcorders (Panasonic PV-53) off ebay for $100, why bother with this POS?
Soo... We trust them with guns but not cameras?
You don't know how true that is. Actually (and yes, I'm in the military ... for another month XD)considering that U.S. Army personnel are spending a year at a time in remote places, they're amassing quite a savings, and miniature camcorders sell fast on remote tours (read desert).
So yes, I think these will sell VERY fast, especially with families sending them to the desert to their relatives, to have cheap video messages, to say the least.
One thing that intrigues me is what the battery is like in this; I highly doubt it will have an easily accessible battery. With a 4" screen and the ability to delete video when the memory is full, how long could I expect to be able to use this camera before I'm forced to take it back to CVS (or hack it)?
Penguin Trivia #46: Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were. -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
This article refers to a disposable camcorder, not camera.
18 months ago they started selling a disposable rectal thermometer that doubled as a home colonoscopy kit. You took the memory card back to the store for printing/negatives and referral to proctologist if needed. I hear they hacked it in about 2 weeks. One maniac even converted his to an oral model.
What else can I send over to the troops other than books and playing cards? I have a contact at work who arranges to have stuff shipped to Iraq on transports ferrying supplies.
I know that boredom killers are in high demand. I tried to get month-old magazines, but the local vendor said they get shipped back to the publisher for back issues. I've been looking for stuff that can be left behind and traded.
Any suggestions?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Oh, really?
Did your recruiting officer tell you that?
Lucrative gig, soldiering, eh?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
For God's sake, double check that the link is about a hack for THE RIGHT PRODUCT before you mod someone up.
Nerds seek the singularity, and sex is a distraction. Your post is both unoriginal and irrelevant.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Technically, the camera's batteries and its packaging are disposable, but everything else is recycled, so it's more a "recyclable" than a "disposable" unit.
Which is more threatening to the powers that be?
Pen vs. Sword, Act III Scene 2...
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Guns don't record evidence.
If the battery/charger was non-standard and required bringing back to the store to swap out/recharge, it might make it a little harder to hack (well, not to hack but for people to reproduce the hack easily at home)...
"They've canceled the show but we're still here. What does that make us?" "Big Damn Junkies, Sir!" "Ain't we just"
Most phones today that can take pictures will take video easily. The problem is actually data transfer rate, not capacity. That's why many limit you to 30 seconds even though you can fit a lot more into flash memory. Although my Treo 650 apparently let me shoot as long as the card lasted.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
camera's have always been alot more powerful than guns, with a gun all you can do is slience your enemy, with a camera you can do just the oppisit. so yes we trust them with guns, because any "secrets" they dont want us to know wont be reviled with a gun, only with a camera..
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
I take it you have never watched a single episode of C.S.I.?
> Which is more threatening to the powers that be?
They've just tipped their hand that they are so weak as to be utterly terrified of a plant.
First disposable condoms and coffee enemas, and now this! Truly we are at the dawn of a great age. What's next? Clean hookers? Quick somebody grab Dvorak! I need to know.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This looks great (as someone else has linked to in this thread) for aerial photography, whether by kite or rocket -- the sort of thing that you don't want to risk an expensive camera with.
;)
What other things would you use this for? Underwater robots? Car-attached home-made action shots? Glued to back of pet turtle?
There have to be some cool applications for which a $30 video camera would be perfect
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Big difference.
All my previous sigs now look like this one, I wish they were permanetly recorded when used.
I don't know why you would pay twenty bucks for a 1.4" LCD when you can get an LCD and the rest of the camera for about twice that.
My "carry along" camera is a cheap 3Megapixel SiPix I paid $100 for almost a year ago and that wasn't exactly a bargain bin price even then. It accepts up to 256MB flash chip which is good for several minutes of 320x240 AVI video. Now you can get equivalent cameras for fifty bucks or so. And yes, it will fit in a pocket.
It takes good pictures only when you coax it, but I have taken a few with it I would not hesitate to put my name on and publish. It has terrible ghosting in bright sunlight, but I cannot believe these cheap gadgets are going to be any better. And I can "rip" the flash cartridges to my laptop all day for nothing but the price of electricity.
The only real "value" here I think is making a DVD for you from the video. Lots of people still have no clue how to do such things.
REALLY bothers me sometimes. This is not progress...
I am gonna buy one to keep in my car in case of an accident...theres practical purpose for you..why take pictures when you can shoot video..and what about those times you want to go to the beach but dont wanna risk sand screwing up your camera..i think these will be big and will last for a bit..too many practical used around them..especially if some company comes up with a cheaper way of getting the pictures off and burning them
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
Just tried it. I made love to your wife twice in the allowed time.
Seems kind of pricy. sure $30 camcorder is cheap, but you don't get to keep it (it's disposable). Really what they do is take the device back, wipe it down, put it in a box and sell it again. And they charge so much to burn a movie to dvd to keep the initial cost of the camcorder low (impulse buy). But really I would prefer that CVS admits that they want $43 for you to make a short video of your vacation, birthday party, buddies at a party.
I think I'll stick with a still camera and use the money left over to buy beer and a cake.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
(Note: I have no financial or emotional connection with the company that makes the products mentioned below. I just want to point out that for a little more you can have to keep a far more flexible product.)
_ wide.JPG
h oop.asf (3.3 mb ASF video)
This week, Target is selling for $97 the non-disposable equivalent of this gimmick, the Aiptek "IS-DV."
The IS stands for "Image Stabilization."
It records to internal memory or a SD stick. A 256 mb stick holds about 60 minutes of MPEG4 video.
It is also a still camera (5 mp, but with a non-adjustable lens), voice recorder, and MP3 player. It comes with a tripod, A/V cable, headphones, and USB cable.
I've had an earlier version, the DV4500, for about six months. It's a great little toy. I bought it so I'd have a cheap camera I wouldn't be afraid to carry around everywhere. The image quality is pretty good:
http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/valley_view
The video quality is "OK." Note that this film was done under less than optimal lighting conditions:
http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/kira_jumps_
I bought a IS-DV so I can give the DV4500 to a relative.
Stefan
like wedding receptions, instead of disposable still cameras.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Breakfree CLP. Wonderful gun cleaning/lubricant. AR15 rifles such as they're using over there jam all the time due to the high amounts of dust and the high precision of those specific rifles. They have to clean them constantly.
Breakfree CLP is a non-oily lubricant, so it won't inherrently collect dust while still lubricating and protecting, helping prevent various malfunctions.
Considering the time they spend cleaning their guns (I would hope quite a lot, so they continue to fire for them when needed - I know the Marines do), and how long it takes to properly break down an AR15 ("M4" in military parlance, I guess), it would be greatly appreciated, I'm sure.
You could try sending them stuff like Guns & Ammo - give the magazine a call, they might be able to give you a discount rate (or simply ship a couple extras for you to send over). They're good Americans, generally speaking.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Cool. Thanks for the information.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Actually, what this company is suggesting is superior to recycling. The cameras themselves are reusable. So, rather than say melting the plastics and reforming them (which itself would be difficult if at all possible), the camera frame can be used verbatim without expending the large energy costs associated with recycling.
Give me reuse over recycling any day.
Uh, if you're single without kids, sure - disposable income. But if you're married with kids, odds are you're barely scraping by - whether you're regular, reserve, guard. And when you're deployed there goes BAH and separate rations....
The toys are cool and it seems like everyone and his/her brother/sister has a DVD player or laptop with more movies than you can shake a stick at.
I probably won't buy one, basing my decision in part on this review. Instead I'll save my money and buy a "prosumer" DV camcorder with Firewire and MPEG2.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I would love to get one of these to see how CVS accesses the videos. Maybe it would be possible to hack in a usb port, add some memory. Many possibilities with this.
Affordable Business Web Hosting with a Personal touch.
more rubbish.
thanks.
I guess you never played with R/C cars/planes much?
SearchIRC - Now with live chat directory!
Attach it to your RC ariplane or car, dangle it from a kite, take it white water rafting or into the mosh pit...
The frame rate and resolution may not be great, but if the camera is trashed you won't be out much.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
That's not true - with a gun I can also silence my enemy! I can kill him too! Or just hurt him.
Are you kidding? Besides just doing the oppisit, I can also take pictures!
Believe me, sonny, I can do plenty of reviling and I don't need a gun to do it!
My first thought. . . Wouldn't this be fun to launch on a model rocket? It's solid-state, so it should handle the acceleration fine. 20 minutes is long enough to prep the rocket and fly it, so you don't have to worry about rigging some gadget to trigger recording at launch. And it's not too expensive to risk crashing or losing it.
At five ounces, it would have to be more of a mid-power rocket, I suppose. . . and I haven't seen a photo yet, so I'm not sure how big the payload compartment would need to be. But I think it's exciting that these kinds of gadgets are becoming available.
To: Dad
t ikrit_by_us_troops_Jun_07_2005.html
From: IHaveNoWhereElse2Go!@yahoo.com
Subject: Video Postcard from Iraq
Yo dad! Check out this sandnigger guerrilla we terminated today!
http://www.ogrish.com/archives/insurgent_shot_in_
p.s. don't forward this shit or i'll get court marshalled.
p.p.s. please forward it!
Power to the Peaceful
Bullets have a limited range. No more than a mile or so for the bigger guns. Rockets and shells have longer range, but a shot from a camcorder can hit one hell of a lot of people in a very short time, and has the potential for causing much more damage.
Not all the way to the end.
I have several hundred shots taken with a Dakota Digital that say 'have faith, pervo-padawan'.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I assume CVS will refurbish the camcorder for resale after you turn it in for processing.
Will the value of the color screen and the memory be worth more than $30? If so, wouldn't people buy them all up and take the parts for resale?
You could try sending them stuff like Guns & Ammo
And here I was thinking that was one of the things the government provided.
Billions of dollars and where is it going; sheesh.
Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
"Breakfree CLP" is just the civilian version/brand of the military-issue CLP cleaner that everyone in the military already uses. I'm sure they've got tons and tons of it already over there.
.22-caliber for an M-16.
What you probably could send over that they'd appreciate, in terms of gun cleaning, are the cotton bore patches that you use to clean the barrel. I don't know why, but those were always in short supply when I was in the Army. We always ended up cutting up old t-shirts and rags and stuff, which tend to unravel and leave threads on metal protrusions. You can get them in packages of 100 or more at any gun store. Be sure to buy
Also, speaking from experience with the inside of an M-16, Hoppes No. 9 powder solvent works better than CLP and would probably be appreciated, but it's kerosene-based and you probably won't be allowed to ship it over.
I'd recommend sending lots of unscented baby wipes, and if the person wears glasses, the little packages of pre-soaked glasses cleaning cloths. You can find them in the travel-size sections of some drugstores.
The best "toy" I ever had overseas was a cheap Polaroid camera; there are a lot of people in the world that have never seen a photo of themselves, much less been given one. They used to make a cheap thing called the "JoyCam" that produced wallet-size photos and was all-manual, and was pretty small. Might be a cool thing for a guy over there to have.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Why did you join?
+++ATH0
That's $42.98 per use... $2.15 cents per minute... not including sales tax.
Though people talk about hacking it, the people who could hack it are not the target market for it, as they can figure out how to use their camcorders and DVD burners.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
I agree. You do not have to be a rabid eco-freak to resist this kind of waste. The production and sale of such intentional environmental nightmares should be forbidden or heavily taxed.
Is it just me or does this seem like a bad business decision in the first place. First of all because geeks are going to buy your camera for parts / a cheapy one even if they don't want it. Secondly because it puts a tremendous vurnerability in your company. Most likely, you are selling these things at a loss, so what if company B decides to buy all of company A's stock, effectively leaving them out all their product as well as a some money in the hole, only to go use them for the same purpose. Maybe I'm just naive?
I know someone who has had problems with vandals. Something like this, if you could hide it, and if it had a motion detector that waited a few minutes from when you entered that mode to sense would be quite useful.
I.E. it would be a low cost way to catch crooks on video if they break back in, and it would be cheap enough you could risk its theft.
For that matter 20 minutes of video is more than enough to monitor a lot of locations that should get no traffic normally..
Folks, TFA is about a REUSABLE camera,
not a throw-away.
Please, could someone in the states buy a bunch of these and resell them on ebay? I would jump at the chance to get a hold of one. I don't live in the states and cvs online doesn't seem to stock them. Thanx
Apparently they've been offering a throw away digital camera for momths now. But this one takes the cake.
Of course it'll be hackable, unless they used some sort of encryption in which case reverse engineering the roms on the thing will solve that problem.
For $30 I'll pick one up and see what I can do with it.
OK, the paper is "Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory" by Peter Gutmann of the Dept. of Comp. Sci. at the University of Auckland.
d ings/sec96/full_papers/gutmann/
I found it on www.usenix.org: http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/procee
Hope this helps/is interesting.
"Sometimes the truth is stupid." - Lawrence, creator of Prime Intellect
http://www.puredigitalinc.com/ - specialising in digital cameras ... my brain hurts
http://www.puredigital.com/ - UK company specialising in digital radios (DAB)
Looks like you're out of salt. I hope you're still getting your iodine.
A SureFire 6P. Add on 120 lumen bulb. The waterproof holder for a spare and six batteries. A tactical speed holster. Two boxes of twelve batteries. Shock proof bezel if weapon mounting is wanted.
http://www.surefire.com/
If you have the bux an aftermarket mount and squeeze switch for it so it can be put on an M16.
I need to find my supplier for this.
A good knife from http://www.sharppointythings.com/ the Battle Bitch is sweet but a simple Cold Steel smachet or tanto is nice. It's not an online store but an email will get a quote.
Any small card game, you'd be surprised how well Steve Jackson's games go over. They are small and portable and fun.
http://www.sjgames.com/
There is another site for really cheap cool card games but I've lost it.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
If memory serves, the range of a 16" naval gun is 30 miles, not one.
.
Of course, in spite of laws mandating otherwise, none of the battleships with these are in service, but . .
hawk
People, think of the future generations.
The fact remains that a well-timed camera shot could be as politically devasting as a tactical nuke can be on a battlefield...
That's not true - with a gun I can also silence my enemy! I can kill him too! Or just hurt him.
All means of keeping a someone silenced
Are you kidding? Besides just doing the oppisit, I can also take pictures!
hence the reviling part, furinished proof...
Believe me, sonny, I can do plenty of reviling and I don't need a gun to do it!
and would anoyone beleave you without hard proof such as a good photo? with the way you present yourself, i doubt it. (unless you were talking more of exposing, in which case i doubt you have much to expose anyway seeing as you posted AC)
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
Whee! A gatling camera!
hawk
Personally the standard issue ka-bar is quite effective. I'd be hard pressed to trust something called the "battle bitch". While there some excellent quality knifes out there, there is also some real junk. I don't know which would describe the parent's recommendation.
Report on NPR (npr.org)program stream w/ no important information.
Bullshit.
How is this insightful?? The camcorder is marketed as disposable. Go look up what the word "dispose" means. It sure as hell doesn't mean "reuse" or even "recycle". How many people do you think would bother bringing in their camcorders for reuse? The overwhelming majority would just throw them away when they are done with them, just the way it happens with the disposable cameras we already have. What on earth gives you the idea that these camcorders will be treated any different???
How about getting a regular cheap camcorder instead? Hey, look, it's also REUSABLE!!! You can use it over and over again! How about that?
This product is pure crap that will just end up costing you more then a regular camera after only a few rounds, AND will enthusiastically contribute to the process of burying this planet of ours under vast mountains of garbage.
A DVD player, one designed to last years, is this price at Wal*Mart. Why is a disposable device that doesn't need to have things like high load power supplies or motors or solid cases that will support a television equally expensive?
Carpe Deez
Sarge released, an Intel Macintosh, and now a low-ID Slashdot user with real life adventures.
Shall I place the order for Duke Nukem Forever?
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
If some manufacturer thinks that I will drop 30 bucks in the toilet for a disposible camera, they have to have rocks in their heads. For five bucks, probably I might go for it, but not for the kind of money that they are asking. My pension can't stand that kind of sticker shock! And out of that thing, I would only get 20 minutes of play time? Naw, forget it!
We got a free camera for training and such. It suprisingly only runs on 2 "AA" no name alkaline batteries.... You can get aroudn 35 minutes of video and playback before your batteries die, but you can easily change them.
:)
When you return the camcorder we use the same machine we use for the disposable digital cameras to transfer the information. Then we ship the off to the company that manufactures them to be recycled..
No one has ever really asked me if they could keep their camera but i probably wouldn't refuse if someone did ask. I sometimes take the cameras home just for the lcds screens, i have quite a nice collection