CVS Disposable Camcorder Hacked

ptorrone writes "We've been watching this on MAKE closely- and the king of the one-time digital camera hacks/analysis finally got his hands on a CVS Camcorder on Friday, the 24th via someone shipping him one FedEx. Within 18 hours, he had slurped the flash memory and has the unencrypted, XVID codec, 320x240, 30fps movies stored in the camera on his computer."

Comments

Hours of crappy goodness

[gbulmash]

If you don't hack the camcorder, you're paying $2 and change a minute to buy it, record 20 minutes, and have those 20 minutes put on DVD. Considering how many obvious artifacts were in the demo scene from the DVD, I am ready to boycott CVS just on principle. Charging that much money for such crap!

Now the obvious answer is "hack the camcorder. Then it doesn't cost so much and you get more value for your money." Hmmmm... I can get a 16 ounce sh*t-flavored milkshake for $3, but with a little trick, I can turn that into a gallon. What a bargain, so long as I don't mind that it's still sh*t-flavored. If I want more sh*t-flavored goodness, then darn, I better learn the trick. If I want a milkshake that doesn't taste like sh*t, I think I'd better save my pennies.

The ONLY reason I can think of getting this is to get a camcorder for your kid. If they break it, big deal.

It also sort of reminds me of that old Mattell video camera that recorded grainy B&W on audio cassettes. Though crappy, it has its own kind of retro cool if you can find one now. Perhaps these cameras have value as collectors items.

- Greg

Re:Hours of crappy goodness

[tepples]

Fisher-Price being part of Mattel, of course.

Anyway, the camera was called "PXL-2000" and the format was called "Pixelvision". Read More...

Re:Hours of crappy goodness

[Council]

Like this.

Any other examples of too-damaging-for-a-real-camera photography?

Re:Hours of crappy goodness

[bill_mcgonigle]

Considering how many obvious artifacts were in the demo scene from the DVD, I am ready to boycott CVS just on principle. Charging that much money for such crap!

Wow, if you don't like a deal someone is offering, just don't take it. Show me a store that isn't charging too much for something or that offers something that doesn't present a value proposition that you accept. You're going to have to be self-sufficient if you start boycotting all of 'em.

I'm thinking of getting a weather balloon and tying one of these on to see what happens. $30 sounds good.

Re:Hours of crappy goodness

[Vellmont]

According to this article you are only renting the camera, and are supposed to give it back when you're done.

And an article in todays Star Tribune http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/5475334.htm l says that there's no security deposit, and you don't have to return it if it's broken. That doesn't sound like a rental agreement to me. Coupled with the fact that there's no rental contract, I'd say "rental" is just a convienent word to use for people to describe the arrangement.

So if I ask to borrow your car to drive 20 miles, and I don't sign anything, I can take your car on a 2000 mile trip, turn back your odometer, and get away with it?

This isn't an informal "borrow a car from a friend" relationship. This is a storefront where people buy things and if a contract is involved, it's spelled out quite clearly. In this case, they sell you the camera, and then hope you'll bring it back.

A contract doesn't have to be signed in order to be binding.

No it doesn't but you do have to have at least a verbal agreement to have a binding contract. Unless they say whenever you buy one of these things "buy buying this product you agree to return it" then you have no obligation whatsoever to return it.

Sure, you might get away with breaking it, but that doesn't mean you're not stealing.

Gee.. I thought stealing meant someone took something from you without you giving it to them, or selling it to them. Since CVS is actually selling these things to consumers, there's no "theft" involved. If you want to co-opt the word theft to your own personal definition, fine. But don't go around using it that way and expect people to agree with you.

oh yeah!

[bigwavejas]

Getting a used Pure Digital / CVS Disposable Camcorder shipped to you... $15 dollars
Taking the day off work to be at home for the Fed-ex delivery... $140 dollars
Spending 18 hours hacking the camera for 30secs of video... Priceless!!!

Hacking Cameras...

[__aaclcg7560]

... isn't nothing sacred anymore? The next thing someone will hack will be the Hubble Space Telescope.

Re:Hacking Cameras...

[ari_j]

... isn't nothing sacred anymore?

Evidently, nothing is sacred anymore. Not even grammatical rules against double negatives in the English language.

The question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

...do they completely reformat the flash every time one of these is returning for processing. This could become a strange form of voyeurism.

Re:The question is...

[morcheeba]

That was my thought with the first disposable digital camera. IIRC, I didn't find an obvious erase in the firmware, but that's a moot point because I never found a recycled camera. The camera wasn't really designed to be recycled -- it had a surface that could easily be scratched, even with very light use.

The second still camera (the PV2) has a USB function that sucks out all the important system files out of Flash memory and saves them in SDRAM. It then reformats the memory and copies the files back in. It's a pretty good erase (maybe not NSA secure, but recovery would involve probing the IC wafer), and I don't see why it wouldn't be used.

But, the biggest security risk seems to be the time after development and before sending the cameras back to Pure Digital for recycling. According the people who operate the machines, the development machines don't erase the pictures. They stay on the camera in case something messes up -- they didn't want to have angry customers saying "what do you mean you accidently deleted my prints". It seems that the used cameras stay a while at the stores, so any operator could make prints of your pictures for up to a couple of weeks after you have them developed. But, bad employees is probably about the same risk as with traditional development.

Since the camcorder uses a separate partition with only picture data, I suspect it would be pretty easy to reformat only this section completely. (the PV2 had system and user data in the same filesystem, which is why it had to save the data in ram)

The blogging applications of this are endless.

[CyricZ]

Such cameras will bring a new dimension to bloggery. The extreme portability of these cameras, often smaller than the smallest commercially available MP3 players, will allow people to document their everyday lives in a very visual way. It will take videobloggery to a new dimension: a teatherless webcam, of sorts.

Article Text

[MooseGuy529]

Disposable Digital Camcorder Interfacing

Pure Digital's Single Use Camcorder for CVS

[PureDigital CVS camcorder]

Introduction
This web page is a little raw because I just got the camera and I'm leaving on a trip soon. So, I'll be brief and hopefully informative.

If you're not familiar with the camera, here is a good review.

Disassembly
Here's a photo gallery of the disassembly of my unit.

Similar in constructioon to the PV2, this unit is rugged and can be easily recycled.

Preliminary Analysis
Others found that pressing the Record and Delete buttons while turning on the camera yields a special diagnostic page. Mine said:

FW-VERSION: 03.40
CAMERA ID:
6B7051xxxxxx
PCB VER: B2

FLASH Memory Analysis NEW
I was able to get my videos out of the camera and onto my home computer by removing the 128MB flash memory chip and putting it into my home-built flash reader. I originally built the system for the PV2 camera -- here's some more info on it. The only modification I had to make was for the increased memory size of the new part. The reader is nothing special -- just a cheaper (and slower) version of comercially available units.

I've placed my analysis of the camcorder's flash memory on its own page. That page also has sample videos I have recovered from my camera.

Resources
The most current discussion that I follow is on the Camera Hacking message board. There is also discussion on Dakota PV2 discussion board.

contact me: my email address is my first name (john) at my last name (maushammer) dot com.

Is this legal? Yes.
Info on the original most recent still disposable digital camera
other systems I've played with
visit my homepage

Interesting..

[Thomas DM]

This will finally enable you to create your own cheap sextapes, without the chance that some curious CVS employee(s) will see your work..

Re:Interesting..

[jackcarter]

This will finally enable you to create your own cheap sextapes, without the chance that some curious CVS employee(s) will see your work..

And the fact that it only works for 30 seconds is perfect for Slashdot users!

Re:Oh, the humanity.

[morcheeba]

I figured someone would criticize me. You're seeing low-res version for slashdot - sorry, bandwidth trumps aesthetics today. Tomorrow the pretty pictures will go back up.

Check the file sizes:
-rw-r--r-- 38000 Jun 24 21:09 PICT0001-info.png
-rw-r--r-- 13343 Jun 25 12:36 PICT0001-info.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 10958 Jun 25 12:38 camcorder-icon-full.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 2334 Jun 25 12:38 camcorder-icon.jpg
-rw-r----- 4547 Jun 25 13:02 index.html
-rw-r----- 23960 Jun 25 13:25 flash.html

My low-res pictures are 13k vs 38k, and 2.3k vs 11k. Overall, loading flash.html is 40k instead of 73k. That means (roughly) 80% more visitors for the same bandwidth!

I also tried GIF and TIFF - they were pretty close in size to the original PNG.

On Sale in two weeks

[Cow4263]

As a current CVS employee, I can tell you that these camcorders and their digital camera like brethren are going on sale the week of July 4th. They are going to be 19.99 but you get $10 in "ExtraBucks" back. As the ad flyer says, "Its like paying $9.99".

The ExtraBucks print from the register 2 days after the qualifiying purchase and although you do need your own ExtraCare card, the information you provide can be as false as possible. ExtraBucks are good on anything in the store excluding tobacco, alcohol and prescriptions.

Good thing this person isn't in high school

[anthony_dipierro]

He might have gotten charged with a felony.

Light, breakable cameras

[Council]

A use for hacking disposable cameras: They're disposable. That is, they're cheap enough that if you break them, you haven't lost much. That's useful for this kind of thing:

http://www.xkcd.com/kite/

I was so confident of my engineering skill and my insistence on multiple safety measures that I sent my nice, $150 digital camera up the kite line. It worked for a few hours after the 70-foot fall, but hasn't since.

WTF is CVS?

[mike.newton]

Sure I could Google it, but my point is that I don't know what CVS cameras are, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. An explanatory link like this one would be nice.

For the rest of us, CVS is a chain of pharmacies, they're selling a small, locked, one-time use digital video camera for $30 and charging $13 to get the data off it and onto DVD.

Re:WTF is CVS?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're for taking CVS snapshots.