Originally Posted by yabbadaba2

Looks like a keeper Prof. Be interesting tomorrow at the crack of dawn

Re a comment on the other thread, I thought my camera was pretty well focused compared to my earlier #3's. I may have to send it to you for a focus adjustment

Yabba

Yabba,

Yes, it does well in low light. It's amazing the quality you get from such a small, inexpensive device.

You can adjust the focus yourself. It's easy. Your shot of the fence (2nd shot) shows where the camera is focused.

Bill

Originally Posted by Tom Frank

Yabba, in regards to my quoted comment, I just had a thought as I was watching one more time your ground video in the other forum where I commented on the "changing color" of the field stripes . You mentioned you were using your "clothespin camera" so I'm wondering if you had the HD cam clipped UNDER the bill of a baseball cap, or something like that? That could explain why the upper corners of your video were considerably darker than the bottom corners, and why the AV you just posted did not show this!! Am I right!

Tom,

You made a good start on this thread - congratulations - well done!

There has been some discussions about vignetting on this camera, and I think my videos are the ones suffering the most, perhaps because of low light and also snow scenes (not much color).

I thought maybe it came from the narrow lens opening in the plastic cover, so I tried widening (flare?) the opening a little some days ago. I am uploading some clips, shot before and after the "operation" - please note the dates (luckily we have a time stamp ) - 2010/12/22 and 2010/12/29.

I made the clips with AVIDemux (copy function), it became a bit messy going back and forth between dates, sorry about that. It's getting late and there is a long day tomorrow.. Anyway, my first impression is: It did not help to flare the lens opening, don't bother.

/Jan

Test 4 vignetting (5 min 43 sec)

delete

Does anyone know if the web cam drivers work with win7 x64?
How about other needed files for deleting date and other settings?

Originally Posted by jazz53

Does anyone know if the web cam drivers work with win7 x64?
How about other needed files for deleting date and other settings?

It will play with W7 64.

Go up a few posts, Tom Frank has step by step for deleting the date and other settings. There are cautions so you do not brick the camera.

Originally Posted by empeabee

Computer USB ports Deliver 5v at (1000mA (1A) MAX - some portables fused at 1/2A (500mA))most unpowered external hubs only provide 500mA. So you would have to buy one of those cheap car lighter socket -> USB power adapter - they should work fine from 3S lipo, but don't plugs 3Slipo into camera direct through its USB port - you stand a very good chance of letting the smoke out of both camera and lipo.
Mike
Hummm re-reading I need to clarify my bit.
1). A car 12v outlet plug with USB socket on it will have a 5v (probably 1A) V regulator in it. (well 99% chance - there are always GotChya's waiting to humble X-spurts like me).
2). Do Not connect 3s Lipo directly to the USB input of the camera.

Yes, understood. The camera is supposed to come with it's own car charger cable. Since I don't have mine yet, I was not able to measure the voltage on the pins, nor to check if a different cable will work.

I found with my JAZZ HDV178 camera that it will NOT work with any generic wall wart USB charge cord. It will ONLY work with the one that came with the camera, which suggests it must be communicating with the camera via the normally unsed data signal lines in the USB plug on the dedicated charger. I thought something like this could possibly be the case with this camera and worth checking out.

If they put the voltage regulator chip in the camera off the USB plug instead in the car charge cord, it could still function on 5V or 12V input. If I had the cord to check the pin voltage, this would become more clear. I certainly would not apply 12V to the camera without more investigation of what the car charge cord is doing.

Originally Posted by empeabee

er er I count 8 pins on the thing pointed to
Mike

I sit corrected! That's what I get for going from memory after a quick glance two days ago!

Originally Posted by A Monell

My cigarette lighter charger states on the label
12-24 VDC input and 5VDC 1.5a output.
I haven't tried any tests with it yet as to whether the camera will only charge or record as well.

If you are referring to the charge cord that comes with the camera, and not a "generic" one, then this clears up the charge voltage requirement for an external power source, assuming nothing fancy is going on with the data lines like my Jazz HDV 178 camera.

Tom,

The charge cord that connects to power point in a car has 5V 1.5 AMP output.

Edit, problem solved.

Bill

Originally Posted by yabbadaba2

I haven't tried anything other then just plugging it into my 12v power outlet on my pick-up and videoing my drive home from the soccer fields (yawn) but it "seems" to only allow you to video, not charge. I'm probably wrong about this but I could not get the red charging light to come on when hooked up to the cigarette lighter adapter that was included.

It may be charging at the same time as it is taking video, I dunno. I just know that when I would plug it in there would be no light (vs computer usb = red light) and when I held the button it would only go to yellow (computer usb, plug in = red light, press button = red light changes to yellow)

I thought it was advertised as a charger/power adapter. Makes me wonder if my adapter might be defective. It;ll be interesting to hear others experiences with the adapter.

Yabba

That's interesting. If it can't charge via the car plug, that would be a big surprise. Is it possible the battery was fully charged when you tried this, and since the red LED goes out on this camera when it is fully charged, then it never came on since no charge was needed?

Some more testing is needed by running down the battery a bit, plugging into the PC USB port to see if the red LED comes on, then move to the car charge plug and see if the red LED comes back on. I'd hope it would so you can recharge at the field if needed. Assuming it does, turn the camera on while the red LED is on and start recording to see what the LEDs do.

Wish I had my camera so I could try this myself... I'm really curious now.

My microcard is formatted as a FAT32. Should I re format it NTFS or leave it?

Tom / Yabba,

Nevermind on my Timeset problem. I modified the sample that was provided and simply saved it and W7 added (1) suffix. It will never work that way. Geeze, I feel like maroon.

Bottom line is I now have the time and date revised.

Originally Posted by Prof100

My microcard is formatted as a FAT32. Should I re format it NTFS or leave it?

I've been leaving mine FAT32 and default allocation size.

Let me check the other thread, someone posted the file to change the datestamp. You just change to the current day and time. Save it to the DRIVE (mine sez "removable disk (F ), I change the date and time. Save it as a .txt file to the drive. Maybe not be technically accurate but it works for me.

Lemme go find that file on the other thread. BRB.

Bob

Tom / Yabba,

Nevermind on my Timeset problem. I modified the sample that was provided and simply saved it and W7 added (1) suffix. It will never work that way. Geeze, I feel like maroon.

Bottom line is I now have the time and date revised.

Bill

Originally Posted by Isoprop

I don't know what your soldering skills are Tom, but I would definitely NOT advise anybody without good soldering skills to try this. An SMD capable soldering iron is a MUST. Soldering the 8-Pin (not 6-Pin) flash chip is dead easy in comparison to desoldering it. If your iron is too hot and/or you apply heat too long, you will lift the track - guaranteed! Then you have a real problem...
The only possible approach for beginners, IMHO, is to cut the original leads with very thin cutters and then QUICKLY desolder the remains of each cut lead one by one. But I still don't believe a beginner can do the job - SMD is just too tiny.

Another very good option would be to use special low melting point solder to desolder the chip (see chipquick.com or similar). This must be completely removed before soldering the new chip with normal, fine solder. But again, I don't believe a beginner could manage this. In any case, I advise testing your skills on an old mobile phone, for example, beforehand.

If a beginner should attempt this, despite all warnings, remember to position the new chip the right way round (Pin1 - the one with the small dot - must be aligned where Pin1 should be). Failure to do so will almost certainly destroy both the camera and the chip.

From the picture, the location of the flash chip is excellent. There are no components near the pins which could hamper the iron.

Could someone identify this SPI Flash chip? Is it 1MB or 2MB (8Mbit/16Mbit), type, manufacturer?

And, if somebody succeeds in removing the chip undamaged or has received a replacement chip and has access to an SPI programmer, it would be great if he could post the memory dump from the good (unbricked) memory chip.

I recently bought a few virgin SPI chips for $3 to $4.5 each on eBay, postage included. I find this expensive, but I had difficulty in finding the correct type and size. Last summer I bought two replacement chips for my #3 and paid $8 which is almost the price of a new #3 but much cheaper than the current HD price - AND, my chips were virgin.

I've done a considerable amount of soldering on circuit board components, but most were not SMDs. However, I have successfully replaced surface mount FETs on an ESC as you suggested, by first cutting all the pins and removing the chip, then one-by-one removing each individual pin with a quick touch of a sharp point low wattage soldering iron. Then replacing by first carefully levelling the desoldered pads with a touch of the iron, tinning the new chip pins, carefully aligning the chip to solder down one corner pin, then an opposite corner pin to hold it in alignment. Then a quick touch of the remaining pins with the iron tip while pushing down on the pin with a small screw driver to assure good contact and sink some heat. This worked for me, and the picture shows good access to the pins as you said, so it looked like I could repeat the process. Everyone else would need to decide for themselves, and I did suggest some micro soldering skill would be adviseable.

Also, looking at the subject where I brought up this topic, the premise was that the camera was already bricked, and this was a last resort to possibly revive it. So if the chip replacement goes terribly awry... nothing is lost other than the cost of the replacement IC and some time.

The larger of the two firmware patches for the date on/off toggle is 1.06 MB in size. So if all this gets dumped into the replacement IC, then it's larger than 1 MB. It was my understanding that the replacement chip that would be sent would already be pre-programmed to allow the new date swap firmware patch to be made. I have no clue if the entire firmware is being replaced with the Date patch, or just a portion of it.