Originally Posted by qsgsg

the problem is there isn't any visible glue. I'm hoping this isnt the new way they are "fixing" their lens.

Did you check all the way around the threads? I've had some with glue on the underside, and I couldn't see it until I removed the circuit board.

How far out of focus is it? Which lens? If it's really bad, your vendor will likely replace it under warranty. Sample pic?

I downloaded the GUI. Followed the instructions everything went well.
I tried the camera and it was working great.
I wanted to put it on the bottom of a quadcopter so I opened the GUI flipped the image 180* and lowered the sound to low.

Was having trouble getting the camera on then it seemed to work. Flew 1 flight and wanted to view the footage.

Plugged the camera into my PC and the PC could not find it.
I tried the GUI again and it could not find the camera.
I tried to pull the card and put that into the card slot on the PC and it was not found.

I went through the GUI instructions again: disconnection it turning it off and holding the shutter then the power until the light goes off then releasing the shutter & connecting it again.

Neither the GUI or PC can find the camera.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do to get it to work again?

Originally Posted by transformingfoam

I downloaded the GUI. Followed the instructions everything went well.
I tried the camera and it was working great.
I wanted to put it on the bottom of a quadcopter so I opened the GUI flipped the image 180* and lowered the sound to low.

Was having trouble getting the camera on then it seemed to work. Flew 1 flight and wanted to view the footage.

Plugged the camera into my PC and the PC could not find it.
I tried the GUI again and it could not find the camera.
I tried to pull the card and put that into the card slot on the PC and it was not found.

I went through the GUI instructions again: disconnection it turning it off and holding the shutter then the power until the light goes off then releasing the shutter & connecting it again.

Neither the GUI or PC can find the camera.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do to get it to work again?

If you are using a recent firmware (v0.41 or greater), you don't need to prepare the camera any more, except if you are using a Mac.
If you have mistakenly prepared the camera you should delete the configuration file, or, much easier, format the card from within the GUI.

Obviously this doesn't help if your PC doesn't recognize the camera or the card.

The card slot on your PC most likely also runs off the USB bus, so I suspect the problem lies within your PC. Have you tried turning off the PC and then turning it back on?

When you connect the camera, connect it directly to the PC and don't use a USB bus.

If your PC still can't recognize the camera, use a different USB cable or try using another PC.

Does at least the green charging LED come on when the camera is off and connected to the PC? If the battery is discharged, you'll have to charge it first.

Originally Posted by Isoprop

If you are using a recent firmware (v0.41 or greater), you don't need to prepare the camera any more, except if you are using a Mac.
If you have mistakenly prepared the camera you should delete the configuration file, or, much easier, format the card from within the GUI.

Obviously this doesn't help if your PC doesn't recognize the camera or the card.

The card slot on your PC most likely also runs off the USB bus, so I suspect the problem lies within your PC. Have you tried turning off the PC and then turning it back on?

When you connect the camera, connect it directly to the PC and don't use a USB bus.

If your PC still can't recognize the camera, use a different USB cable or try using another PC.

Does at least the green charging LED come on when the camera is off and connected to the PC? If the battery is discharged, you'll have to charge it first.

I have turned off the pc and turned it back on. same thing.
I plug in the camera via usb cable. Green light is on & charging.
Press the on-off button and the yellow led then it goes red. The computer goes bong bong(as it always did). BUT no "K" drive in "my computers" & the GUI does not find the camera either.

If I plug my thumb drive in the same USB port "K" drive appears after the bong bong.

Originally Posted by transformingfoam

I have turned off the pc and turned it back on. same thing.
I plug in the camera via usb cable. Green light is on & charging.
Press the on-off button and the yellow led then it goes red. The computer goes bong bong(as it always did). BUT no "K" drive in "my computers" & the GUI does not find the camera either.

If I plug my thumb drive in the same USB port "K" drive appears after the bong bong.

If your card is not being detected by the PC, it will not connect as a USB drive, but you will still get a double "bong" sound when the camera then goes to webcam mode, which it will do if no card is detected. But the double bong sound has the hi and lo tones reversed, so you can tell by listening if that is what happens. You could also boot a program that has a webcam mode and see if you can get video from the camera.

Try a different memory card in the camera, too. Turn your camera on with no card in it... the yellow LED should start a slow flash every second indicating no card detected. Then insert a card. The camera should then boot to the normal yellow LED. Those test should help rule out a problem with the card or the camera's card slot.

If you can confirm that the card is not being detected, your card slot in the camera could have a dirty, bent, or broken pin preventing the card from being read. But it's virtually impossible to see if that's the case without opening the card slot cover (NOT recommended). But you could try to clean the pins with a little alcohol on the card pads, then repeatedly insert and eject the card several times. I sometimes use a very thin piece of card board wetted with alcohol inserted in the card slot to wipe the pins.

This may all be for naught, but it will help isolated the problem.

Originally Posted by transformingfoam

I downloaded the GUI. Followed the instructions everything went well.
I tried the camera and it was working great.
I wanted to put it on the bottom of a quadcopter so I opened the GUI flipped the image 180* and lowered the sound to low.

Was having trouble getting the camera on then it seemed to work. Flew 1 flight and wanted to view the footage.

Plugged the camera into my PC and the PC could not find it.
I tried the GUI again and it could not find the camera.
I tried to pull the card and put that into the card slot on the PC and it was not found.

I went through the GUI instructions again: disconnection it turning it off and holding the shutter then the power until the light goes off then releasing the shutter & connecting it again.

Neither the GUI or PC can find the camera.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do to get it to work again?

Also, you may have noticed you have to press and hold the power button on the camera until the light turns yellow. If you release it too early it turns green again (charging mode). I noticed this after updating my firmware.

I turned it on without the card in it did as Tom said. I replaced the card and the went steady.

In "Properties" it says it is working properly.

When I try to open K drive it just freezes my PC.

I hooked it up to my laptop, it found the hardware, but I couldn't open "e" drive.
I finally tried to format E drive and it states "no drive found?

Can I format it in the camera?

"jurepu" mention his way of switching between external and internal batteries. My way is this:






I am using here little connector which can be found on some old computer parts or can be bought in electronical store and tiny switch I bought from DX as PSP spare part. Wiring is easy. I only cut in half the positive internal battery wire to solder it on switch and add there only two extra wires for external battery. On the photos there is not the magnets on camera yet, but I am going to add them there on the camera. Magnets are also on external battery and there I ad connector to fit one I aded on camera, so I can not connect the external battery wrong way if I made wiring correctly. Switch in position one means that the internal battery is working, in position two means that external battery can be connected. And yes it also resets internal clock every time the switch position is changed. Connector and switch on camera I aded are hot glued.

What do you people think about my way?

Originally Posted by Tom Frank

Did you check all the way around the threads? I've had some with glue on the underside, and I couldn't see it until I removed the circuit board.

How far out of focus is it? Which lens? If it's really bad, your vendor will likely replace it under warranty. Sample pic?

Thanks Victa and Tom. I've used a needle to scrape the gap of the glue and the important thing is to detach the camera and using a thin cloth on one hand while holding the edges of the cam module and twist it.

@Tom the focus was so bad that with the cam placed at eye level , i could not see the letters on the keyboard. Now it's Clear.

Originally Posted by jurepu

If anyone is interested in connecting the external battery with modification I have made I give you some simple solution.





You can easily use internal battery with jumper ON white/black wire. The external battery can be connected using servo cable connecting red/black wire. I use 3.7V Li-ion cell phone battery and it works well.


JP

Just a word of warning... think what happens if you plug the external battery the other way around: batteries would be in series which means double voltage to the electronics. Not good at all.
A four pin connector with one pin not connected would be a safer solution.

The Bitrate for the videos i've taken in both dim and bright condition with constant motion have similar bitrate(around 6500kbps) and the videos aren't as sharp (noise evident). I'm wondering whether the class4 microSD is impacting the bitrate. btw I'm using a Kingston class4 8GB micro SD card.

Originally Posted by qsgsg

The Bitrate for the videos i've taken in both dim and bright condition with constant motion have similar bitrate(around 6500kbps) and the videos aren't as sharp (noise evident). I'm wondering whether the class4 microSD is impacting the bitrate. btw I'm using a Kingston class4 8GB micro SD card.

No, if the card could not handle the bit rate, you'd have dropped frames. I've yet to get any dropped frames from a true CL4 card (and I have some Kingston CL 4 cards, too.). You can check by stepping through frame by frame in any video areas where it looks like a slight pause or skip during the playback, but you need a player or editor that can advance one frame at a time (I use AviDemux, but VLC player can advance one frame at a time... it just can't go backwards).

Noise is caused by the light level. If there is a lot of motion in a lower light situation and the camera is using a shorter shutter speed to tame the motion, it MUST boost the gain to get proper exposure, and that results in video noise artifacts. And the H.264 video codec uses a variable bit rate, which it will boost or diminish depending on what it determines to be adequate to maintain an equivalent video quality for the scene motion and detail (the settings in the GUI are average bitrates, not constant bit rates).

Have you tested your card for speed (D/L the Diskmark.exe speed test utility to make sure your card is performing up to specs)?

I put a new card in and now it works fine. Some how the old card got messed up. Not sure how or if I can ever get it back.

Originally Posted by Azuritko

"jurepu" mention his way of switching between external and internal batteries. My way is this:






I am using here little connector which can be found on some old computer parts or can be bought in electronical store and tiny switch I bought from DX as PSP spare part. Wiring is easy. I only cut in half the positive internal battery wire to solder it on switch and add there only two extra wires for external battery. On the photos there is not the magnets on camera yet, but I am going to add them there on the camera. Magnets are also on external battery and there I ad connector to fit one I aded on camera, so I can not connect the external battery wrong way if I made wiring correctly. Switch in position one means that the internal battery is working, in position two means that external battery can be connected. And yes it also resets internal clock every time the switch position is changed. Connector and switch on camera I aded are hot glued.

What do you people think about my way?

Why can't the 2 battery be wire in Parallel? Leave the internal and solder 2 wires inside and mount the plug so you can just plugin the external battery when needed for longer record time. That way there no switch and no jumper or no mistake made.You won't have to reset the time.

Originally Posted by jmdlcar

Why can't the 2 battery be wire in Parallel? Leave the internal and solder 2 wires inside and mount the plug so you can just plugin the external battery when needed for longer record time. That way there no switch and no jumper or no mistake made.You won't have to reset the time.

The voltage mismatch between external battery and internal battery at instant of connection can try to force too much current into the tiny camera battery. While it has an excess current protection circuit, I don't know if it's bi-directional... it's mainly for short circuit protection of the battery. Why risk it?

The best way is to feed +5V USB level power in through the camera USB port, but it seems so many want to bypass it with a single external lipo cell.