Dakota "Disposable" Camera Mini Review (Part 1: The Dissection)

andy888 · Aug 1, 2003

I was intrigued by the discussion about this new single use digital camera, and immediately thought about tearing one open and seeing if I could figure out how it ticked. Sure, this may be difficult or impossible due to encryption/obscurity/who knows what else, but what’s 10 bucks?

I ran out and picked up two. One to rip open with unrestrained glee, and the other to actually use to study the results vs. a standard single use film camera.

I can tell you this. There is no RFID tag. There is also no USB controller (as suspected.)

The camera opened up with the removal of three screws and a little pressure applied to the case. Nothing heat-sealed or molded as far as I can see.

There is a proprietary interface, and details of this are in the review.

Click here for pictures and descriptions of the camera...

http://frutsel.terrainhost.com/frutselapp/dump/dakota

Perhaps tomorrow, I'll return with part 2 containing the images captured with the camera itself.

Wayne Larmon · Aug 1, 2003

andy888 said:
There is a proprietary interface, and details of this are in the
review.

Thanks. But could you say a bit more about the interface? All I saw in your review is identification of chips.

Wayne Larmon

andy888 said:
Click here for pictures and descriptions of the camera...

http://frutsel.terrainhost.com/frutselapp/dump/dakota

Perhaps tomorrow, I'll return with part 2 containing the images
captured with the camera itself.

Joe Hoddinott · Aug 1, 2003

You beat me to it. I wanted to rip one apart and see if I could get the images off of it. I'm anxious to see what you will find.

--
Regards,
Joe H.

PPA
---------------------------------------
http://www.biggerboatstudios.com

(Sarcasm Included - some assembly required.)

andy888 · Aug 1, 2003

Well, I'm not quite there yet. I'm assuming some type of bidirectional serial interface. However, with the functions of AT LEAST "download memory" and "reset counter", there is quite a bit of logic happening...not to mention figuring what type of encoding and/or encryption may be present.

Wayne Larmon said:
andy888 said:

There is a proprietary interface, and details of this are in the
review.

Click to expand...

Thanks. But could you say a bit more about the interface? All I
saw in your review is identification of chips.

Wayne Larmon

Wayne Larmon said:

Click here for pictures and descriptions of the camera...

http://frutsel.terrainhost.com/frutselapp/dump/dakota

Perhaps tomorrow, I'll return with part 2 containing the images
captured with the camera itself.

Click to expand...

Kevin Omura · Aug 1, 2003

Thanks for taking the time and effort to dissect one of these puppies! We don't have any of these store even remotely close to us.

I'd be interested in seeing what type of unit these cameras are plugged into in order to download their photos. Obviously that proprietary edge strip is the interface which probably wouldn't be too tough to replicate. The sw to access the camera would probably be the trick.

Would be nice if all they did was build a photoshop aquire module and the 'reader' used usb to connect the camera to a standard pc...we should be so lucky right...

Kevin

andy888 said:
Well, I'm not quite there yet. I'm assuming some type of
bidirectional serial interface. However, with the functions of AT
LEAST "download memory" and "reset counter", there is quite a bit
of logic happening...not to mention figuring what type of encoding
and/or encryption may be present.

Wayne Larmon · Aug 1, 2003

andy888 said:
Well, I'm not quite there yet. I'm assuming some type of
bidirectional serial interface. However, with the functions of AT
LEAST "download memory" and "reset counter", there is quite a bit
of logic happening...not to mention figuring what type of encoding
and/or encryption may be present.

XORing is enough to make it protected under the DCMA.

You don't suppose....

Anyway, thanks for taking the plunge.

Wayne Larmon

eric · Aug 1, 2003

a friend of mine is an electronics whiz. hes working on mapping the i/o pinout. right now its looking like the 14 pin serial type connector is what needs to be decyphered. the other slot (the external one) is for diagnostic/testing components before repackaging and charging the batteries. this is fun. here my thread i started...

e

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1000&message=5730661

Vladimir Koifman · Aug 2, 2003

It looks to me the cost of this camera is much higher than $11. They probably losing on camera body sales to get their profits on printing.
If you succeed in downloading pictures,, this would kill their business.

--
Vladimir.

bruce komusin · Aug 2, 2003

Buy a gross of them now.
-bruce

Vladimir Koifman said:
It looks to me the cost of this camera is much higher than $11.
They probably losing on camera body sales to get their profits on
printing.
If you succeed in downloading pictures,, this would kill their
business.

--
Vladimir.

Ron Parr · Aug 2, 2003

Here are some of my questions:

What kind of sensor does it have?

Is primary storage SDRAM? If so, do the batteries power it continuously? It seems that the camera could get amnesia if you wait too long before returning it.

--
Ron Parr
FAQ: http://www.cs.duke.edu/~parr/photography/faq.html
Gallery: http://www.pbase.com/parr/

nick_eos168552 · Aug 2, 2003

theres 2 flash memory chips on the pics, they wont need battery power

Ron Parr said:
Here are some of my questions:

What kind of sensor does it have?

Is primary storage SDRAM? If so, do the batteries power it
continuously? It seems that the camera could get amnesia if you
wait too long before returning it.

--
Ron Parr
FAQ: http://www.cs.duke.edu/~parr/photography/faq.html
Gallery: http://www.pbase.com/parr/

Ron Parr · Aug 2, 2003

nick_eos said:
theres 2 flash memory chips on the pics, they wont need battery power

Oops... Missed the first one and only noticed the 1Mbit flash chip.

--
Ron Parr
FAQ: http://www.cs.duke.edu/~parr/photography/faq.html
Gallery: http://www.pbase.com/parr/

Roland Karlsson · Aug 2, 2003

Vladimir Koifman said:
It looks to me the cost of this camera is much higher than $11.
They probably losing on camera body sales to get their profits on
printing.
If you succeed in downloading pictures,, this would kill their
business.

I don't think so. Most people will buy a disposable as disposable.
Just a tiny fraction wil actually keep the camera.

Roland

Sheldon Koehler · Aug 2, 2003

andy888 said:
I was intrigued by the discussion about this new single use digital
camera, and immediately thought about tearing one open and seeing
if I could figure out how it ticked. Sure, this may be difficult or
impossible due to encryption/obscurity/who knows what else, but
what’s 10 bucks?

I was thinking the same thing, but since http://www.compgeeks.com has digital cameras starting at $19.99 with USB connectors... don't spend a lot of money trying this.

But it would be interesting to know how hackable it is...

Sheldon
--
'I take orders from no one except the photographers.'
– Harry S. Truman

andy888 · Aug 2, 2003

True, but these $19.99 cameras are not 2 megapixel. Also, this pursuit is not purely for obtaining "value" from the camera, but to have fun by "playing" with it.

Other questions:

The camera runs on 2 AA batteries. Once the images are transferred to flash, though, constant voltage would not be necessary.

There are actually two flash chips. One is a 1 megaBIT flash that stores the bios/os/states?(pictures count, etc...) The other flash chip appears to be an 8 megaBYTE chip that would store the images.

There is also an 8 megabyte SDRAM chip that would store each individual image while it is being converted to jpg(?) or other proprietary compressed filetype. More than likely, the OS would also be running in the SDRAM as well.

andy

Sheldon Koehler said:
andy888 said:

I was intrigued by the discussion about this new single use digital
camera, and immediately thought about tearing one open and seeing
if I could figure out how it ticked. Sure, this may be difficult or
impossible due to encryption/obscurity/who knows what else, but
what’s 10 bucks?

Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing, but since http://www.compgeeks.com has
digital cameras starting at $19.99 with USB connectors... don't
spend a lot of money trying this.

But it would be interesting to know how hackable it is...

Sheldon
--
'I take orders from no one except the photographers.'
– Harry S. Truman

djryanspin · Aug 2, 2003

I'm not sure what the advantage of a one time use digital camera is? you can buy a disposable film camera for less than half that cost, and the picture quality should be better - compared to a 2mp camera. its sortof a neat idea i guess.. but i dont think it will be profitable

digital has certian advantages that are negated in this situation:

instant feedback - you get to see your picture instantly and delete / re shoot it if you arent happy w/ the results (impossible with this camera since theres no lcd to review your pictures so you dont know if they're good until you go to get them processed)

cost - w/ digital i can take as many pics. as i want and save them to my hard drive, and the cost is practically nothing until i actually print them, then my cost is that of the paper, in this case, the cost of the camera will already cover the cost of a cheap 35mm one-time camera and cheap developing ( i think my local walmart has one-hour for about $6 and a cheap one time camera for about $4). w/ the one time digital, even if you just want pictures on disk for say, email or website purposed i'd imagine there would be a fee to save them to a cd-r. i think many photo shops offer a medium resolution picture-on-disk option w/ developing at a reasonable price.

the only advantage i can think of, is perhaps a few minutes saved in developing time. i've never had a situation where i didn't have time to wait for one hour developing.. but w/ the digital i would guess it'd take 10 minutes or so to get you 25 printouts and a cd with your pictures.

however if you need your pictures that quick, a one-time polariod is also an option (if they even still sell these?)

the only niche i can really see these filling well is for the people that want to 'hack' the camera to get a $10.99 2 megapixel digital

Roland Karlsson · Aug 2, 2003

djryanspin said:
I'm not sure what the advantage of a one time use digital camera
is? ...

First ... in this case it is NOT the customer that decides.
The customer have to buy whatever disposable solution that
exists. So ... if no more disposable film cameras are made ...
you have to buy the digital one. And that's it.

Second ... there is a benefit from the digital one. It
uses no material whatsoever. You can use it over and over
again until it breaks or looks so used that it is not possible
to sell again.

Third ... there is a huge difference between waiting an hour
or 5 minutes for the pictures. I gladly wait 5 minures, but if
I shall wait an hour I must have something else than just
hanging around in the store to do.

Roland

mechanizedeye · Aug 2, 2003

I work for Ritz Camera, and from what I've heard from company memos and rumors is that it's a 2 megapixel camera made by panasonic that plugs into a special adapter hooked up to the image controller on a fuji frontier digital minilab. It's not in my area yet, so unfortunately I don't have too many more details.
--

andy888 said:
andy888 said:

http://www.mechanizedeye.com

Click to expand...

Kevin Omura · Aug 2, 2003

Part of me wonders the same thing but check out this article from PC World.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,111841,00.asp

The comment from the Photo Marketing Association makes sense, a lot of folks don't have computers, then less may have colour printers so a digital camera may turn out to be a big expense if someone wanted to do it themselves. Even taking a card to the local photolab that can print digital might be a bit of a stretch for some so perhaps this isn't such a crazy idea.

Guess we'll know in a year or so....

As someone else mentioned it would be very handy to keep one in the glove box just in case. If it even had half decent quality it would be worth it. And yes I have had a spot news photo published that was taken from a disposable film camera (a Kodak Panoramic) no less. When you have no choice you grab whatever you can get your hands on so to me it might be worth it.

Granted if someone can hack the interface so that I can dump the pix to my laptop or even better we can get an interface at work for that one in a million time when someone gets a ball breaking news shot on one of these pups and there is no way else to get at it then it would be worth the effort.

(ask me about our plan B for the Rolling Stones concert sometime...)

Kevin

djryanspin said:
I'm not sure what the advantage of a one time use digital camera
is? you can buy a disposable film camera for less than half that
cost, and the picture quality should be better - compared to a 2mp
camera. its sortof a neat idea i guess.. but i dont think it will
be profitable

digital has certian advantages that are negated in this situation:

instant feedback - you get to see your picture instantly and
delete / re shoot it if you arent happy w/ the results (impossible
with this camera since theres no lcd to review your pictures so you
dont know if they're good until you go to get them processed)

cost - w/ digital i can take as many pics. as i want and save them
to my hard drive, and the cost is practically nothing until i
actually print them, then my cost is that of the paper, in this
case, the cost of the camera will already cover the cost of a cheap
35mm one-time camera and cheap developing ( i think my local
walmart has one-hour for about $6 and a cheap one time camera for
about $4). w/ the one time digital, even if you just want
pictures on disk for say, email or website purposed i'd imagine
there would be a fee to save them to a cd-r. i think many photo
shops offer a medium resolution picture-on-disk option w/
developing at a reasonable price.

the only advantage i can think of, is perhaps a few minutes saved
in developing time. i've never had a situation where i didn't have
time to wait for one hour developing.. but w/ the digital i would
guess it'd take 10 minutes or so to get you 25 printouts and a cd
with your pictures.
however if you need your pictures that quick, a one-time polariod
is also an option (if they even still sell these?)

the only niche i can really see these filling well is for the
people that want to 'hack' the camera to get a $10.99 2 megapixel
digital

eric · Aug 2, 2003

funny!! thats a 1/3MP camera for $4 more than a 2MP camera. call me crazy but there may be a little advantage in picture quality with the extra 1.7 million pixels from the dakota (i smell sarchasm)

e

. Sheldon Koehler said:
andy888 said:

I was intrigued by the discussion about this new single use digital
camera, and immediately thought about tearing one open and seeing
if I could figure out how it ticked. Sure, this may be difficult or
impossible due to encryption/obscurity/who knows what else, but
what?s 10 bucks?

Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing, but since http://www.compgeeks.com has
digital cameras starting at $19.99 with USB connectors... don't
spend a lot of money trying this.

But it would be interesting to know how hackable it is...

Sheldon
--
'I take orders from no one except the photographers.'
? Harry S. Truman

Dakota "Disposable" Camera Mini Review (Part 1: The Dissection)

Member

Forum Pro

Senior Member

Member

Senior Member

Forum Pro

eric

Guest

Forum Enthusiast

Senior Member

Ron Parr

Guest

Leading Member

Ron Parr

Guest

Forum Pro

Well-known member

Member

Active member

Forum Pro

New member

Senior Member

eric

Guest

Similar threads

Keyboard shortcuts