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CVS Camcorder Hack
1. I first went to CVS to check out this "Video Camera." It was $30, so I bought it. I was really impressed by it and then millions of ideas went through my head.
2. The two main things I wanted to create were to hack the camera so I can hook it up to my computer and create my own custom case for it. I ordered a cable I needed for the hack off of ebay and now awaiting for it to be delivered. This cable is called Palm III series m100 m105 serial cable. Click here to look it up on ebay.
3. After about 2 WEEKS of getting my cable, I left a negative feedback to the seller of the cable. Ok now I can start cracking. Mr. Connors showed me a website about the hack of the CVS camcorder, I started off from there. The part of the cable I really needed was the tip. The tip is the part that slides into the slot in the camera. The slot is located on the top of there camera behind the sticker that says "This camera cannot be hooked up to a computer or a TV". I'm about to change that.
I cut the tip off and got it ready for soldering.
I cut open a usb wire. This wire contains 4 wires, red --> + power, black --> ground, green --> + data, and white --> - data.
It took me some practice to solder the wires to the appropriate slots.
Once the wires were on, I secured the cover back on and was now ready for the software.
I looked at many websites about this camera. The name for this camera is Saturn. It's the most generic camera on the market. I followed the instructions about retrieving the libusb-win32 file, but I ended up at a dead end. I found another site. A very useful site that helped me a lot. This website showed a dock rather than a cable. But I concentrated on the software piece. There were many files needed to put together for the driver. The old website gave me links to the different files, while the new one gave me one link with a whole installation package to all of the necessary files. Here is this package. Download the 2.3 version. Once downloaded, I plugged in the camera to my computer and windows plug and play picked it up right away. I directed the driver to be one of the files downloaded. Once the driver was installed, I used the OPS program to download the videos. From this window, I need to click on "Open Camera", "Unlock", then "Download all Movies." You must do this in that order; otherwise the camera can get damaged. I can also format all of the videos as well. All the files were then downloaded onto my hard drive.
Then when I tried to play a movie, only the sound would play, so I had to download a codec package for Windows media player. You will have to download this file. Download the ffdshow-alpha file. Then click on "Download ffdshow-20041012.exe". Run the short installation and then you can the video clip.
Sample red sox clip!!!
Tools & Supplies
- Soldering Gun - $8.00
- Solder - $2.00
- Wire Cutters
- Electrical Tape
- Scissors
- CVS Camcorder - $30.00
- USB Cable - $10.00
- Palm III Cable - $7.00
Total = $57.00
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