dude sweet me and my friend have a cvs near us and they sell usb stuff and that sweeeet

Any way of dumping the videos using os x? i really want to use one of these for a helmet-cam in my films

looks like i’ll be picking up one of these tomorrow at work :) cough*30% discount**cough

SWEETNESS, already got mine dumped, it could use a better description of how to get it going once you get the cable made.

1 you need to make a libusb driver with inf-wizard, i used a VID of 0x167B and PID of 0×0101. MFG of Pure Digital and device name of Saturn. i’m pretty sure the MFG and device name are arbitrary. then name the driver like saturn.inf.
2 run that through the regular windows driver installing routine, give it the file from libusb it asks for in the driver install if it asks for it.
3 run the OPS camera dumping utility. it has 3 builds of the OPS exe when you download OPS, so run the one with the version # that most closly matches your libusb version.
4 When you have OPS going, click “open camcorder”, it should say the “found camcorder” and “connected to camcorder”. click “unlock camcorder” it’ll make a key for the camcorder and should unlock it. once the camcorder is unlocked, click “download last movie”, give it a filename and hit “save”.

congrats you just got a video off the camcorder! to get the other videos off you need to delete the last video off the camcorder. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ACTUALLY GOTTEN THE LAST VIDEO ONTO THE COMPUTER FIRST! TEST IT TO MAKE SURE! then delete the last video of the camcorder with the delete button on the back of the camcorder. you don’t need to unplug the camcorder while you do this either. lather, rinse, repeat step 4 to get the rest of the videos. when done you should have an empty camera and all the videos on your hard drive. hack a nice day.

the page with the instructions on making that custom USB cable says its for the digital camera, not the camcorder. am i reading that wrong, or is it compatible with both?

Can anyone link me to this camcorder?

Is there anywhere we can buy these cameras online? I’m nowhere near a CVS store..

Anyone have any idea about the battery life on this thing?
I hear you cant swap it out.
What good is doing this if the battery only lasts an hour or two…

does anybody have the link of the camcorder i need it im goin there tomorrow

I don’t see it anywhere on their site. Also I don’t feel like walking 15 mins to CVS and find out that they dont have it.

anyone know where to buy the palm m100 hotsync cable? ARE there any other cables that you can use? i cant seem to find any because its “old”

any sample vids out there?

There aren’t any CVS’s within 460 miles of where I live. :( Oh well!

Is there a cached version of the site? its overloaded for the month.

Is it really worth it to get this? From the reviews I’ve read, the image quality is horrible and playback on tv (I’m guessing primarily from DVD) has many artifacts and effects from light. Granted, it is a 30 dollar disposable camera, but many of the cheap usb cameras can do the same. Toy factor is a plus, but rationally I may pass at this and spend my money on a margarita machine. ;)

hmm.. the site to build a usb cable is frozen… any mirrors? and any possible way to create one out of a palm hotsync cable… it has 16 pins on it. thx

Here is a better description of the cable-making. It is written for the still cameras, but it’s the same cable as you need for the video camera..

To those people who can’t get them:

I called my local CVS, and the guy said he has a bunch of them.

If you want one, I have no problem shipping them, if you pay via paypal. email me offsite at rhenderson [at] that google email service thing . com and we can figure out how much it’ll cost to get you one. I’ll also provide my ebay profile link so you can see my 40+ positive buying and selling feedback.

-Rich

Has anyone had a problem actually getting this hak to work? My ops crashes everytime I try to DL the movie.

“”37. Posted Aug 4, 2005, 10:01 AM ET by mE

any word on when the hack for the cvs video camera will be out?
“”

WTF, please quit posting on sites on this planet. Thats what this hack is, everything you need to get the videos. Pls quit wasting our time.

auger> are you unlocking the camera? ops crashed for me when i tried to download before i unlocked it. you have to unlock it each time i believe?

tired2> i think he was joking :-P

99 cents stores also has the palm III hotsync to serial cables (without the cradle.)

its a serial cable, just use the camera connector, the serial cable gets desoldered. its WAAY worth it to use the palm cable though over the old printer cable method in my opinion, i tried both, the m100 cable was much better, a perfect fit. and id says the 30 bucks is well worth it considering this is the first release of the hack. but i guess only time will tell if it does (dont see why it wouldn’t) if you’re willing to risk the money dont forget to sign up for a cvs card ;)

ok i saw the camera its like $30 bucks is it really worth it

Just did this. Carpespasm’s post helped a lot. I also made my own connector with some paper; just holds the wires on the contacts. If anyone wants to know, the wires go, from right to left looking at the top of the camera with the lens up, black, white, green, unused, red.

glad i helped, i made it easier to get it all installed now to, i call it “CVS Camcorder Quickinstall” check it out at http://camerahacks.10.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=556

I went in to buy one and those cvs bitches wouldnt give me my 30% employee discount. they’re always lookin for a way to make another buck. you you are right aobut it selling at a loss, they make up for it in the processing. 13 bucks for a 20 minute dvd. its a rip really. thanks for the nice hack, i’ll get crankin on it soon. i can also ship to people who cant find them, at a cheap price cause i’ll put my discount in. paypal only. just email me at a99lbscox@hotmail.com

1Mb photos? well no wonder your bandwidth got leeched. Try resizing.

There is also another HOW TO posted using the Palm III cradle device and it looks pretty sweet the way you can just mount the camera with it. I searched ebay and you can find these there pretty easily as well.

http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/182/94/

Wonder when hackaday will get on it? Perhaps do something to use the camera to record streaming video straight to the computer? Possiblities, possibilities…

btw i recieved my stickers yesterday in excellent condition, thank you if you still read this thread vince and eliot.

xaos: It’s TWO unretouched (i.e. not resized) photos, each one over 500KB, from the Dakota and my Canon A10 that I had posted to show the quality (or not) of a $10 digital camera. When I set up the site I never expected to get >3,000 hits all within two weeks!

jay: I had also thought about adding a mini-USB connector to my four cameras but I decided it was easier, though maybe not cheaper, to make three cables. The cameras don’t have to be opened or altered in any way and I don’t have to fool around with the fine-pitch leads of the mini connector (read: poor close-up vision with my contacts) or try to figure out how/where to mount them inside the cameras.

Question: I got everything working correctly, but when I play the videos off of the camera, I only get audio and no video. I’m guessing that this is a codec issue. Can anyone tell me where to get a codec that will let me watch these videos and not just listen to them? Thanx

Need a divx codec to work http://www.divx.com/divx/

The $30 CVS camcorder just got better. Apparently, with some judicious editing of the USP.BIN file, you can change the resolution and data rate of your video. Mine are now running 640×480 at 30fps. I only get ~10 minutes, it’s quality video. I also have a vanity serial number to top it off. There is a thread at the Camerahacking site that shows how to do it, or you can use a patching program one if the denizens created. It is very easy to do with ops 0.7.

Cheers!

I would love to have one of these but there is not a cvs within 200 miles of me. Is there anyone willing to help me out?

Mike@graphxking.com

Hey, could a cut up USB extender cable work?????

I found someone on ebay selling a camcorder with a usb connection installed directly on it:

http://cgi.ebay.com/CVS-Digital-Camcorder-with-USB-cable-Firmware-3-4_W0QQitemZ7547675412QQcategoryZ64332QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

here’s my page for making a 24 pin centronics connector-based cable

http://www.throughthekeyboard.com/cvscam.html

[Chris TT]

Great Site, and Great lil gadget ill say i saw a sweeeeeet project that this guy did he made a docking stand for the CVS cam like the docking stand for the ipod, awesome stuff see it here http://www.i-hacked.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=182, and i saw another guy did this and made a video on it seen here http://www.ourmedia.org/node/49095, youll need quick time player to view this video but apple right now has bundled itunes with it so go to google and get it there i cant remember the site i got mine off just put in quicktime 7 in google but dont go to apple, unless u want itunes :-) BTW i do have a digital camera/camcorder its by aiptek its a pretty good one ive burned video off it to a VCD and the sound is really grainy but it works, id like to get my hands on that JVC everio <–(i think this is what its called) one records dvd quality video on a hard drive no taped no discs or cards