I recently purchased a miniature camcorder to play around with. It is an interesting little piece of equipment. First of all it’s tiny. It’s about the size of those 5-packs of gum like Juicy Fruit or Doublemint comes in. The video it takes is not too bad either. It shoots at 720×480 at 30 frames per second, and the color and general picture quality are pretty good. It uses a Micro SD card for storage and can plug directly into a USB port for downloading. The really surprising part though is that it was only $14 shipped. Really, that’s not a not a typo. It’s $14, and that includes shipping! At this price it’s practically disposable.
It's Light and Small In the Hand
Camera and Friends
I purchased mine for use in an RC plane since it’s so small and lightweight. Also, it’s so cheap that if it gets smashed or lost, it’s not the end of the world. It was simple to just tape onto the bottom of the plane or to cut a hole and have it stick out.
A Frame Capture From Some Video Taken Over Carmel Beach
Like any self-respecting engineer, I wanted to know what was inside. Below are some pictures from a quick teardown. The chip count is pretty low, and most components are easy to identify.
The Back Side With the Aluminum Cover Removed
The Front Without the Cover
The Back Side of the Camera With Buttons and Lights
The Front of the Camera
The image sensor is socketed and just pops off. This thing is tiny.
There are a couple things about this camera that aren’t perfect though. The date can’t be set properly, so the camera always thinks it’s filming a New Year’s party in 2008. Also, the video is saved as Motion JPEG which takes up a lot of space. This compression is much simpler than something like H.264, so it’s easier for the processor to do in real time. Another thing is the sound can cut out occasionally as you can hear in the following video, but this is pretty minor.
Also, I was cheating a little bit on the price. You do need a Micro SD Card too, which would run you an extra few dollars depending on the size you get. I’m using a 2GB card. It records at around 1 megabyte per second, so that means I get about half an hour of record time with 2GB.
It seems there are different versions of this camera in the same or very similar packaging. I can’t speak for the quality of others, but I am very happy with the one I have.
The unit I bought was sourced off Ebay. You can find it there by searching for something like “gum camera” or “mini dvr”. You can also find this camera at various online spy equipment or random junk stores, however they usually sell them for at least $100.
Copyright © 2013
I just bought 2 for $24.00 on ebay
very cool bit of kit =]
Certainly neat, though 1MB/sec means you need a decently large card for any real long shoots, which kinda ruins the “so cheap it’s practically disposable” thing. I wonder if a firmware hack could help trim the filesize? Or could you rig an SD-wifi card in there and stream the video to a nearby PC?
Gawd I hate I saw this, now I want one of these cheap and soon to be worhtless microelectronics wonders.
Found one for 11.68 shipped on eBays buy it now.
Thanks allot Nick, another 12 bucks down the drain.
From youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGvNgLCek3Q) in the comments section from user hellpassion. To set the date:
Delete everything on the SD Card
Create a txt file called TAG.TXT in the root.
Open Tag.TXT and enter the following, with one space after the last entry in each text line
[date]
2009/09/27
21:00:00
Save it, eject it, then power on camera.
Whoooa!!
Sky!! I’ve had this gadget for a freakin’ year or so. Got it cheap off ebay just like the rest of us and got crappy instructions that didn’t work. I’ve tried every version of naming that file I could find from time.txt and .bat to settime. txt, probably four or more versions and always got the same date. I got the thing out of the box again last week determined to get it to work. I spent hours renaming, saving, recording, blah, blah, blah. No change. Tonight, from way back in 2009, you come up with yet another variation and it works!!!! Lawd have mercy, its freakin’ Christmas Miracle!! Thank you so much. Now, got any idea how to turn the datestamp completely OFF? Then I’ll have total control of this little sucker. Thanks again.
I’ve used one for over a year now and think it’s a great deal for the price.
Once you set the date don’t turn the camera off. Treat the on/off switch on the side as a RESET switch. Leave the switch in the ON position. The camera will power-down all by itself to save the battery but a trickle of power will keep the internal clock working. If you turn it OFF that trickle of power to the clock is off also.
It can also be used as a voice recorder by putting the camera in picture mode and holding the large button for 3 seconds. This creates a sound only file. You’ll see the red LED blinking. Press the large button again to stop the recording.
The one drawback I’ve found is that you can’t see what you’re taking a picture of. There is no viewfinder and the camera is so small that you can’t always be sure you have your subject in the center of your shot.
Also it is not a low light camera. It does fine outside or in a well lite room but in low light the picture quality isn’t very good.
One other thing. You can’t remove the timestamp from the photo. There is no option to turn off timestamp so it’s always in the bottom right of the picture. I have seen a few websites with ‘hacks’ that might work but I haven’t tried them.
good luck setting the time on this “gum stick cam”. i have sat for hours, and tried different combinations to enter the time. i never had any luck. if you are one of the few out there who have done this, please put it up on this site EXACTLY how it is done..
by the way, on my gum stick cam, which is the same that is pictured on this site, has no time stamp. mine is blank. but i still cannot get the time set on it following “SKY’S” comment above.
[date]
2009/01/02
20:30:00
Save to root driectory as “tag.txt”
NOW, how do you blank it?