Walgreens PureDigital Camera Hacked

Powercntrl writes "While the Ritz version of the PureDigital single-use camera was recently hacked, the Walgreens version wasn't - until now. Codeman, the same guy who brought us the I-Opener hack, found a way to add a standard Smartmedia interface to the Walgreens camera and extract images with a standard Smartmedia reader. Links to sample images showing the camera's quality are included."

Re:$10 for 1280x1024 pictures

[AvitarX]

Except that I have seen cameras of that quality for that price at target. No soldering required.

They even came with some chicken shit software.

Re:while it may be neat...

[garcia]

pay in cash at a Walgreens you normally don't go to (considering that they are mostly in Wisconsin right now I don't think that will be a problem).

USB Interface and Practicality

[rufus t firefly]

I don't know much about the hack, other than than the information regarding the camera at http://earth.prohosting.com/puredig/ [prohosting.com]. What I'm curious about is why no one has posted or is interested in a USB hack similar to the Ritz one. A smartmedia reader, as some have pointed out, is much more expensive than a USB cable. I know that I would not spend 10$ on a single use camera, then spend an additional 30-50$ on parts to make it arguably equivalent to a 60$ cheapie digital.

Screw the camera

[AndroidCat]

For $10, it would be nice if this could be used as a general purpose USB interface for other projects. (I'd RTFA, but it's pining for the fjords.)

That looks like an enhanced fuji ix-10

[Anonymous Coward]

Having looked at the pics of this camera it looks a lot like an old camera I have - a fuji ix-10
If there are linux drivers for it it might work with them..

Re:while it may be neat...

[Daniel_Staal]

Well, they could put up a sign at the store saying that by buying these cameras you are agreeing to return them when the memory gets full for picture processing. Then it would be a contract clause. As long as you have to see and read the contract before buying the camera you could be bound by it. (This would be different from 'shrinkwrap' licensing in that you would see the contract before money changed hands.)

Not that I've seen such signs...

Re:while it may be neat...

[dattaway]

Let me ask if this is the future you want. Car dealers may not charge you $10 to own the cars, but more of an incentive for you to bring them in for "service." Since reverse engineering the internals of the car is now illegal, it would be forbidden to determine what kind of oil or fuel it uses. To publish any information you find about your tinkering could get you into big trouble. It could prevent *all* car manufacturers from making a profit and no incentive to sell cars.

I'm sure we are not confused about a rental agreement and Walgreen's cameras. But I do play the cd's I legally rented illegally on my Linux box with mplayer. Am I a criminal? I heard someone who made it possible for me to enjoy a movie in the privacy of my own home has been made a criminal just for that.

You see where this is going? We are allowing companies to artificially commoditize the market into exclusive goods. Its wasteful, harmful for the environment, stifles innovation, and destroys any sense of freedoms that may occur naturally.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Woo hoo!

[yonyonson]

And now besides the 99% of the population who will buy them and not modify them, there will be an added percentage bonus from the scientifically applied hobbyists who would never have bought one before.

Re:damn it!

[RevAaron]

We need some sort of way of putting the archive on bit torrent and then making it easily viewable. That is, someone saves the pertinent pages into a zip file, puts the zip up on bit torrent, and when you click the url, Moz or whatever your browser be unzips it to a temp dir, and opens up the index.html ... VIOLA! that'd be slick as snot.

Liars Playing Victims

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious solution to this (for the company) is something they used to do with the film disposables -- charge for processing up front. Include the price of the "processing" (which amounts to downloading the pics and printing them for an unreasonably inflated price) in the price of the camera, and then just say "processing included". The only reason they don't do this is because they found it was more profitable to mislead consumers into thinking the product was cheaper than it was.

I have no sympathy for companies. They tried to mislead consumers and a bunch of geeks called them up on it. Justice has been served.

Encryption too slow on CPU

[Anonymous Coward]

The CPU on these cameras are too slow to do this in a short amount of time (so you can take another picture quickly).
Out of the 2 Million to be sold, who cares about 1000 of them hacked, no reason to make the thing a big mess to manufacture and possible rejection by users because it's too slow.
Not everyone can solder, and I would say most people would rather drink a beer and watch TV.