In order to get a clear image, rotate the lens 0.625 turns left, presuming that the white line that has been drawn on the lens case starts at the bottom.
Category: Dashcam
Making a test photo with the DIY Dashcam
Today I learned that the following command creates a test capture with the raspberry pi camera:
libcamera-still -o test.jpg
And by golly, it works! So yet again some progress has been made. Somewhat worry that it is blurred, so let me make another one with the lights on:
Well heck. That’s not good. I have still not been ably to install python3-picamera3. Would that be the issue? Weird though. Let’s do another test with a mug at 10 cm distance:
One more test then at 20 cm:
Sooo. Not sure what’s going on here, but at least the camera works. 😀
Little update for the DIY dashcam
The progress is slow, but steady. Everything is now assembled and ready to go. Now it is time to find the best opensource dashcam software. I have now hooked it up to the local network so I can poke it everywhere I want.
[Projects] DIY Dashcam update
Alright, that was a lot of soldering and it’s not perfect, but I’m not either. So with that done, I have bolted on the PiSugar auxiliary battery and I think it is time to plug in the camera as well. Now I do hope that I find that one github thing back where all the code was!
Back soon with more progress! (I hope)
Side-project: I’ll just build my own dashcam.
While I am trying to repair the Koonlung K1S Dashcam, I am going to build my own dashcam. Sure, I can buy one and pay a ridiculous amount of money for a half-way decent one, but I paid € 230 for the K1S which I assumed did not turn out to be trash.
And so, I am going to build one myself and learn from it in the process. The project was first going to be a pwnagotchi, but I think building a dashcam is more useful. For now @_@
While I am waiting for the auxiliary battery, I will have to start with soldering the 40-pin header onto the board. And if you wonder why I didn;t buy one with a header soldered on it already, my answer is: “I had no idea that this was an option!!1 D: ”
Trying to fix a Koonlung K1S, a probably long-term project. [plus downloads]
The Koonlung K1S is a very nice dashcam, with GPS, emergency button and HD recording and everything is made quite small. The HD video has a bit of a low bit rate, but it’s still not bad.
That said, it became a piece of rubbish. No matter what kind of SD card is inserted, the software locks up and the whole device becomes useless.
I have tried all the versions of the firmware [⇓1]. I have tried to decompile the firmware [⇓2][⇓3]. Nothing worked, whatever I tried.
So the time has come to take the thing apart. It cannot be any more broken than it is now, so maybe it is a blown cap or something? It is not, by the first look. There seems to be a corroded button cell soldered onto the motherboard.
Alright. So what model is it? It’s not like you can just take it out and read what’s stamped onto it. Luckily I have a reference sheet in my archive that can be helpful. Hooray for being a data hoarder? >_>
The diameter is 4.8mm and the height is 2.0mm. The height is somewhat debatable as everything is small and kinda hard to reach. According to my datasheet, there are two candidates as a replacement battery:
- 4.8 x 2.15 – 1.55V – Maxell model: SR421SW – Seiko SB-A6 – Citizen 280-77 – GP 348
- 4.8 x 1.65 – 1.55V – Maxell model: SR416SW – Seiko SB-A5 – Citizen 280-75 – GP 337
As I want to get the exact battery, I grabbed a mini caliper and measured 1.65mm. There we go. It will be a SR416SW or anything compatible.
€5,46 has been paid for a set of 10 batteries because it was impossible to buy just one and now it is time to get the battery out.
More progress updates later!
[1] K1S-R158-50417-MPH – K1S-R179-50825 – K1S-R180-KPH – K1S-R180-MPH – K1S-R215-KPH
[2] k1s.bin_hlil – Type: Mapped, Platform: thumb2, Architecture: thumb2
[3] k1s.bin_hlil-arm7 – Type: Mapped, Platform: armv7, Architecture: armv7