Experimental features
Since the camera is a mostly open platform, lots of standard Linux features are available. This page lists features we find useful, but don't intend for general use at this time. You can try them out if you would like. Use at your own risk, no support for experimental features are available.
USB storage
You can save videos on a USB storage device.
At power up, if you have both a big SD card and a USB storage device installed then the camera will treat the USB storage device as the primary storage device.
At power up, if you have only one storage device (either big SD card or a USB storage device) installed, that one will be the primary storage device. If you plug in another storage device, it will be the secondary device. Once the primary storage device gets full, the camera should switch to saving videos on the other storage device.
If you have more than one USB storage device installed, only one will be used.
No testing has been done using a USB hub.
Browser links
The web server built into the camera supports other links you might find interesting.
Accessing videos
You can see the list of saved video files and related metadata file by browsing to the link /static/mnt and then clicking on sdcard or usb. You will find the videos in the directory DCIM.
Accessing camera log
You will find the camera log file at the link /static/log/messages
Displaying camera details
You can list the details about your camera at the link /cgi-bin/get_var.py. Example output is
Model number: 0x0001 Serial number: 0x0003 Hardware revision: 0x0003 Hardware configuration: 0x0x0000 Build date (YYYYMMDD): 20130520 Ethernet MAC address: 00:1B:C5:09:60:03 Image sensor baseline DACVREFADC value: 0xC6 FPGA version: 38 Software build date: 20131125191444
Stand alone operation
It is not necessary to connect a computer to the camera to be able to capture videos. However, without a computer live preview, focus and framing are guesswork.
When the camera is powered on, the default_settings.txt file in the primary storage device (typically the big SD card) is read to get the starting camera configuration parameters. Once configured, you can take videos using the remote trigger.
You can edit the default_settings.txt using any flat ASCII editor. A word processor is not recommended since it will add information in the file that will confuse the camera.
Example contents of the default_settings.txt:
# Incorrect syntax will cause camera failure, edit carefully # Line syntax: printable text, TAB, printable text, TAB, printable text Sensitivity: 1000 ISO Shutter: 1/500 Seconds Frame Rate: None Frames/Second Horizontal: None Pixels Vertical: None Pixels Sub-sampling: Off sub-sample Duration: 5 Seconds Pre-trigger: 75 percent