Flatfoto 2 firmware
Thanks to brite_eye's legwork I have some interesting information on the flatfoto 2 firmware. He ran pv2patch on the ff2 firmware and it reported some interesting things... 1. The ff2 firmware passes pv2 checksum -*test*-('")s. I'd guess that the ff2 uses a very similar bootloader. 2. The "speaker mute patch" in pv2patch finds what appear to be valid patch locations. It appears that the memory locations to control the speaker are the same in both the pv2 and ff2. However other locations weren't found by pv2patch. The "unlock patch" wasn't found, which is unsurprising, since the camera is alread unlocked. The USB PID code wasn't found - perhaps the firmwares do diverge significantly. Then again, so do the the firmwares for the 6410 and the 6520. I'm going to try to snag a ff2 over lunch today... maybe I'll get lucky. If I do, I'll be disassembling and comparing the firmwares to see what else these 2 cameras share this weekend. If they appear to share a lot more hardware interfaces, I might even risk a ff2 firmware upload to a spare pv2!

Raw_structs.h for flatfoto2
Flatfoto2 has thumbnails inside raw starting at C8. The compressed image starts at 100C8. The address at 07 labled as uRecDelim1 is C8000100. The address at 15 labled as uRecDelim2 is C8000000 (start of thumbnail). The thumbnail appears to be 280 x 221 (don't understand extra row) with rows containing 6 bytes of 0s at each end reducing size of row data to 268. For an all white image thumbnail has repeating pattern of 31 3F 2B which is rather odd for a bayered lcd - maybe this camera uses a different lcd. Note the same old 9bit repeating pattern was in compressed image at 100C8.

No FF2 yet
The Radio Shack I visited today didn't have any FF2s... maybe I'll have better luck during tomorrows lunchtime excursion. brite_eye, are the thumbnails viewable in forkboy's TFT utility? I think the pv2 TFT format is pretty well just dumped as-is to the SDRAM behind the sensor. Forkboys utility might give you some visual idea of how the two sensors differ. And I am oh-so-jealous of your FF2 hack-capability! :wink:

I went to RadioShack in Rotterdam Square Mall last Tuesday and they were out, too. The clerk said that they weren't expecting to get any more in, either. I did a search on Ebay and found someone selling a lot of 6 for a "buy it now" of $99.00. Now I can't understand why anyone in their right mind would want or need 6 digital cameras.... uh, wait a minute... *I* have 6 of these CVS thingys. I need help. :lol:

When I grabbed my FF2 here it was the last one on the shelf. The guy behind the counter said that they had "featured" it for the 2004 Christmas selling season and were now selling off the inventory. I suspect that eBay may be the only way to buy one soon... Maybe having no hardware in stock will inspire them to post the FF2 drivers on the 'net - I can't imagine they want to sell and ship $2.50 CDs forever. My recent count tallys 6 digital cameras in the household - ranging from prosumer DSLR to camera phones...

Update on FF2 lcd: While looking for an address for daBass in older posts I came across one of mine - TFT under a microscope: G B R G B R _B R G B R G G B R G B R _B R G B R G So repeating 3 byte pattern means all FFs are translated into different values by color. Can anyone explain that? I believe I noticed before that 2 most significant bits are dropped in tft thumbnails. I'll need to hotplug and verify bayer is all FFs - with 0x34 segments and a newer larger imager I currently doubt sailpix's decompression will be reliable (may get the blues) - and I do not currently have a C compiler installed anyway. I wish someone would post an executable version that creates a bayer file. So little time - I need to post a shot of my bright eye as an Icon.

Finally flatfotoed
The second Radio Shack I hit today at lunch had 2 of them left, so I snagged one! Probably won't get much time to play with the new toy this weekend though... my wife wants us to pack up the kids and hit the road to visit Grandparents. I guess I can spend the road time contemplating what my avatar/icon should be. Should be a treat when I finally get into the disassembly of FF2. Wild speculation, but based on the speaker control and checksums being the same, I bet a lot of the hardware interfaces will be similar to its pv2 cousin.

That auction for six FlatFoto 2 cameras ended with no bidders so I contacted the seller and talked him into selling me two of them for $9 a peice plus shipping (it will cost me $26 after shipping). Apparantly, they don't function but hopefully with two I can make one working one and get the firmware extracted to play with. Billw - let me know if you successfully flash FF2 firmware to the PV2 and the results. I might be willing to risk a camera myself. Hopefully I won't be making another post to the failure thread in the near future. :?

Great deal - especially if you got my return which worked fine except it had stopped flashing. I suspect minimally that constants for different size imager will need to be found and changed in firmware before upgrading a 1.3 imager to 2.0 software. Although the USB portion should still work fine allowing rollback if things don't work. As soon as someone else succeeds, I'll risk another fry.

FF2 Analysis
Back from the road trip - pretty wiped, but I just set the ff2 up for libusb operation. Some interesting observations... the USB stack appears much the same as the PV2. It responds to the "TFT display" USB $5d/$oe command, as well as the program-execute $28 command. (right down to the 5 second "watchdog" that resets the camera after running the user program) A quick run of the "twill" program from the devkit reveals the speaker is handled the exact same as in the pv2. The "beatbox" program from the devkit revealed something interesting - the button mapping is similar, but not the same... PV2-Dislay==FF2-Display PV2-Delete==FF2-Right-Arrow PV2-Shutter!=FF2-Shutter So I doubt a PV2 flashed with FF2 firmware would work correctly. The button thing could be easily patched, but I suspect the TFT display will be backed by a different SDRAM area. (this is the case with the 6410-27 and the 6520-30)

pv2 flashed with ff2 firmware
Ok, I bit the bullet and flashed my 6520-T30 with the ff2 firmware. The good news is, it doesn't kill the camera, and it's reflashable back to the original state. As I expected, it doesn't register the shutter button. Additionally, the display is completely dead... I think the "display on" interface to the ff2 is probably different than the pv2. It does, however, beep like a ff2. There's a single beep when you turn it on, (but that's followed by a bunch of error-ish low-beeps) and when you turn it off you get the two short beeps you get from the ff2 when it powers off.. I ran some -*test*-('")s on the ff2, and if you only use the display and right-arrow buttons you can't really do much of anything. I played around hitting random delete+display sequences on the pv2, and it too didn't do much of anything :wink: except the random error-beep. If anyone wants to replicate, I uploaded the whole ff2 FLASH image to the pv2. My reasoning for that, was I wanted to include any critical files or file structures the ff2 firmware needed. Then again, perhaps just uploading FIRMWARE.BIN and leaving the PV2 NVRAM.DAT and FWCFG.DAT the same will give more positive results...

Thanks for being the guinnie pig billw. I caution against just uploading firmware.bin since if other files it needs are incorrect it may burp and not allow a subsequent revival. FF2 does not have any PD files and does hava a hibernate (if I remember correctly).

ff2 firmware update
brite_eye, that sounds prudent. Anyway, I re-thought that point. A FIRMWARE.BIN-only update probably won't produce any positive results since the SDRAM locations used for the display screen are hardcoded into the firmware, as are other hardware interfaces. While I think a patched-for-pv2 ff2 firmware update is possible, I think it will be just as difficult as directly adding the features we want to the pv2 firmware. And it will be easier to distribute our own pv2 patch code so everyone can benefit from new features. When someone does come up with a new whiz-bang feature, I think it will be easy enough to port to the ff2 firmware though. (In fact, similar ports will be needed for different pv2 firmware revisions, since temp memory locations and register usage can vary widely between pv2 firmwares.)

New forum looks great! Regarding the ff2 cameras @ Radio Shack. As already mentioned what is on the shelf is likely the end of these cameras. Radio shacks website has the new FF3 camera for sell $79.95. Main differences seem to be that it's 3.0 MP and has a better/stronger flash. Also no Mac OSX support unlike the ff2 :-( Here's the link none of the stores seem to have them yet. http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F001%5F002%5F000%5F000&product%5Fid=16%2D3844 Regarding the none working ff2's from ebay. I've been told the weak point of these cameras are the none replaceable batteries. I was told by a Radio shack employee that dead battery pack is the main reason for returns on these cameras. The number is within reason but gives reason to think life span maybe short unless somone can figure out how to replace the battery pack. 500 recharges is the expected life span.

ff2 raw images
I confirmed that the TFT format embedded in the ff2 RAWs is pretty well the same as the pv2 TFT format. I pulled the TFT out of a RAW using the following (*nix or cygwin required): dd if=IMG_0008.RAW of=IMG_0008.TFT bs=1 skip=200 count=61600 Forkboy's TFT Utility displays the TFT fine. I'd guess that the display used in the ff2 is probably the same as the pv2. Schwinn, interesting point on the rechargability. I plan to crack open the ff2 some time soon. When I do I'll report if custom batteries are used (it looks like AAA's would fit the form factor), and if the screen module is really the same. (if it is, then you know where to get replacment screens for $20 binaryweaver)