2011年10月16日日曜日

Recolo - timelapse cam - disassembly

Japanese manufacturer KING JIM recently released Recolo, a toy camera dedicated for timelapse video. The camera which run by two AA batteries even does not have an LCD monitor to check the recorded vid. Instead, it features a classic style LCD to input and check recording configs: the intervals of taking photo (3 sec to 1 day), how many FPS your vid will be (1 to 24), and color config (normal, monochrome and vivid). The recorded videos will be MotionJPEG format .avi files without sound.


As an electronics engineer, I'll show you how the cam is built.

Remove two blindfold silicone filler and screws on the back side with precision driver.
Two more screws are to be removed under the front battery cover.
Put a flathead driver into this gap and separate the device two parts.
CMOS cam and image processor board. The left, rectangle chip printed as ESMT is an SDRAM, and the right, square chip is a microcontroller.
The MCU used is GPL32100A, from Chinese manufacturer Generalplus. Chip operating voltage ranges from 2.7 to 3.6V (3.3V±10%), which means NiMH rechargeable batteries, those electromotance is usually 1.2V per unit, may fail to run. The chip features 32bit ARM7 core, 16KB RAM, running at 96MHz maximum, as well as LCD controller and MotionJPEG processing. That must be why this chip was chosen.
I suppose not so many engineers have heard the name. Me neither. It strongly makes me associate that they outsource the electronics design to a Chinese ODM farm.
A metal cylinder at top-right is a crystal oscillator. SDRAM's capability is 64 Mbit, or 8MB.

The other side of CMOS board. The black chip at left is CMOS camera, and the metal part at right is SD card slot.
The black socket at bottom is an input receptor from an optional AC adapter. Black and red leads are from AA batteries to run the whole boards. The board pattern under black resin seems another MCU can be placed... I assume this is a legacy of reference design of MCU and LCD. The right side of this board is voltage stabilization circuit, or DC-DC. We can see a voltage regulator controller (U2) and  ferrite beads.
A hole for CMOS cam. It's not centered.
Tripod hole. What's inside are an usual nut and a metal plate. Good enough design with reasonable cost.
LCD display to show configs. There're electrodes at right-bottom. These will be contacted to input front switches with --
-- this FFC, without soldering or socketing.
You'll see two tiny holes atop FFC to fix the positioning. Very cost efficient. This will be the first candidate of failure if it gets defected.
Optical finder. It's affixed just by binding front and back panels.
Manufacturing cost seems to be USD 20 or something, including parts, mounting and assembling. I'm not sure about how much the mold costs. I assume up to USD 40 including molding, planning and developing.