MD-80 vs. Clone

Discussion about deployment systems including altimeters, timers, air speed flaps, servo systems, and chemical reactions.
joeosmond
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Re: MD-80 vs. Clone

Post by joeosmond »

hi thanks for the info on this camera. i have the clone and the battery life is terrible! anyone know of software to check the level and charge rate . any idea what amp/voltage it is so i can find a replacement!?
thank you in advance
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U.S. Water Rockets1
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Re: MD-80 vs. Clone

Post by U.S. Water Rockets1 »

We believe we have made a new discovery about the MD-80 Camera. We have been using the reflash technique to eliminate the time display from our MD-80 cameras, and we noticed that the flash is slightly different in our two cameras. It could possibly be that we have multiple firmware revisions in our two cameras but we were discussing this and one alternative we thought of was that the camera potentially uses some of the flash memory for nonvolatile memory storage... perhaps the camera undergoes some type of calibration procedure at the factory and the flash chip is used to hold the calibration parameters.

If anyone else has dumped their MD-80 flash memory, they should compare the results to the flash villamany has dumped and see if there are small blocks of memory that differ.
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Re: MD-80 vs. Clone

Post by Team Seneca »

U.S. Water Rockets1 wrote:We believe we have made a new discovery about the MD-80 Camera. We have been using the reflash technique to eliminate the time display from our MD-80 cameras, and we noticed that the flash is slightly different in our two cameras. It could possibly be that we have multiple firmware revisions in our two cameras but we were discussing this and one alternative we thought of was that the camera potentially uses some of the flash memory for nonvolatile memory storage... perhaps the camera undergoes some type of calibration procedure at the factory and the flash chip is used to hold the calibration parameters.

If anyone else has dumped their MD-80 flash memory, they should compare the results to the flash villamany has dumped and see if there are small blocks of memory that differ.
That's an interesting theory. I have two Clone MD80 cameras. The one that crashed is broken but it looks like the serial flash memory is intact. I'm trying to get something together that can dump the flash easily. I can compare the two if the chip wasn't ruined.
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Re: MD-80 vs. Clone

Post by villamany »

U.S. Water Rockets1 wrote:We believe we have made a new discovery about the MD-80 Camera...
I also have 2 cameras and firmwares also seen to be a bit diferent, i only try read original firmware of each camera, mofify and then send back to the camera.
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Re: MD-80 vs. Clone

Post by chenrp »

hello,
i got my clone MD80 and it work fine.
but the charge is always blinking.
it wont charge completely.
firstly i tried by USB and than by 220V charger...
any one ?
villamany
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Re: MD-80 vs. Clone

Post by villamany »

try first with another cable, then with another charger (cables and chargers that comes with camera are very bad quality, seems to work but do not work 100% ok)
joeosmond
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Re: MD-80 vs. Clone

Post by joeosmond »

chenrp wrote:hello,
i got my clone MD80 and it work fine.
but the charge is always blinking.
it wont charge completely.
firstly i tried by USB and than by 220V charger...
any one ?
same problem , cam only films for 10-15 min max.
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Re: MD-80 vs. Clone

Post by U.S. Water Rockets1 »

Team Seneca wrote:
U.S. Water Rockets1 wrote:We believe we have made a new discovery about the MD-80 Camera. We have been using the reflash technique to eliminate the time display from our MD-80 cameras, and we noticed that the flash is slightly different in our two cameras. It could possibly be that we have multiple firmware revisions in our two cameras but we were discussing this and one alternative we thought of was that the camera potentially uses some of the flash memory for nonvolatile memory storage... perhaps the camera undergoes some type of calibration procedure at the factory and the flash chip is used to hold the calibration parameters.

If anyone else has dumped their MD-80 flash memory, they should compare the results to the flash villamany has dumped and see if there are small blocks of memory that differ.
That's an interesting theory. I have two Clone MD80 cameras. The one that crashed is broken but it looks like the serial flash memory is intact. I'm trying to get something together that can dump the flash easily. I can compare the two if the chip wasn't ruined.
There's no other memory in the camera so they have to have some degree of factory programming stored there. After thinking about it some more we realized the programmed differences should include a serial number used by the USB host to individually address each camera. This should be easy to discover using a USB sniffer or poking around in the hardware device list of a windows PC with a camera connected. The same number should be easily discovered by comparing to the dumped MD80 clone camera (or a gumpack camera or 808 car keys camera, etc.)

That would be just one setting that could be verified easily.
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Re: MD-80 vs. Clone

Post by U.S. Water Rockets1 »

joeosmond wrote:
chenrp wrote:hello,
i got my clone MD80 and it work fine.
but the charge is always blinking.
it wont charge completely.
firstly i tried by USB and than by 220V charger...
any one ?
same problem , cam only films for 10-15 min max.
The batteries in these cameras are no better quality than the cables... in other words, $20 for a camera probably won't get you good components. There's no reason to expect they are going to work well. You have to just roll the dice and hope you get one that works.
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joeosmond
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Re: MD-80 vs. Clone

Post by joeosmond »

U.S. Water Rockets1 wrote:
joeosmond wrote:
chenrp wrote:hello,
i got my clone MD80 and it work fine.
but the charge is always blinking.
it wont charge completely.
firstly i tried by USB and than by 220V charger...
any one ?
same problem , cam only films for 10-15 min max.
The batteries in these cameras are no better quality than the cables... in other words, $20 for a camera probably won't get you good components. There's no reason to expect they are going to work well. You have to just roll the dice and hope you get one that works.
do you know of any batterys i could buy to replace it with?
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Re: MD-80 vs. Clone

Post by U.S. Water Rockets1 »

joeosmond wrote: do you know of any batterys i could buy to replace it with?
Do you want the exact same size battery or would you be open to a larger size battery that you can mount externally but would last much longer?
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Re: MD-80 vs. Clone

Post by joeosmond »

U.S. Water Rockets1 wrote:
joeosmond wrote: do you know of any batterys i could buy to replace it with?
Do you want the exact same size battery or would you be open to a larger size battery that you can mount externally but would last much longer?
either lol
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Re: MD-80 vs. Clone

Post by chenrp »

what is the size of the battery? i want to put a larger one (more mah)

thank you.
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Re: MD-80 vs. Clone

Post by U.S. Water Rockets1 »

chenrp wrote:what is the size of the battery? i want to put a larger one (more mah)

thank you.
A great place to get good batteries is to take them out of old cell-phones. These are nice and powerful and you just stick them into the phone and put it in the charger when you need to recharge them. It beats trying to build a special charger for these batteries.
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Re: MD-80 vs. Clone

Post by chenrp »

have you done such a mod?
can you post pictures?

thank you.