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$12 stick-on tail cam

My camera showed up, cant beat the price but the silly little manual was not created by anyone remotely familiar with english. The translation is horrible. Anyway, if anyone found a link to a decent instruction folder or video of working these and would them be kind enough to post or email me it would be really appreciated. Amazing what $12 bucks gets you but...just need to be familiar with using it now.

The fan site in my original post has pretty good english instructions.

http://chucklohr.com/808/MD80/index.html
 
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oh well......

I've come to the conclusion that my $14 camera is junk. The video and sound quality isn't bad but the thing can't record for more than a couple minutes without crashing. It locks up and the only way to get it to power down is to use the reset. Of course this fails to write the video to memory.

It took a long time to get the battery to where it would take a good charge so the whole deal may be power related.

Don't know what this world is coming to when you can't get a $14 Chinese camera to work properly...............
 
I've come to the conclusion that my $14 camera is junk. The video and sound quality isn't bad but the thing can't record for more than a couple minutes without crashing. It locks up and the only way to get it to power down is to use the reset. Of course this fails to write the video to memory.

It took a long time to get the battery to where it would take a good charge so the whole deal may be power related.

Don't know what this world is coming to when you can't get a $14 Chinese camera to work properly...............

1. Send it back on warranty. Ha Ha Ha Ha :)
2. Replace the battery?
3. Follows these instructions:

-----
2010 Apr 30 - Mick's tip about external power through the mini USB connector
I am using one of the cheap MD-80 clones from JOYMYFUN and have found a way to plug in and run an external battery supply. I have tried a single AA battery mobile phone charger and a 2 battery AA phone charger. I can even record while powering from USB and AC.
The trick to it is so simple.
Firstly, with the camera powered off, press and hold the record button in.
Next, insert the power supply into the mini USB port in the camera.
Keep holding the record button in while the blue L.E.D comes on and the red L.E.D. flashes a bit.
When the blue L.E.D. in stationary and red L.E.D. is off, you are ready to go.

So simple and this has revolutionized the way I use this camera now.

-----
 
I don't know if it's related or not but at the same time I tried to get my MD80 up and running my computer went haywire. I had to reset it to a previous time to get it (my computer) to work again.

I am not a computer guy and am now a little hesitant to try the camera again.
 
I've come to the conclusion that my $14

It took a long time to get the battery to where it would take a good charge so the whole deal may be power related.

Don't know what this world is coming to when you can't get a $14 Chinese camera to work properly...............

I know what you mean, Sam. My dvd writer can only accept one dvd at a time! All that money! Seriously, if it's not the battery it is probably the memory chip. You can test it with a program called "H2testw". You can read about it in the first para of this link http://chucklohr.com/808/. I had the same problem. It tested bad, took it back to wally world, got a new one and voila.
 
I know what you mean, Sam. My dvd writer can only accept one dvd at a time! All that money! Seriously, if it's not the battery it is probably the memory chip. You can test it with a program called "H2testw". You can read about it in the first para of this link http://chucklohr.com/808/. I had the same problem. It tested bad, took it back to wally world, got a new one and voila.

Well.....I reset the camera without the chip installed (it did the 35 LED flashes thing), formatted the chip in a 'puter instead of the camera, put everything back together and the camera is recording as I type. It has run longer than it ever has........maybe it's good I didn't throw it in the can earlier today........ ;)

I really hope it works, the two minutes it recorded yesterday evening while taped to the leading edge of the wing (but before I had time to launch) was pretty good quality. Might be a good idea to reset it before every flight. The link you referenced is the best I've found about this and similar cameras.

Update: The camera crashed after recording about 20 minutes and generated a file of 0kb size. Ran chkdsk and it recovered the file to a 547 meg chk file. Renamed the file with avi extension but no show.
Camera now in the trash can. It was fun while it lasted.......................
 
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Really is a POS

Got mine. It will record a bit, then freeze. I got 20 minutes in the car. Charged it up. From the cockpit got about a 5 minute clip of takeoff.

One hour later, turn it back on to capture the landing, nada. It would not even record 5 minutes.

My memory card is a high dollar one that I already had (from a camera).

It's too bad it totally hangs so badly. It's even hard to push the reset button, it doesn't really line up with the hole. I had to disassemble mine to do a reset!

Still, now I've got the bug, time for something a little better.
 
I've been using my camera for about a month now with minimal problems. So far, I've recorded about 2 hours worth of video. Yesterday, I recorded about 40 minutes with the camera taped to the pitot mast and got just a little waviness.

After leaving the camera plugged into the computer for about 8 hours for recharging, I was unable to shut it off until I removed the mini SD card. Now if I could just get the time stamp to go away all would be good.
 
How to get rid of time stamp?

I bought two of these and they work fine. However, I cannot get rid of the time stamp. I have tried the various methods that I have seen on youtube to get rid of it but zero luck.

Does anyone know how to do this???? Like others, I got no CD and the manual is unreadable.

Thanks.
 
Just to throw this out there. A few months back, the military went nuts about people using thumb drives on gov't computers since most of them are from overseas..China....

Anyway, I hear they found that some of these things had little programs on them that would launch when connected and create some security issues.

Not a black helicopter guy (actually gray with guns on it and it says USAF on the side)...but interesting none the less.
 
Just to throw this out there. A few months back, the military went nuts about people using thumb drives on gov't computers since most of them are from overseas..China....

Anyway, I hear they found that some of these things had little programs on them that would launch when connected and create some security issues.

Not a black helicopter guy (actually gray with guns on it and it says USAF on the side)...but interesting none the less.

Thanks Tim,

I'm a relatively hard core sw geek and in this case I can promise that is not a concern. These devices don't even have flash - the user provides the flash via the SD card. So no vector to provide any code that would ever get loaded/run by windows.

The thing that happened with the thumb drives was a combination of inept IT in the military, mistakes in Windows and chinese hackers who wanted to build a botnet by putting run-me-you-moron.exe on a flash drive.

On a related note: because of the large number of windows machines (read: horrible security design) deployed in the US, the US is the worlds largest source of botnets by 300%. Bummer. Most of the botnets are controlled from eastern europe (because of good CS schools and not enough jobs) though over the next fiveish years China will probably take the lead.
 
very short battery life

I bought one of these from lucknetwork on ebay. It was dirt cheap ($4 + $6.40 shipping), arrived promptly, and came with several mounts. However, to me, it's pretty clear their battery life is nil.

The first time I used it after charging it a day or so, I got about 4-5 minutes recording time with it. I left it on the USB cable for a couple days. It then recorded for 13 minutes, 18 seconds, then shut off, apparently out of battery. After letting it sit awhile so the battery could recover some, I started recording again. It recorded for 20 seconds, then shut off; to me a clear indication of a discharged battery.

The seller's last reply on this (at least he responded to me) was this when I described the problems and asked about getting a better battery:
Dear buyer,
I am sorry that the goods take inconvenience to you,I don't know what's the problem,all products would be checked before send out.
But this product haven't battery alone,we can replace it to you a new,this is our adrdss:
Wei Luo
E16,GanLanPengYuan,CaiTian Road
FuTian District
ShenZhen 518000
China

I don't think it's worth the trouble to try to return it for probably a new copy of the same thing. I will try someone else's suggestion here to attach it to external power.
 
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