Canon A570 IS 1.01A firmware dumped
November 11, 2007 1:20 am GMT-0700 | In TechToday I dumped Canon PowerShot A570 IS 1.01A firmware using tricks from CHDK website. Here’s a little bit tech detail for my own record.
- Receiver: Thorlabs DET110 + 10k terminating resistor.
- Recording: 48 kHz sampling, 8 Bit, Mono. Delay settings I used:
#define DELAY_SYNC 200 #define DELAY_SPACE 50 #define DELAY0 50 #define DELAY1 100
I slowed down the blinking to make my sound card happy. However, the following faster setting:
#define DELAY_SYNC 45 #define DELAY_SPACE 50 #define DELAY0 1 #define DELAY1 25
does give very clean waveform (even with the shortest 5 us pulse) on the scope, so it should work with good sampling device (say a better sound card).
- LED: I used the least-frequently-used blue LED
#define LED_BLUE 0xc02200c4
- Recording level set at about -5dB to -3dB
- Decoder setting:
#define LEVEL_THRES_HI 0xa0 #define LEVEL_THRES_LO 0x80 #define LEN_SYNC 10 #define LEN_SPACE 1 #define LEN_0 3 #define LEN_1 6
- Total dump time is about 2.5 hours. (about 3700 bits per second)
- I did not have any CRC error! I added an md5 checksum at the end. The camera took about 17 seconds to calculate md5sum of the 4MB firmware. Of course, no surprise, md5sum matches.
- Starting part of the dump:
Decoded as 00110000, 00110001, 00110010, in other words, ASCII ‘0’, ‘1’, ‘2’. Also, for some reason the waveform is inverted (compared with CHDK website), so I have to manually invert the waveform for adc. - The camera freezes about 3 milliseconds every few seconds. Here’s typical behavior:
Since the protocol is decently robust, this extra delay is not a problem at all. - Dumper code available for download: a570is dumper (based on code from CHDK website and kxn’s modification.).
Brilliant kxn ported CHDK to A570 IS 1.01A within two days.
2 Comments
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Quick question for you – do you know if 1.01a is the latest fw? When did you buy the camera?
This is the cheapest CHDK-compatible camera that you can still purchase new from just about everywhere. I’m actually planning to buy it based on your excellent work!
Comment by bob — November 24, 2007 6:27 pm GMT-0700 #
I bought it in Aug 2007 for my lab. As far as I know, 1.01a is the latest fw. Yeah it’s a good camera, I am planning to buy one for my own.
Comment by atppp — November 24, 2007 7:25 pm GMT-0700 #