"Dr. Evil" <drevil@sidereal.kz> wrote :

This brings to mind something which would be a very cool project: Have a digital camera that public key encrypts the photos before storing them. Obviously the private key would be stored in some other safe place, so if the camera is stolen, no one can see what the photographs are. I'm sure Canon will never add this feature, but someday soon these things may be running Linux and may be hackable.

Anyway, I can't wait to see the photos.

Most of these things are SOCs based on standard 32-bit CPU's with specialized peripherals for CCD, LCD, pixel processing. Often they're using conventional RTOSes like VxWorks, pSOS, Nucleus. Most of them include some mechanism for updating the application SW in FLASH. That's where you might start disassembly. If the camera of interest is using an SOC that is not proprietary you can probably get data sheets from the Si manufacturer. They're definitely hackable. The BIG PROBLEM as with everything else is how to find the time to do the fun stuff? I think it would be cool to have a high quality CCD front end that could be used as an add-on to an iPAQ. Use a microdrive for storage, store everything in Bayer format(fast), do the post pocessing later or in the background. An iPAQ could handle the control of a front end and you could do whatever you want with the files. Mike