Facebook
Google
GitHub
Linkedin
Thought to share this with others who may find it useful. I was in need of usb video camera to monitor an outdoor gauge and discovered Ali-depress selling 640x480 endoscopes for $1.99. Wasn't sure it would fly under linux but it appeared to be a UVC cam, had head LED illumination, was IP67 rated, 2M cable.. so was worth a shot. Ended up working fine but the footprint of the camera (head length + cable exit) combined with minimum focus setback wasn't going to fly given the available clearance. I poked around to find documented teardown of a similar unit but that undertaking used a dremel to rip the unit apart for post mortem display here. After taking that in but wanting to non-destructively get the assembly out intact it wasn't clear how best to proceed. One thought was chucking it in a lathe to peel the sleeve away but became impatient and just used a mini tubing cutter set about 6mm up from the aluminum sleeve's rear (not including molded cable gland). That was a lucky guess as this resulted in the cable gland/seal coming with the short cutoff portion of the sleeve:
The flex PCB assembly as predicted was hung up on the internal burr left by the tubing cutter even though I was very careful to take up lightly on the cutter as the blade traveled inward. But the sleeve is soft aluminum so a sharp blade carefully rotated inside the sleeve removed the burr quickly. And out slid the works. Note this pic shows the camera head (bottom left) already separated from the main flex PCB to its right. Didn't think to grab a pic when the head was still attached but it was then rotated 90* clockwise left-to-right and sat indexed onto the upper/lower main flex prongs. (Note: the other writeup at the link above has a picture of this.) In that state a blob of epoxy was holding the head in place on the prongs. That blob looked like it was going to be a major operation to remove without damaging either the head or flex PCB but after a few careful snips with precision dikes it was starting to come off relatively easily and then just pulled away from the stainless base to which the flex PCB was attached. After that the head was rotated parallel with the board as seen above. And most importantly the unit remained functional.
The cable has 6 conductors, 4 for usb/power, a 5th (yellow) for V+ drive to the white leds (about 28ma max). The remaining blue wire leads to a tact switch (function unknown) in a small inline enclosure at the USB A plug end. The enclosure also contains a poorly designed thumb pot LED intensity adjustment feeding the yellow wire from USB +5V.
Finally here is the processing mystery silicon in this particular device. No idea of the exact description but for my purposes it can remain a black box.
The flex PCB assembly as predicted was hung up on the internal burr left by the tubing cutter even though I was very careful to take up lightly on the cutter as the blade traveled inward. But the sleeve is soft aluminum so a sharp blade carefully rotated inside the sleeve removed the burr quickly. And out slid the works. Note this pic shows the camera head (bottom left) already separated from the main flex PCB to its right. Didn't think to grab a pic when the head was still attached but it was then rotated 90* clockwise left-to-right and sat indexed onto the upper/lower main flex prongs. (Note: the other writeup at the link above has a picture of this.) In that state a blob of epoxy was holding the head in place on the prongs. That blob looked like it was going to be a major operation to remove without damaging either the head or flex PCB but after a few careful snips with precision dikes it was starting to come off relatively easily and then just pulled away from the stainless base to which the flex PCB was attached. After that the head was rotated parallel with the board as seen above. And most importantly the unit remained functional.
The cable has 6 conductors, 4 for usb/power, a 5th (yellow) for V+ drive to the white leds (about 28ma max). The remaining blue wire leads to a tact switch (function unknown) in a small inline enclosure at the USB A plug end. The enclosure also contains a poorly designed thumb pot LED intensity adjustment feeding the yellow wire from USB +5V.
Finally here is the processing mystery silicon in this particular device. No idea of the exact description but for my purposes it can remain a black box.
