Hacking the Nikon WU-1a....

[jvnega]

[JonHob]

I know it's a daft question but do you think this could work with the D3S?

[joefitz]

Hey everyone, sorry for being asleep at the wheel for the past few weeks, i have been busy wrapping up 8 years of work and taking some much-needed vacation, and I guess i wasn't subscribed to the post.

Thanks gittela for the photos, and thanks thefool for testing out the 1b and other cameras.

To answer a few questions:
-yes, it's a pretty dumb adapter. I haven't tried glitching it to bypass the firmware protection to dump and reverse it, but it appears to only work with nikon SLR cameras in PTP mode. When i get around to soldering up my facedancer i'll see what i can find out about whether it actually has a whitelist/blacklist or not.
-I'm almost certain the limitation for the D7000 and others is the ability to output 3v and 5v on the usb port. My guess is that there's hardware limitations preventing that and they used some sort of intermediate power supply for all their development and testing. Perhaps though they had a custom firmware or a debug/modified D7000, but who knows.
-thefool and a few others are working on better interface hardware; i haven't yet been in touch with anyone about making a better app. Anyone know anyone? It should be easier to port a USB-PTP app to WIFI-PTP/IP than to build one from scratch. I've been enjoying DslrDashboard for android and might contact the author. I don't have/use any apple hardware.
-I haven't encountered anything yet to indicate that this won't work for anything as far back as D2x or so, which was the first to support PTP. I'd bet the reliablity is probably much lower the older you get though.

I hesitate to make promises cause i know how bad i am at following through, but i do really totally intend to, in the next week:
-post python scripts to test and control liveview
-post a legible schematic for my board
-answer all the nikon-related email i've received recently.

[plroberto]

[emsi]

I believe you need 5v to camera to activate the USB device part (host is about to supply +5v to the device and the camera is a usb device) so it sounds safe to me.
The Y cable sounds like a viable idea to me.

[thefool]

@roberto: I have tested with the D7000, it works very well!
I also believe what emsi wrote - the 5V is needed for the camera to know that it needs to listen for PTP commands via the usb port. but I have not tested this on the D7000. I just did a test on the D300 though, I used an application that communicates with the camera via PTP (very similar to what the WU-1a/b is doing), and used a usb cable where i cut the 5v wire. Nothing happened. neither the camera, nor the application knew that a cable was connected...

There is no risk involved in "pushing 5V directly into the camera" - you do that every time you connect a USB cable to the camera! I did my tests with a usb cable, and got my 5v from a usb port on my macbook air. So there's really no difference to normal usb usage...

BTW - I've come up with a really nice idea for the hardware, but have to do some more tests before I'll be able to show it!

thefool

[emsi]

...and the 3V seems to be to activate the host on the WU-1a (aka OTG).

[emsi]

Today I found a time to finalize soldering for my WU-1b.
I booted it up properly, the WIFI part is working (slow green blink, ready to connect). I was able to connect to the WiFi.
Unfortunately when plugged to Nikon D70S as well as D200 the red fast blink starts (connection error according to manual). I tried different connection sequences but with no luck.
It seems the firmware does not like to talk to my camera for whatever reason (either it checks product ID or something else is going on).

Any ideas how to dig it up?

[thefool]

@emsi
If I recall correctly, I could also not get it to work with my D200. I can't check right now as I lent it to a friend...
Make sure you set the camera to USB mode PTP or MTP and not MSC (Mass Storage).
http://support.nikonusa.com/app/answers ... al-cameras.
Maybe the WU-1a/b require the MTP protocol, but the D200 (and D100 -> and therefore probably also the D70(s)) only support PTP, which causes the problem?

[emsi]

thefool: thx but D200 is definitely a PTP camera. PTP is the only mode I use on my cameras since I developer the Linux PTP driver back in early 2000's

Seem like the WU-1b is somehow refusing to talk to my camera. The only option is to snoop the USB communication and identify the cause or even better reverse its firmware and "fix" this little imperfection.