Hacking the Nikon WU-1a....

[joefitz]

Hey guys,
I've had a little side project I've been working on and tied a bunch of it together in time for presenting it at a conference this afternoon.

I did a bit of reversing of the WU-1a and the WMAU app, and managed to get it working with my D800. I've also got some remote control pieces working over wifi with libgphoto in linux and in a little python utility i wrote.

I'll drop the links now and will do my best to share all the code and circuits in the next few days (perhaps on the nikonhacker wiki).

my slides (though they don't stand well on their own): http://goo.gl/5530H

video of my D800 working from the nikon android app: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tm7l25xjUes

technical info: wiki/WU-1a

-joe
http://joefitz.com/Nikon_Hacking.html

[recliq]

Very interesting project!
I'm hoping you guys can get this working with eg. D5100 someday...
because right now the D5100 doesn't support any WiFi dongle as far as I know and I'm not a big fan of Eye-Fi cards.

[Vicne]

[d5100_user]

[joefitz]

Hey guys,
I had a moment to post more technical details. Still have a bunch more coming. I've got a busy week ahead, but will be on vacation the week of thanksgiving, should have it all up then.

wiki/WU-1a

-joe

[max]

Great work Joe! I'm looking forward to trying this on my D90.

[gittela]

I added some pictures to the Wiki page. Took them with my cheap but surprisingly functional usb microscope.
As this hack progresses I figure we can add some annotations to the pictures.


Howard

[markusk]

is this an antenna-plug on the top left?
wiki/File:Board1front.jpg

as this seems to be a rather dumb adapter - can we assume it might work with pretty any ptp-capable nikon dslr?

markus.

[thefool]

Fascinated by Joes work, I ordered a WU-1b, to hack.
I got it yesterday, and immediatly cracked it open.
It's practically identical (will try to get some good photos) inside, except for the plug, which is now a standard mini-usb plug.

I used the WMUA app for the iphone in my testing.

I can confirm that the WU-1b also works with the D800, with the same modifications joe described.
basically I only had to supply power (5V) to pin 1 to both the camera and the WU-1b, as well as 3V on pin 4 of the WU-1b.
Unfortunately I did not get it to work reliably with my D300.
At some point I did get some kind of connection, but most the times, the WU-1b only blinks red.
Will try with more cameras soon.

By the way: when you have live-view, you can focus the camera at any focus point by simply tapping on the part of the liveview image you want to focus on!

thefool

[frank3]

Incredible work Joe! I noticed in your slides and in the discussion that Nikon prototyped this on the D7000 and a module is included in the firmware. What do you think is preventing it from working out of the box for a D7000 or is power supply and white listing still an issue?