QV3000

    QV-3000EX digital camera support

We intend to fully support this camera in the next version of QV.EXE. However, this model uses a different serial link command set to that of its predecessors.

The camera uses a SanDisk solid-state Flash Memory Card to store images.
These cards are also used as plug in PC disk drives.

Casio have adapted their existing serial link protocol to support the familiar DOS commands - CD, DIR.

We need to get this documented. We have made approaches to the digital camera product marketing manager for this product at Casio UK. We have already had some assistance from them..

    The problem

Before we can engineer a product we need to know what we're doing with the camera when we're squirting commands at it.
We don't want to inadvertently delete images or erase the camera's firmware!

    In the meantime...

Here's a test utility we wrote that does a useful job of downloading files from the QV-3000 into c:\temp\qv. This will copy .jpg and HTML files from the camera.
THERE ARE NO WARRANTIES, GUARANTEES, OR ANYTHING!
This has been tested on Windows 2000, and Windows 98.
Also the full source code for this test utility is available.
This is to encourage mutual help from other engineers: we used their help with the original protocol documentation in 1997, now its our turn to help! (Please examine camera.cpp!)

    Some technical questions...

What do these commands do? PP, NP, BC, DO

    Help so far...

The Linux based gphoto group at http://www.gphoto.org have provided the initial leads.

Eckhard Henkel has pulled apart the tags in the .jpg images - this is useful! Also documentation of the serial protocol. Check out his DiCaSoft site.

Maurice Delaney has a web page detailing software that will remote control the QV3000EX.

Robert Harrison has a Linux GUI for the QV3000.

The Digital Photography Review Casio Talk Forum is also worth a perusal.