Peeking inside a $15 Camera
December 24, 2023Revised July 24, 2025
Click an image to display full-scale
Dollar stores are full of dubious quality electronics at stupidly low prices. This one caught my eye - it looks like a very cheaply assembled camera, almost a toy (which is partly true, you'll see how later). I knew that these kinds of off-brand Chinese gadgets have one weird quality: It's fairly easy to repair or repurpose them.
The user experience is equivalent to the picture quality you get from this thing. It's terrible. Configuring anything requires a liberal amount of fumbling which is exacerbated by those uncomfortable push buttons. On the other hand, it only cost $15.
(The screw holes are hidden under a plastic covering, which I totally destroyed)
The camera comes with a 256MB microSD card, which is useless for recording video. Every clip is 1-2 gigabytes large because the firmware writes many empty bytes. And worse, it starts recording as soon as you turn the camera on.
Here are the pictures it takes: (click a photo to display it full-scale)
It captures in 4:3 and stretches to 16:9 for no good reason. Here's the same image, squished back to 4:3.
Rolling shutter.
The photos are written with EXIF data. I used mdls to parse the following:
AcquisitionMake = "HX-Tech "
AcquisitionModel = "HD"
BitsPerSample = 32
ColorSpace = "RGB"
Creator = "HX330X-V001.001"
DisplayName = "IMG00002.jpg"
EXIFVersion = "2.2"
ExposureMode = 0
ExposureProgram = 2
ExposureTimeSeconds = 0.01007049345417925
FlashOnOff = 0
FNumber = 3.2
FocalLength = 7.454545454545454
FocalLength35mm = 0
InterestingDate_Ranking = 2023-12-13 00:00:00 +0000
ISOSpeed = 100
LogicalSize = 427720
MeteringMode = 4
Orientation = 0
PhysicalSize = 458752
PixelCount = 5760000
PixelHeight = 1800
PixelWidth = 3200
ProfileName = "sRGB IEC61966-2.1"
RedEyeOnOff = 0
ResolutionHeightDPI = 72
ResolutionWidthDPI = 72
WhiteBalance = 0
AcquisitionModel = "HD"
BitsPerSample = 32
ColorSpace = "RGB"
Creator = "HX330X-V001.001"
DisplayName = "IMG00002.jpg"
EXIFVersion = "2.2"
ExposureMode = 0
ExposureProgram = 2
ExposureTimeSeconds = 0.01007049345417925
FlashOnOff = 0
FNumber = 3.2
FocalLength = 7.454545454545454
FocalLength35mm = 0
InterestingDate_Ranking = 2023-12-13 00:00:00 +0000
ISOSpeed = 100
LogicalSize = 427720
MeteringMode = 4
Orientation = 0
PhysicalSize = 458752
PixelCount = 5760000
PixelHeight = 1800
PixelWidth = 3200
ProfileName = "sRGB IEC61966-2.1"
RedEyeOnOff = 0
ResolutionHeightDPI = 72
ResolutionWidthDPI = 72
WhiteBalance = 0
Looks like the ISO, focus, exposure compensation, and such are fixed.
One of the first things I did with this camera is to take it apart.
Everything's held together with sticky foam pads.
The camera's version text is written on the PCB. It reads "HX02-K600C V1.0" and "230523" (date code?).
We're probably most interested in the SoC and EEPROM. Here's a picture of the unidentified SoC, which reads "HX3302B AH176YDM".
This SoC is used in other cheap toy cameras. It's designed around a little-endian version of the OpenRisc1000 instruction set architecture. Click here for more information
Here's the flash EEPROM. It contains the firmware. 16 megabytes large, with an SPI interface. If you had an SPI programmer you could dump the firmware and write a new one.
The chip reads "MK 25D80BTIG 2319D8". Click here to read the datasheet for this EEPROM
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