flip
Quick Flip Fix
After a weekend at the Ottawa Pinball and Gameroom Show ’12, I came home to find that one of my Flip HD video cameras had stopped powering on. It functioned without problem when connected to the computer to copy the videos from it, but it would not turn on to record.
Today, I finally decided to open it up and figure out the cause. I suspected perhaps the power switch was bad, since it didn’t seem to be a major system failure. When I opened it up, the problem was as clear as day:
As you can see, something isn’t sitting quite right. One of the diodes became un-soldered, perhaps due to a shock, causing an already cracked solder joint to completely give up.
Simple enough to fix, a quick test with a multimeter, two points of solder, and everything was back to normal.
You never know if a task will be easy or difficult without first taking a look.
Modifying a Flip Video UltraHD to Add Charging Capabilities
The Cisco Flip Video UltraHD is a very basic 720p video recording device. It has a screen, a few buttons, and USB and HDMI ports. Not very much going on. Record, play back, copy to computer. However, these devices were discontinued, so my friend and I bought two to share at $29 a piece. I was very keen on using them together for 3D video.
To prepare for this weekend’s 2nd annual Ottawa Pinball Expo, I was making sure all my camera gear’s batteries were charged. The Flip UltraHD takes 2 AA batteries, which is generally enough to allow you to completely fill the camera’s 1 hour internal memory.
I noticed that there was a rechargeable battery pack you could buy for the Flips. It charges when the camera is plugged in to a USB port. This battery pack is really just two AA NiMH rechargeable batteries wrapped together, with a little tab that pushes on a switch to tell the camera that the pack is installed, and not regular AAs. When I realized this, I figured I could modify the Flips to work with my own AA NiMHs, and charge when connected to my computer.