HP Photosmart M307
I have the HP Photosmart M307 camera with me, unfortunately there is a problem.
I can not get it to work. For this, I will put much info here as I can. (I even have the drivers for the camera)
When I opened the battery compartment, the batteries... well... they've made a mess.
So I cleaned it out and with a alcohol cotton swab, I cleaned everything off.
I put new batteries and tried to turn it on, nothing worked,
Next I tried to plug the USB to my computer (using the USB port on the camera),
waited an hour or two. Nothing worked (again). There was a 3.3V port there,
but I had a 5VDC connector which is not the right voltage, and I did not wanna damage the camera.
So. I have nothing to try anymore, so. Can anyone help me out with this?
(Plus I do not want to throw away this camera.)
My main goal is to get this camera to working state.
Comments
I also got the old SD Card out of the camera.
Alkaline? Make sure battery terminals are completely free of oxidization. Also, look at the door holding the batteries. Point and shoots often contain a small mechanism in the door to make sure you can't close the latch or blocks current when the batteries are inserted wrong. The circuitry inside may have been damaged by the acid.
Acid may also have seeped into the camera itself and wrecked havock on its innards. Not to mention those HP point and shoots are sketchy enough already.
Point and shoots are not the easiest to dissasemble and repair. It may be beyond saving.
I could offer to fix it, but I don't think you'll favor shipping to Germany and I make no guarantees. Cost < what it's worth.
That sucks, the acid thing may be the case and it isn't easy to take this camera apart anyway.
Welp. I can't do anything. And it is really sad because this camera is from 2004, it was last used in something like 2012. After that the camera was put somewhere and forgotten for 6-7 years (with the batteries inside).
Moral of the story is: don't keep the batteries (mainly alkaline) inside of electronics if you are done using them and forget about them.
But hey, that SD Card could come in handy one day if the files are compressed down to fit the 256 MB that the card can carry.
Hence why all my electronics use either rechargeables or disposable lithiums.
Lithiums lose far less charge idling than alkalines. And they don't leak if you forget about them.
The slight price increase is more than worth it.
But some of the lithium family are meant to burn when they get deep discharged. After two-three years in a drawer every li-cell is empty by self-discharging.
I already had a iphone 4 getting a big belly in my pocket.
Yeah that's why I mentioned the disposables. Those energizer disposables keep quite well.
Lions are poor at long-term energy storage. The higher the capacity per volume, and they get worse.
For fun, if anyone has a HP Photosmart M307, please do video test clip and post it here as a link to download. I never took a video with this camera and want to know what videos look like recorded from this camera.
Correction, not an SD Card, a MMC card.
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I noticed there was some shit in the positive terminal,
after cleaning the shit, I turned it on AND IT WORKED!!!
IM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Ok, camera is working, gonna install the drivers for this thing.
So a new problem has arrived... It relys on only the AA batteries, I thought it could charge via USB but apparently not. I will now need a working powerbank to fully charge these AA batteries or just buy new fully charged AA battieres. :(
Bought myself some good ol' Duracell batteries and these off-brand batteries are shit.
Got yet another problem here... the dumb camera spits back "CARD LOCKED" whenever I try to load the 256mb mmc card. And there is no lock switch on the card, nor is it locked at all. I can write perfectly to the card. I need to know how to format on the camera, which button should I hold while turning on the camera to format it? Also got to read the service screen and found that the firmware is "v1.00_N v3.7", gonna update the firmware.
Also found out that it drains batteries fast (or so I think). After I bought the batteries and inserted them in, it said battery depleted after 2-3 minutes. I guess I will do need a working powerbank so I don't spend alot of money on this camera.
If your camera is draining batteries after 2-3 minutes, there's something seriously wrong with either the camera or the batteries.
Technically you are supposed to use "high energy" AA batteries, but what is available on typical store shelves these days has gone downhill the last few years. Regular batteries, as you discovered can not keep up with that level of drain, and the camera thinks they are dead within minutes.
Get yourself some Duracell AA 2500mAH NiMH rechargeable batteries and a charger. This is exactly what they were designed for, and will run almost all day depending on how you use it. You will save a ton of money in the long run. (BTW, they used to be labeled 2450mAH but they are the same thing). MicroCenter, carries them.
Never get those "Industrial" and "Heavy Duty" batteries. They are really misleading and go flat in seconds in things other than a tv remote or a fire alarm.
Either the disposable lithiums from energizer or as SomeGuy suggested, rechargeables.
Last time I went to the USA, I went to this battery store "Batteries plus" or something and picked up a pack of these. A full charge lasts me between 6 and 8 36exp rolls in my f90x. Lithium ultimates from energizer last almost the same(cost the same, but not rechargeable), and duracell quantums or something and pretty much any other allakaline pushed 3 rolls.
Make sure you reasearch a good charger nimh though.
It's either the camera because of being shoved in a shelf to be forgotten for almost a decade or...
I think Alkaline or whatever batteries are becoming obselete because they are being replaced by wall plug sockets to charge the tech or Lithium batteries that are manufactured in the tech. But that is just my opinion.
Back to the camera...
So I bought me some 4 AA batteries (2 more for just in case it dies when I'm middle of something and cannot be recharged too...), pretty dumb if you ask me but then, I am not gonna be using this everyday, just to get pictures and videos out of it. Also found this camera only uses Standard Capacity SD Cards (meaning only under 2gb, and not SDHC, SDXC or etc...), which isn't something to blame because cameras back then only used these for recording because SDHC or SDXC cards were pretty expensive and even if you got one, if you lose it or it doesnt work, it would be a nightmare. Anyway I will get the SD Card and the batteries ready so I can record on it. Also if you are asking about the 256mb mmc card... Well the camera said it was "CARD LOCKED" so it was just a waste. So I am gonna get a different one. I will post here when I got it.
Once you get a new card, try it out with a computer first. If the computer writes to it fine but the camera still doesn’t work with the card, then the camera’s SD reader may be broken.
I think if I put it in the computer, the computer might do some shit that makes the camera unable to access the card. Or is that just me. But I will try to write via the computer and if it does fine, then I have to pray to the gods the fucking camera recognizes it and not the same thing just like the last time.
Make sure it's fat32 and supported by the camera. The camera from there will create the database information and required dcf data.
Look inside the sd card slot. There is a little finicky sensor that checks the lock switch position of the card. Make sure that sensor is not jammed/stuck.
Good thing I ticked all of the boxes.
I found a microSD card that is 2gb and a microSD adapter for it, gonna format it and try it.
Don't know what I was expecting, but didn't work. It said "MEMORY FULL" despite the card being fully formatted and empty so that probably meant that the camera didn't recognize it. Welp, gonna have to buy a full-size Standard SD Card.
I decided to peek at your camera's manual. The position of the sd slot is danger close to the batteries. Damage could have been done by corrosion.
Check and see if that camera has a built in format/erase option. You might need to use that first. What file system does it have on it? It is possible it requires a FAT16 partition (2GB max size).
If the card was formatted in a way the camera doesn't like, it would say unformmatted or has wrong format. Page 110-111
http://www.arxvaldex.com/pb/files/manuals/HP_Photosmart_M305.pdf
It's not reading it correctly. I've had this problem with faulty connections on a pc. Sometimes it says unformatted, yields incorrect size values, full, or not valid when it can't make full contact. Yet it won't display a directory or let me open up files if it makes contact. Check the slot with a flashlight.
The MMC Card however did not have any corrosion when I retrieved it so it is fine.
I would've probably done this but I do not wanna start it up now considering I am only gonna use specifically for taking pictures and videos, If I did, I would've required more than just AA batteries.
Also, being that this camera is from August of 2004 and there is few documentations of it on the internet, it is gonna be hard to find a website that gives full information about it. But my guess is that it is FAT32. Probably most cameras of that time used FAT32 storage anyway.
Checked and it is all good. Thank god. Hopefully will get the SD Card.
Did a quick google search and found that the internal memory is 16 MB. Which is pretty low, so I will definitely be needing an SD Card. Because taking pictures and videos via the internal memory and dragging them to the computer is gonna take longer time.
I decided to take a look at the camera's memory anyway and found that all the pictures in there was in the maximum resolution and it was just compressed down to 1mb. (Oh and they were from 2006.), I tried to get them out of the camera into the computer, wasted a lot of battery. Then I tried to take a picture with it and it said battery depleted.
So here is yet another new problem discovered, after it said battery depleted. I just simply replaced the batteries with the new one and it still said battery depleted, I don't know what the fuck is in the camera. Either it is bugging like shit or it thinks the batteries are depleted and needs to recharge.