Tag: children

TTS IT00617 digital camcorder/camera

I purchased these three damaged Camcorder/Cameras for a very low price. Will they be fixable or just good for spare parts. Let’s see…

What the listing stated:

TTS IT00617 Digital Camcorder Camera 

Full HD pocket camcorder that records in 1080P and can take 5 megapixel photos.

2″ TFT colour screen. Charges via in-built flip-up USB plug.  

Cameras appear to be faulty. One has a corrupt screen, the others boot and show the camera feed but give a “card error” no matter what SD card I install. 

EBay

The seller wanted £10:00GBP for these three camcorder/cameras but I was not prepared to pay that, for what potentially could be three pieces of junk, only good for parts. So I cheekily put in a £4:00GBP bid that was accepted straight away, the seller really wanted rid of these, I suspect they are junk, we’ll just have to wait and see.

TTS IT00617 digital camcorders – displaying their faults

From the information I can find that is available online, these units are handed out to children partaking in key skills programs within schools, to use when recording project work they are completing as part of the school’s curriculum. From what information I can gather, it appears these units were introduced around 2014, as that’s when the instruction manual is dated. They may only be around 12 years old but I suspect they have had a very hard life in those few short years. Hence they are very probably knackered, mistreated, and may well be just junk. My expectations for these units are now very low. The company that produces these units – TTS appear to be based in Nottinghamshire, near me in the East Midlands, and specialise in supplying ICT equipment to primary schools. Here is all the information I could find regarding these units.

The TTS IT00617 is a 1080p Full HD digital camcorder and camera specifically designed for educational and outdoor use by TTS Group. It is often marketed for use in primary schools due to its rugged design and simple interface. 

Core Specifications

  • Video Resolution: 1080p Full High Definition.
  • Still Image Quality: 5.0 Megapixel sensor.
  • Display: 2-inch TFT colour screen.
  • Zoom: 4x Digital Zoom.
  • Storage: Uses removable SD cards.
  • Connectivity: Includes HDMI and USB ports for connecting to computers or displays.
  • Power: Powered by a rechargeable Li-ion battery, which is user-replaceable. 

Key Features

  • Rugged Design: Built to be resistant and ideal for outdoor photography and video capture.
  • User-Friendly Interface: Often includes a built-in microphone and a touchscreen for easy navigation.
  • Educational Accessories: Retail packages typically include an installation CD, user manual, and necessary cables.

Google

I have managed to get hold of a user manual electronically, so I will download this and just go through the motions step by step when the units arrive. You never know one or two of them may just spring back into life if treated correctly. I doubt it, but it doesn’t hurt to have a little bit of optimism.

Let’s get an assessment done.

Assessment:

The cameras have arrived. I’ve carried out a very quick inspection and all three are dead to the world, so first things first, let’s try and get some power into them and then we can do a proper assessment. I must admit though, all three cameras are cosmetically in a very good condition.

All three cameras – two charging with red light visible

A switch on the side allows the USB charge port (also a data transfer port) to pop up and you just plug the unit into the socket of your choice, either a hub as I have, or into a port on your chosen computer device. When charging a red light shows on the rear of the camera at the side of the lens. This extinguishes once a full charge has been reached.

Two have reached a stage of full charge, one, the unit with the corrupted screen issue has not, and to check the battery, i have put this into one of the units that charged ok, to check if it is a battery issue or a unit issue.

It’s not a battery issue, in fact the faulty unit is charging its battery, so at least I know the charge circuit is working. It’s working in all units as I have removed all batteries and checked their voltages with the multimeter. The battery rating is 3.7v and they all currently hold a charge between 4.16v and 4.19v and that shows that they are all quite healthy.

Battery charge indication

All testing done, and now with an idea of the issues, let’s move into repair mode.

Repair:

The original posting stated that two of these units had “Card error” faults no matter what SD card was used, and one had a corrupted display screen.

I can definitely confirm that one unit does have a corrupted screen, and this is the same unit that was having the charging issues mentioned above.

Start up
Waiting
Corrupted screen

You will see in the pictures above, that I believe the screen is actually ok, yes the output is corrupted, however the start up screen or the waiting screen show no such display errors. I suspect there is an issue with the actual camera module, so I will have to open this one up to investigate further. The on off button allows you to turn this unit on, however you can’t power off. You have to remove the battery to close the unit down. This is obviously another issue that requires further investigation.

The other two units with the “Card error” fault have each had a 1Gb SD card installed and no such error occurs. Well, to be honest, it actually only happened once, briefly on one unit, when I inserted a fresh card. It then asked me to format, which I did and then it was all normal, that’s all it required. I don’t know what type of card the seller was using, maybe they just did not format the SD cards, but as it stands the stated problem is non existent in these two units.

Two units, no issues working fine

With the two working units I am able to video, and take still photographs, they are working fine, there are no issues and I will display a small video and some pictures below in the result section. Don’t expect quality, it really is quite a basic system. I need to do nothing to these two units now, as they are working fine.

We now need to turn our attention the one failed unit with the corrupted screen, and power on and off issues. I’ve opened the unit up and had to use my microscope on this one as there was nothing obvious on inspection.

Led ribbon cable
I removed the screen ribbon cable
The camera was situated under the circuit board

I detached the ribbon cable and removed the screen, I then repositioned it and again turned it on with the same result. I’m confident the screen is ok, it now looks like it could be an issue on the board.

Using the scope to inspect the board
The on/off button covered in gunk

I’ve now started to inspect the components at a magnified level, as some of these components are honestly a quarter the size of a grain of rice, they really are minuscule. The on/off button appears to be ok, it is covered in a dollop of rubber gunk that they use during production to protect parts of the circuitry, it’s all over this board. Having located the camera, I’ve now started to do some testing on the components surrounding it, and there is a short circuit detected on a small capacitor, and the four or five other capacitors surrounding it. I removed two of these capacitors and the short still remained, and that’s when I noticed the chipset sitting directly above it.

AN SPCA1628A-HL141 integrated circuit

On the screen I was now looking at an SPCA1628A-HL141 integrated circuit. This circuit is heavily used in cameras, digital video devices, and image processing equipment due to its image processing capabilities. And with the amount of failed components around it, I very much suspect this component is carrying the fault, it needs replacement, however as this entire unit has only cost me around £1:30, I don’t believe it’s financially viable to pay around £5:00 for a replacement chip, costing more than the combined three units. It’s just not worth it, and the gain from its repair would not match the outlay, it’s just not worth repairing.

Therefore this unit is going to be dismantled for spare parts, I have a battery, a battery control unit, a camera, an SD card holder, an LED screen and numerous other parts and screws that are far more valuable to me for future use. Very little will be wasted. What is disposed of will be recycled.

So we have one failure but we have two perfectly good working units. Two out of three ain’t bad. (I’m sure that’s a song!) – it is, Meatloaf – I believe, good tune!

Result:

So here’s a few pictures and a couple of small videos taken with the two working units.

Photos taken with the units, one in top left was taken with the phone of the two units
Small video of the two units playing back videos

The overall quality is between atrocious and very poor, but I guess for the purpose of school kids documenting activities it suits just fine. The video is on par with what you would have seen on phones of the Nokia era, maybe early to mid 2000s. The pictures in the right light settings are not too bad, but you do get more bad than good.

What can I use this for? God knows, it would be ok for doing a basic journal with, something to film a rehearsal situation with prior to using the good gear and doing it properly.

To be honest, I’ve a couple of young relations under the age of ten in Devon who might like these just to fool about with when they are out playing. At £1:30 per unit they couldn’t buy a decent pack of sweets for that, and this would cause less dental decay 😂

Anyway, it’s a good fix, more saved from landfill, so in my eyes the job is a good one👍

Thanks for passing by. It’s very much appreciated.

Don’t stop playing

Don’t stop….

What does it mean to be a kid at heart?

Play.

I’m going to answer this as briefly as i can. I heard this quote a few days ago but had never heard it before. It’s from George Bernard Shaw the Irish playwright and critic.

George Bernard Shaw

There is some truth in this, I guess.

But to be honest I just want a cup of tea and a quick nap at the moment. I’ll leave the playing to the youngsters.

Goodnight all 😂👍

When is a dad not a dad?

This could also be titled, “When is a mum not a mum?”

I married my dear wife over 30+ years ago now, and to say she has been the stabiliser of my life would be an understatement, the rudder to my boat, you get the point I’m a lucky guy.

However we knew very early on in our marriage that we would not be having children, and that was difficult at the start. Not as much to me as, to be honest, children weren’t really in my plans at that early stage, but to my wife, she viewed it as if it was her duty to produce a child, she was a woman after all and she dearly wanted a child. And I’d do anything to make her life complete. However this was never going to be a dream come true in our life time as unfortunately and for reasons I won’t discuss here, we were dealt the bum deal as they say. It wasn’t to be. We were to remain childless.

Those first ten years of our marriage were an immense test of our feelings for each other, I’d come home at times and often find her crying for the child she could never have, and yes my heart broke every time, it was a very sad period in our lives. We explored every possibility, in the early days when Kim Cotton was the first in the UK to venture into surrogacy, we followed that closely and were considering the possibility of going down that same route, it was early days and there were lots of pitfalls and heartbreak stood in each corner of the decision making progress. It was fraught with problems and legal issues. We stepped away from this opportunity, reluctantly.

Back in the early 90s the adoption process was not as open as it is nowadays, we just wouldn’t have been considered, it was so selective and as we were quite young and in local government housing at the time, we wouldn’t have even got through the initial application stages, oh how times have changed.

There’s a strange feeling taking your wife to baby shops such as “Mothercare” to chose prams and a decor for the child you would never have, we knew we would never be buying but it was “fun” in a weird sense as we learned a lot about how life would have been if we were dealt a fairer set of cards.

Then the younger members of the family started having children of their own, I thought things would be worse for us as I was worried about my wife’s reaction to all these upcoming births. I needn’t had worried, as this turned out to be the point in our married life where it all changed for the better.

We pretty much became permanent baby sitters, it’s fair to say we probably witnessed more periods of excitement and firsts in their little life’s than their own parents did, it was fantastic, and we could hand the nippers back at the end of the day, even though we did have the occasional overnight stay.

That was definitely the turning point, and my wife changed when this occurred, she was accepting of the fate she had been dealt, but she now had what she wished for, children to look after.

We had brilliant days out with them kids, we did all the stuff you just do and we could now visit those shops to buy gifts for these little visitors that we had been gifted the chance to look after.

We even witnessed teenage angst

To this day those kids, or should I say young adults spend so much time with us, they’ve even joined us on a recent holiday and the relationship we have with them is fantastic. They have grown up to be beautiful souls and it’s nice to think we played a part in their stories. We still ask each other what we think our kids would have been like, and often comment that if they are just like the nieces and nephews we helped bring up, then we couldn’t do much better than that.

The prompt for this post was encouraged by the fact that even though we are the only childless couple in our family, every Mother’s Day and Father’s Day we are showered with cards and gifts, and whilst I question it every year it’s their way of showing their appreciation, and just saying thank you.

I’ve sent them all a WhatsApp message telling them what I have purchased with their gift cards, as I like them to know where it’s been spent. This year I’ve purchased some new tools and a special extraction fan for my soldering, just so I can stay around and appreciate them a little longer. They and their parents changed our life’s for the better.

I should really be thanking them. But they know I’m always here for them. I’m not a dad, but they make me feel so much like a dad. ❤️

Thanks for passing by. Stay blessed and try to be happy.

Chewing gum wrapped heart

What was the most outrageous lie you believed as a child?

I remember one lie that was told to me around the early to mid 70’s by my parents, of all people. And I don’t believe that they were the only ones, as it seems my gang of friends around that time had also been told the same. With no internet on the horizon for at least the next 15 years at the earliest, I can only assume that our parents had some kind of “Parents jungle network” that they used, to actively spread such untruths.

That lie was, “If you swallow chewing gum it gets wrapped around your heart and can kill you”. Blimey. As an easily influenced 6-10 year old this would have been shocking information to receive from our parents who always talk nothing but the truth! Honestly they do!

I guess they didn’t approve of chewing gum.

It worked though, I never swallowed it, and that’s probably why in the late 70s and early 80s there was so much of an issue with discarded chewing gum on British streets during that period.

It was our parents fault 😂

To be honest it probably was not until we started doing biology in our senior school years that we uncovered the fake information our parents had given us, and when questioned about it, there was always the denial, “I didn’t say that, stop your lying.” You’d never win that argument.

Apparently it passes through the digestive tract as per normal as the body can’t digest it. However swallowing large amounts could potentially cause blockages but that would have to be some serious amount of gum.

Could be worse though, this was what one curious five year old was told by his mum. Courtesy of the Guardian newspaper:

According to my mum, when I was younger, you blow a bubble out of your bum. Why that was supposed to deter a curious 5 year old is beyond me.

Gareth, Graham UK

Enough said. Parents of the 70s – you have been rumbled.

I still never swallow it though 😂

Have a super day.

My father, not for obvious reasons

If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?

I’d like to be my father for the day. Not because he was someone who could be admired and loved and cherished, he was none of that. He was a nasty evil man that made my mothers, my younger sisters and my life an absolute misery.

I would like to know what made him tick, what was his reasoning and did he ever consider getting help for the way he was.

I’d kick start that change even if I could’ve been him for a day. He has ruined my life and still haunts me in nightmares to this day. Never was I more pleased when someone passed away, it’s a horrible thing to say but my life began in earnest that day. However my faith and beliefs tell me we will meet again one day and that is what bothers me now, I’m not prepared for that..

His evil ways, I carry as a burden everyday.

As a child it is not right that you have to be protecting your mother from abuse and a little girl for being downright petrified of her own father. As for what I endured it goes to the grave with me.

I’ve always said to my wife I want to be a better man and be nothing like him. I’ve managed that well, I have never raised a hand to woman in my life and will never do so. My mother was a punchbag and far too many times it was me that absorbed those punches as I tried to protect her.

I have moods occasionally and I put them down to being like him, and I dislike it when someone says I look like my father, there is no one I’d rather be.

It’s a curse to be honest, and here I am just a few small years away from retirement still paying the price, and very much afraid.

It’s not fair. Domestic abuse is not acceptable, it affects lives for longer than you can imagine, it’s probably going to be with me way into the afterlife. It’s a life and death sentence. And he is the winner. It’s wrong.

Peace to you all.

Our total love and devotion

If you could make your pet understand one thing, what would it be?

As I’m sure, anyone at all that pays any attention to what is written in these posts, will know we lost our best friend Alf, our beloved pet dog on 16th August last year. There’s probably a lot of you out there who are probably saying,“ For gods sake man just get on with it”.

Easier said than done I’m afraid. If you read the facts and figures, animal grief is just so real, especially in an animal loving country such as ours.

I’ve never really experienced it in such a manner before, but this time we’ve really struggled. I think I summed it up at its peak here: Is there a cure for a broken heart 💔 . There are a number of other posts about him but this one sums up the raw feelings when we lost him.

We’ve never been able to have children in our life, it’s complicated. Especially when you spend your life with the most wonderful woman who would have made the most fantastic mother, it really is heartbreaking to see her interactions with children and the love she shows them. Then in the quiet moments I really see how it affects her. All I can do is comfort her.

Alf – our little fellah

This is where Alf strolls in. He was to us, what was always out of reach, a kind of surrogate if you like. It was fate how we found him and he had the starring role in our lives for eleven beautiful years.

To answer the question: If I could make my pet understand one thing? It would be:

You were our love, our confidante our life. Our most precious companion. And we miss you so much.

Yes it’s more than one thing I know. But when a kindly loving soul enters your life and has such an effect on it, you just can’t label them with one singular credit, one word, It just can’t be done.

Life is a strange voyage. Sometimes when you can’t have something, you are blessed with the most perfect alternative. I believe we were blessed. His time came and he had to move on. I just hope some where, another couple who have maybe suffered similar issues as we did, are now experiencing some wonderful “Alfie” time. That little fellah truly had wings.

Love you for always lad.

Peace.

Alfie’s ready to come home…

That was the call we’ve just had from the vets. A lovely and quite melancholy call to be honest, just as if he’s had a minor procedure and he has awoken and is now ready to come home.

Reality is a little more stark. We are now heading down to collect our little fellah after he has been cremated.

Our beautiful lad has come home

We didn’t know what to expect to be honest, do we take a bag? Is he in a polythene bag? My wife was upset as she’d taken the call as I had been on nights and was in bed. I had this overwhelming feeling yesterday that he’d be coming home today, so in a way when I awoke I wasn’t surprised, strange isn’t it?

We needn’t have fretted, it was all so professional. He’s in a lovely woodland scene tube, we didn’t want a sealed casket as we wanted his ashes to go with ours in the end, please don’t judge us, it’s what we want and you will never understand just what this little character meant to us.

Paw print
Lock of hair
A beautiful paw print photo frame

We also have a certificate of individual cremation, with lovely words, we have a lovely little picture frame memento with his paw print, we now have to pick a picture from the thousands we have of him, no easy task and I suspect we will have words about this. The vets have taken a cutting of his fur and put it in a small phial, lovely touch. We have two beautiful cards with his paw print on, and I will be using one of these to get a permanent tattoo on my arm with his pet name as he was known to many in the family- “Alfie Moon”.

The feeling in the house at the moment is nice, all the doubt we had has now gone, and we are so happy with the professional service we have experienced.

We can now move on to the healing stage, as he is now home. It’s so weird that the immense feeling of grief has lifted and a modicum of calmness and happiness has returned, it needed to as it had been missing for some time now.

Our lad is home, where he deserves to be. And he will be with us forever more.

Welcome home son ❤️