The CVS “One-Time-Use” video camcorder is a new product that you can use to shoot 20 minutes of video and take it to the store to be burned to a DVD. There is only one problem with this: You don’t get the camera back. I’m not one to be wasteful, so I decided to figure out how to get the videos off the camera (no store required).

Let's start by opening the camera. Located around the screen, you will find four screw holes hidden under the sticker. Remove the screws along with the sticker on the top of the camera and the battery door. Then remove the main circuit board and be cautious not to bend the pins when removing the power connector.

Looking down on the board you will notice a connector plate running along the top of the camera. You can find all the pins for USB right there and a large surface to solder to. Solder your wires running toward the inside of the camera in order not to have any wires running outside the case down the road.

I found a space towards the top left corner of the camera that a standard USB connector can fit. Then I harvested a USB connector from one of my old USB hubs I had laying around but you can order them online. After sizing it up, take your rotary tool and remove the screw post and cut out a hole to place the connector. 

Next, solder the USB connector to the pins on the camera and mount the connector with a hot glue gun. Notice that I have run the wires to clearly show what pins went to which pins on the connector. You can use this for reference on your own project.

Finally reassemble the whole camera and get ready for the software setup.

You will need three pieces of software to setup the camera. The first two are libusb-win32-filter and libusb-win32-device that we will modify to work with the camera. I suggest working with version 0.1.8.0.

The third is Ops. This is used to unlock the camera and download the videos to your PC. I recommend version 0.4.

Now you can plug your camera into your PC. Notice that it appears as “Saturn” when you first connect it. Ignore the request to install drivers at this point because we haven’t made them yet. Now install libusb-win32-filter and when you finish the install run the test program. What we are looking for is the VID and PID of the camera. On our camera we found the VID was 167B and the PID was 0101

Extract libusb-win32-device and open libusb.inf with notepad to edit it.

Look for the section labeled:

;------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; Dakota PV2
;------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just below that you can edit what you want your camera called and add in the VID and PID information for your camera.

"Ritz PV2 Red hacked, Version 02/15/2004, 0.1.8.0"=LIBUSB_COMP_IF, USB\VID_0DCA&PID_0024
"Ritz PV2 Red, Version 02/15/2004, 0.1.8.0"=LIBUSB_COMP_IF, USB\VID_0DCA&PID_0027
"Ritz PV2 Blue, Version 02/15/2004, 0.1.8.0"=LIBUSB_COMP_IF, USB\VID_0DCA&PID_0028
"AOTS Camera hack, Version 03.40, 0.1.8.0"=LIBUSB_COMP_IF, USB\VID_167b&PID_0101

Now you have the driver ready for your camera and your can start downloading your movies.

Open OPS then select OPEN CAMERA and then UNLOCK. If you have problems either unlocking or opening the camera, power it down and restart OPS and try again.

You can also upload video to it and play it back. The camera has one major flaw in that it will only play the last video clip on it, so you should name the video you want to playback “PICT00**.AVI” (** should be replaced with the highest number in the folder.) Then restart the camera and you're ready to hit the road.

Want more ideas or help? Check out the forums at CameraHacking.com.