[HN Gopher] Samsung WB850F Firmware Reverse Engineering
___________________________________________________________________
Samsung WB850F Firmware Reverse Engineering
Author : ge0rg
Score : 198 points
Date : 2024-05-24 15:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (op-co.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (op-co.de)
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| All I want is a dSLR that, when I take a picture on the camera
| with its button, moments later, the image is in Apple Photos.
| jsheard wrote:
| There used to be SD cards with built-in WiFi which could sync
| photos automatically, but the main player in that space (Eye-
| Fi) went out of business and I don't think anyone else has
| stepped up to make a version of that which works with modern
| cloud services. Not enough demand now that smartphones have
| obliterated the consumer camera market, I guess.
|
| Project idea: figure out a way to cram an ESP32 into an SD
| card.
| bitwrangler wrote:
| I used Eye-Fi for several years and enjoyed it. There was
| some opensource software to use it on a private LAN.
|
| Searching 'wifi sdcard' and I found several vendors still
| making those cards, but I haven't used any of the newer ones.
| Palomides wrote:
| all of the high end cameras have integrated wifi now
| jsheard wrote:
| It didn't even occur to me to check that but duh of course
| they do, everything has integrated WiFi nowadays. Does the
| software actually work well or is it a jankfest?
| tw04 wrote:
| https://www.dpreview.com/news/4518014471/capture-one-
| adds-wi...
|
| Seems like it works well (I don't have any gear new
| enough to test myself).
|
| Supported cameras here:
| https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/36000271811...
| mardifoufs wrote:
| It's a complete jankfest on my Fuji camera. The app is
| super weird, the cam works more like an access point (if
| you want any degree of reliability), and so many other
| weird problems. Maybe a firmware update fixed that but
| the app is still beyond bad.
| Nereuxofficial wrote:
| There are two apps from Fuji and i heard the newer one
| works better but the older one does not work for
| transferring pictures 70% of the time and unfortunately
| my camera is not supported in the new "Fujifilm X App"
| carleton wrote:
| Xapp works as well as I believe Apple lets them on iOS.
| You need to connect via the app, tap an iOS "Join WiFi"
| dialog, then 30-70% through the transfer it will stop and
| you need to tap again "This WiFi doesn't have Internet,
| disconnect or continue?" and then it succeeds most of the
| time.
|
| Don't even get me started on Fujifilm refusing to support
| Geotagging unless the iOS app is in the foreground
| though. That is entirely Fuji's fault and their design
| choice because apparently users complained that "it was
| tracking my location when the app is closed" uh duh
| that's how geotagging works, turn off location if you
| don't use it.
| radicality wrote:
| I have both the XT4 and the XH2. I'm still surprised that
| in 2024 these big cameras don't have a built-in something
| that does gps and sets the time correctly. The current
| time is floating in the air in radio waves. And gps units
| are small and with many low power options. Super annoying
| when you're traveling around across timezones and
| suddenly all your photos are in the wrong time zone if
| you didn't update it. Or if there is daylight savings
| update... And for gps, even a ballpark 1km gps range
| would be better than nothing.
| atkbrah wrote:
| The new app (XApp) is an improvement to the original one
| which worked maybe 15% of the time. Having to join your
| phone to the camera wifi is still a requirement
| gsliepen wrote:
| Olympus OM-D E-M1: jank. It can only do a private ESSID
| created by the camera itself. There is an Android app
| from Olympus which works well enough if you just want to
| manually remote control the camera. Some people have
| found out parts of the protocol and have written open
| source tools to download images from the camera.
| Apparently that goes via HTTP, not HTTPS, so you have to
| place all your trust in the security of WPA.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Sony's is a fuckfest, and so is pretty much everyone
| because Android sucks as well.
|
| The main problem is Bluetooth is dog slow, so they use
| temporary Wifi networks which have to be manually
| confirmed _twice_ (once in the app, once in the Android
| UI)... and the wifi obviously doesn 't have internet, so
| after a short time Android nags you to disconnect because
| the wifi it's connected to doesn't have internet.
| ge0rg wrote:
| This is all true, but the camera vendors are adding
| insult to injury with their ugly half broken apps that
| mostly don't work on top of that.
| xp84 wrote:
| Hot take: All these are terrible, but not because the
| camera makers suck, but because there's no non-sucky way
| to do the thing we all would want:
|
| What we want: Snap picture, picture is sent over high-
| bandwidth link to phone
|
| Analysis: Can't be Bluetooth, also it's foolish to assume
| most pics are in wifi range of an access point, so it
| needs to be Wi-Fi Direct, like AirDrop is: Able to be
| performed with or without the parties being ON a network.
| The parties just p2p transfer the file.
|
| More analysis: What would this take? 1. The blessings of
| the platform owners, at minimum Apple and other handset
| makers, probably Google too. The platform owners would
| need to provide:
|
| 1. Ability to make ad-hoc wi-fi direct connections with
| your other devices. APIs etc 2. Ability to either have
| your app running in the background, or be automatically
| silently launched in the background, to receive the image
| and add it to Photos.
|
| No such abilities exist. All the cheesy hotspot things
| that they're doing is literally the only way to achieve
| such a goal without the cooperation of gatekeepers like
| Apple.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The (for me) most interesting thing is: why the fuck has
| no one managed to reverse engineer AirDrop and AirPlay
| yet, in a way that's mass market compatible?
|
| Like, there is OpenDrop but that is dead since five years
| [1], it was a code dump by some researchers, and there
| are no client implementations to interact with Apple
| servers for getting keys, or with registering Find My
| devices...
|
| [1] https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop
| quenix wrote:
| It might be illegal / legally risky for a big company to
| RE and implement airdrop.
| Palomides wrote:
| the fact that there is no trivial way to transfer files
| between any two devices in the same room is one of the
| most pathetic failures of the tech industry
|
| 2024 and people still email themselves files
| coderatlarge wrote:
| Isn't it a success though? :)
| ge0rg wrote:
| I agree with all of that, and that's an elaboration what
| the parent post said, but I still stand by my statement:
| the camera vendor apps are shitty because of that too,
| but they are also shitty because they are badly designed
| and coded.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| The logical conclusion is to just give the camera 5g for
| the world's most bulky camera phone.
| ge0rg wrote:
| Samsung actually created such a monster. After a few zoom
| cameras running Android, they finally created the Samsung
| Galaxy NX, which was a mirrorless camera with a 20MP
| APS-C sensor and Android 4.2 (it was only slightly
| outdated on release in 2013). It's a mediocre camera
| (lacking most physical controls) and a mediocre android
| device (way too bulky and the fixed touchscreen isn't
| easy to use).
| seszett wrote:
| I don't find it that bad. On my Sony camera, you can
| click the "transfer" button on the camera and then put
| the camera in NFC range of your phone. Then the Sony app
| starts, shows you a dialog to choose the resolution you
| want to download (useless IMO, I just want the original
| resolution of course) and then the two devices just
| transfer it through WiFi direct without any problem.
|
| That's my experience, I'm sure it doesn't work well for
| everyone and it's still too cumbersome to do it all the
| time. I only use that feature when I really want to send
| to someone a photo I just took.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Yeah I have a Sony as well, and the amount of clicking is
| pretty darn annoying for my use case - I document far-
| right rallies on Twitter, which means I gotta be fast in
| transferring pictures from my camera to my phone.
|
| Ideally, I'd have the camera be constantly connected to
| my phone's hotspot so I can immediately browse the photos
| and upload them - partially because selecting photos on
| the camera to be transferred is a pain, and partially
| because while Sony _does_ allow connecting to an AP and
| transfer from a laptop, it is an exclusively foreground
| application, meaning the transfer interrupts when I have
| to spontaneously make a new photo / video.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Leica FOTOS app is excellent (and also transfers tethered
| for even faster speeds), but it's also the most expensive
| ecosystem to be in.
| ofcrpls wrote:
| As someone on the Q Typ116 that this app doesn't support,
| it's the primary reason I don't use the camera as much as
| I would like.
| 20after4 wrote:
| I managed to get my canon R6 to upload to an FTP server.
| Using their smartphone app was a nightmare because it
| constantly disconnects and it requires the phone to use
| the camera as a hotspot (and thus disconnect from any
| other wifi network for the duration of the connection.)
| Worst of all, the thing is so slow as to be nearly
| unusable.
|
| The UX for uploading to FTP isn't great but it's
| relatively more tolerable.
| nucleardog wrote:
| I was still able to pick up some Toshiba FlashAir cards
| relatively cheaply. No idea what the deal was, but some
| seller in India had hundreds of them for sale really cheap.
|
| I have no idea what the original FlashAir software looks
| like. Never even occurred to me to try it--just assumed it
| would be a nightmare.
|
| But it works fine in my old Nikon with PhotoSync on iOS!
| ChickeNES wrote:
| Someone already did:
| https://www.aliexpress.us/item/4001119021440.html
| 3abiton wrote:
| It returns 404
| rasz wrote:
| https://www.aliexpress.com/i/2255800932706688.html Its
| not a programmable SD card sadly, just an SD Wifi card
| for some old PDAs.
| yorick wrote:
| This should be possible, it already exists for Google Photos:
| https://www.stg-uploader.xyz/
| ge0rg wrote:
| The Samsung NX1 and NX500 running Linux can be pretty easily
| scripted to upload JPEGs or RAWs to any online service, given
| that you have a Wi-Fi network with you. Unfortunately they are
| a decade old and rare on the second hand market.
| m463 wrote:
| I think canon DSLRs with wifi can ftp.
|
| They can also connect to phones/tablets/websites but you need
| apps/services.
|
| ftp direct from camera:
|
| https://gdlp01.c-wss.com/gds/5/0300024975/01/eos5d-mk4-wff-i...
|
| page 113
|
| link is: EOS 5D Mark IV (WG) Wi-Fi (Wireless Communication)
| Function Instruction Manual
| m463 wrote:
| to be clear, that was not a random link, it was the link on
| the canon website
| tomatocracy wrote:
| Yep. This is what I do with my r5. Connect to Wi-Fi network,
| configured to auto upload to ftp. Unfortunately no sftp
| support (but it will do ftps). It's ok, but can sometimes be
| a bit unreliable.
|
| What's more annoying is that automatically adding geolocation
| data for photos requires a Bluetooth link to a phone via
| their app which seems pretty unreliable and sometimes messes
| up the ftp uploads. Older canon dslrs had built in GPS.
| ents wrote:
| Doable with USB-C to USB-C cable from Camera into iPhone into
| Capture One app
| cjk2 wrote:
| Nikon Z series with Snapbridge are as good as you get on that
| front. They peer with WiFi or Bluetooth. You can actually
| remote control and view the camera with your iPad if you want!
| Brosper wrote:
| Amazing work! Have you thought about doing a tutorial on how to
| do reverse engineering?
| ge0rg wrote:
| I hoped that this article provides enough information serve as
| a tutorial, actually. It's just skipping the parts that should
| be easy to google for.
| rashkov wrote:
| Definitely comes across in the writing. Very step by step!
| rurban wrote:
| I liked https://op-
| co.de/blog/posts/samsung_nx_cryptofail/#index3h3 more. Absolute
| astonishing firmware "crypto" fail
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-05-25 23:01 UTC)