808 Car Keys Micro Camera

This 808 Car Keys Micro Camera is a mini key ring spy camera and Digital Video Recorder (DVR) manufactured in 2016 in Shenzhen China. It has 720-pixels × 480-pixels video resolution and records in AVI format. The photograph resolution is 1280-pixels × 1024-pixels and stores in JPEG format. There are many versions of this micro key ring camera and this one requires a TF/Micro SD (128 MB to 16 GB) memory card for storage purposes. It also has 280 mAh (3.7 V) capacity rechargeable battery that provides approximately 60-minutes to 90-minutes battery life depending upon the functions used.

In this version, the PCB marking indicates 1203G and 2016.06.14, which may be the date of manufacture. The main processor chip has the marking 5SDC MQNK 197.1 1630. There is also another support chip which has the marking 2SD40J 1701 P17726.

Review

This was one of the cheapest ones I could find, but of course, availability is not always guaranteed as there are bound to be other models and versions being developed. I also saw other models that have built-in memory, and they are more expensive. In order to save money on postage, they sent it wrapped in foam, packed in a white plastic bag. I received the recorder, USB cable, and a slip of paper written in Chinese and English. The great thing about this version is that it does not come with built-in memory, but instead you can use your own TF/Micro SD memory card, which lowers the cost drastically as well as making it more versatile. In this version, they have tried to lower the cost further by eliminating PCB sockets. Therefore, they solder the battery wires directly to the PCB; however, you can still change the battery if you needed to, just that you will need some soldering skills. They also solder the ribbon cable from the camera module to the PCB; therefore changing the camera module will be difficult but nonetheless feasible. This model has a single yellow light to indicate its various states; however, there are other more expensive models with dual coloured lights.

With micro sized cameras, you need to consider image sharpness, and sensitivity in low light level conditions. The 720-pixels × 480-pixels video resolution at 30 fps was adequate as was the sharpness and sensitivity, providing the users hold the camera reasonably still.

One advantage of this model is that you can take the electronics out of the plastic case to make it lighter. This way you can fit the PCB to a quad-copter drone for additional video angles. I had to use foam shock absorbers to isolate the fast vibration of the motors being transmitted to the camera.

Time and date are set via a simple text file with the name TAG.TXT stored in the root position of the micro SD memory card. The processor applies this timestamp automatically to all photographs and video.

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