This article will cover how to add an hardwired shutter remote 2.5mm jack to a Sony NEX7 Camera. This jack will allow you to fire a NEX-7 continuously and precisely with an external pocket wizard, tongue switch, timer, etc. The mod is a lot easier than the Sony NEX-5 but it takes just as much time to make it look pretty. You will need:

1. #0 Philips screw driver
2. 2.5mm jack. Used here is a "CONN AUDIO JACK 2.5MM STEREO SMD - SJ-2523-SMT" found at Digi-Key for $1.26.
3. Rework / wire winding wire. 28-32awg
4. Small pitch soldering tools (tweezers, iron, flux, isopropanol, solder)
5. Crazy glue, tooth picks and some patience
6. Plastic epoxy (5 or 1 minute) NOTE: it still takes a few hours to fully harden)
7. Masking tape and pen to note where screws came from
8. Clean, dust free area

Above is how the camera looks after the mod is completed.

The first step is to remove the lens and use some gaffers tape or the original cover to cover up the sensor. Its also a good time to take out the battery and put down a lint free towel to work on. 

Now remove the screws found within the flash compartment. There are three.

I personally use a piece of tape and mark where all the screws come from. This prevents me from leaving out a screw or forgetting where they go and what size goes where.

Next step is to remove the three screws in the battery compartment. Two deep and one on the lip there. 

Now remove the one screw next to the neck strap tie down and then one under the usb access port. 

Now the two screws on the bottom base. You do not need to remove the scew below the 1/4 - 20 tripod mount nor on the screen.

The top comes right off. Slowly pull it up as to not rip off the leads. Use your tweezers to slowly pull the blue fpc connector out. I use the tweezer tips on the little tab and alternate between each side moving it straight out the connector a bit at a time. If you crease this connector you just ruined the camera!

The red and yellow flash connector just pull straight up. You can use mini pliers to pull them up if needed. Do not pull by the wire! Also, be careful, I'm sure there is high voltage here! (feels like a tazzer if you do!)  

Put the camera on AF/MF mode vs. AEL. Then pull out the screen and point it towards the top of the camera (flash/shutter button). The back half now pulls off towards the back. You have to angle it 45 degrees to get it over the screen. Also notice the distance between this half and the body since this is how much slack you will need in your wire leads if you mount the jack where I did. 

This is how the camera looks when its ready for the mod.

Another view

Solder on the rework wire as shown above. I think I used around 9 inches of wire and then cut it to length when I was done. The yellow lead is connected catacorner to the red lead. The top of the switch is ground so do not bridge the pad with the top. Also from past experience, be very careful with flux around this area since the switch is very sensistive and not air tight. I personally just dipped the tip of the lead in flux and then zapped it with a wet iron onto the pad. I grabbed the ground from the on/off switch since it was easier to access. Clean the area when done with an swab midly damp with isopropanol alcohol.

• Red - Shutter
• Yellow - Focus
• Red/Black - Ground

Inspect your work with a microscope of a loop. Thx to Blue Skies Mag for the pimp shirt!

Tack down the rework like so to allow the switches to work and all the mounting points to fit properly. Use a small drop of crazy glue on a tooth pick to tack them down.

Route the wires like shown on the back side. Notice the tack on the metal away from the mounting hole. Then fish the wires to the bottom with a piece of wire acting like a fish. 

Then cut off the back boss off of the 2.5mm connector's base. (Boss is the little round tab that does not make it sit flush) By keeping the front boss, this makes the connector angle slightly out of the hand grip.

Then cut a rectangular recess in the hand grip with an exacto knife as shown. At the same time I marked in the plastic underneath the grip where the connector would sit. Be careful not to put too much force on this assembly as there are tiny tabs underneath that you can easily break. I then pulled up the grip and cleaned off the double sided tape where the connector would sit with some alcohol. Be careful not to get it in the slot where the blue battery release pivots, crazy glue the connector on the grip. Be sure to mount it so its angled up to allow a 2.5mm plug to be seated without bottoming out on the grip. Then mix up some plastic epoxy and glue the connector down permanently. Again, make sure not to get any in the connector or the blue battery pivot point! Let this dry for a few hours.  

You can see how the wires come out the bottom. At this point, push them in and give them a bend (not a crease) so you can easily slide them in the void when putting the back onto the camera. 

I guess I missed taking a picture of this, but once the glue is dry drill a tiny hole just above the connector and just below. Then fish the yellow wire (focus) on the bottom hole and the red (shutter) and red/black (ground) on the top hole. 

The yellow(focus) goes on the ring (center contact/far side in picture), black/red(ground) on the sleeve (closest side, next to hole), red (shutter) on the tip (closest side, next to the back).

(From http://www.doc-diy.net)

Put the back, back on by first putting it over the screen and then feeding the excess wire back into the void. Take your time and check the battery compartment making sure the excess does not go into there. Go slow, and you'll be able to route the excess just fine. The back just slides in and the only hold up may be the small tabs that fits in the battery compartment recesses. 

Don't screw anything back on yet. Reconnect the top flash connectors to the top assembly. Next slide the FPC cable back in using your tweezers on the tabs. Pressing it in will crease it and ruin the camera. USE THE TWEEZERS a little at a time! The top just slips in 

At this point, test the camera and your new connector. Focus connected to ground makes the display text go away, shutter to ground obviously fires the camera. If everything is right, the camera will work just fine!

Screw everything back together in reverse. Finally, tack back down the rubber grip with some crazy glue or rubber cement and notch the grip (see below) to relieve stress on the connector when a switch is plugged in.

Hope this works out for you. Please use your time and obviously HYPOXIC and/or Mark Kirschenbaum are not liable for anything you do based upon my instructions. 

Sony NEX-7 with a 2.5mm jack

Enjoy!

-Trunk

Again my girlfriend's 06 Mini Cooper S Convertible has broken down. The engine turns but it never catches. Also, I noticed that the fuel pump, which is located under the driver side rear seat was not clicking. I checked the fuel pump fuse (F37 - 20Amp) and it was fine. I looked for the Fuel Pump Relay and could never find it!?!

Reading on the forums most people said the fuel pump was dead. I removed the fuel pump as stated at North American Motoring and inspected it to see what broke. Hooking it up directly to 12V, I noticed it actually ran just fine!!!

Next, I tested the power going to the fuel pump via the connector. Putting my meter between pin 2 and pin 5, (Pin 2 (Blue/White) is +, Pin 5 – (Brown)), I got 12v when the car was switched on. That appeared to work, so I was wondering what was going on? The fuel pump appears fine and the power going to it is working too. I reinstalled the fuel pump and hooked some test leads between the connector and the fuel pump so I could measure current and voltage. I notice when the car turned on, it was not supplying any current to the pump. Basically the meter was measuring 0v when it should be measuring 12V. This lead me to believe that the control signal was somehow directly tied to the fuel pump, vs. the control signal turning on the relay to the 12V supply. Pulling the fuel pump fuse also did not stop the 12V signal from coming on when the car was turned on and the cable was disconnected from the fuel pump. This further lead me to believe the relay was dead.

So where is the fuel pump relay on this mini cooper? Believe it or not, after hours and hours of searching I found it. The relay is now part of the interior fuse panel. If your MCS is experiencing this issue you can either replace the whole fuse panel or put a generic relay in its place. I chose the latter.

(Relay is solder to the board located under the plastic labeled RL1)

To replace the fuse panel on this car, you need to remove the rear seat, rear drive side seat back, rear driver side panel and then the driver side kick panel. 2 x 10mm bolts hold on the fuse panel and then a number of cables connect to in on the back. I took a picture with my phone before I unplugged these connectors to ensure I plugged them back in correctly.

The fuse panel connections are actually color coded with the lack of color equating to black. It's probably not a bad idea to disconnect the battery before unplugging these connectors ;-).

Once you have the fuse panel off, you now need to remove all the fuses. I again took a picture before I did this step (see above if you don't). This made it super easy to re-install them when it became time.

Next, the two halves of the fuse panel snap apart if you use two flat heads to pop the two sides up. It's fairly easy. Now the fuse panel circuit boards will slide out and you will notice how they are attached to each other

Unfortunately to do this repair the “right” way you would need to de-solder each junction, pop apart the boards and then re-attach. I chose to do it a different way. You will notice that this relay is totally smoked in the below picture.

Digi-key, mouser and newark where all out of stock, so I just bought a 30Amp relay from radio shack and hardwired it on. To do this I just snipped off the relay and ohm'd out the connections to the interconnects.

Here is how I wired the Tyco V23086 to the Radio shack SPST relay:

Tyco - Radio Shack Relay - Usage (Color and Pin on White connector)

  1  -        86         -  Positive Control Line (Red/Black 5)

  2  -        85         -  Ground control line (Black/Violet 6)

  3  -        --         -  No Connect

  4  -        87         -  To F37 fuse (12V internally connected to fuse)

  5  -        30         -  To fuel pump (Blue/White 3)

(You can also snip these connections and run a dedicated fuse/relay pair directly from 12v)

I drilled a hole through the back of the panel, fished the wires and soldered the leads onto the board interconnects. On the exterior of the fuse panel, I crimped some female spade connectors and hooked it up to the relay. After that, the boards where reinstalled into the housing, snapped back together and the fuses were replaced. The assembly was then installed back into the car, and all the connectors re-seated. Testing, the fuel pump went on when the key was turned and worked when the car was started!!!

I zipped tied the new relay up to the car and reinstalled all the panels and seats. All works fine now!

In conclusion here is what I would do if it happened again to diagnosis a mini-cooper fuel pump issue.

1. Ensure Fuse F37 is not blown
2. Remove the rear-seat, unbolt the protective fuel pump cover (driver side), un hook the connector and apply 12v to the blue lead location and ground to the brown lead location. See if the pump works. (run a line from your trunk battery)
3. If it works replace or fix the fuse panel. If it doesn't replace the fuel pump.

Hope this helps!

-Trunk

Adding a 37mm wide angle lens is easy to do to a Sony HDR-CX190, HDR-CX200, or HDR CX-210 with some patience an a little bit of time.

You will need:

• Some crazy glue
• Epoxy
• 37mm step up ring
• Dremel or grinder wheel
• Aluminum step-up ring (anything) to 37mm

The first thing to do is to remove the part of the step up ring that screws into the camera. I used a dremel and ground it down until it was perfectly smooth. Any burrs or peaks left will make the lens not fit on the camera flush. Make sure to do the grinding away from your camera and final assembly working service.

Rinse the modified step up ring with water and blow it off with compressed air.

Dry fit the cleaned step up ring on the camera. On the ring I chose, century (30-37mm) aluminum version, it basically fell into place.

With the lens cap closed, put a tiny drop of crazy glue on the edge of the step up ring. This is to tack the adapter into place until you can epoxy it in a later step. Have the lens facing up and place the step up ring on the camera just like you dry fitted it in the previous step. Press and hold until it is seated. IMPORTANT: Too much vapors from the crazy glue can damage your lens. Be careful! If you have 1 minute epoxy, you can also use a small drop for this part, however make sure the lens adapter sits flush just like it did while dry fitting it.

With the step up ring tacked on, located some 1 or 5 minute epoxy.

After quickly and fully mixing the epoxy, carefully placed a bead around the edge of the step up ring. This securely affixes the adapter in place preventing wooble and making it ridgid for all types of sports.

This is how the final camera should look.

My team and I typically mount GoPro's on objects we are sure will get destroyed after we throw them out of a plane. Be it poker tables, bathroom setups, cars, or pianos; the GoPro footage we get from these objects impacting the ground is worth the $300 cost of the camera. To us, GoPros are semi-disposable and even better, the footage normally is salvagable!

(Photo: GoPro Screen Grab courtesy Joe Jennings)

This is a guide on how I've been able to recover GoPro footage over the past few years. It takes some skill, a few utilities and some perserverance; but the footage is worth it. 

(Photo: Sik Nik)

Steps to fix GoPro Footage

1) See if the card is readable. If it is, continue on. Otherwise see if a MBR repair utility will get the card back up and working.

2) Copy the corrupt file over locally and see if it plays at all with VLC

3) Knowing the mode the file was recorded in use the fix_header_v3a.pl utility as described here. 

The command line typically looks like:

perl c:\gopro\fix_header_v3a.pl c:\gopro\GOPR0752.MP4 -reso r5

This gets the file working again but it is still formatted a little bit weird. If the file plays with vertical lines try a different camera mode like r3. (sometimes I do not remember what mode I was recording in)

4) Run the file through mp4muxer-0.9.3.zip (MAC Utility) and seperate the video from the audio tracks. Rename the file as .MP4 

5) Import this footage into your movie editor such as Sony Vegas and re-render it using the same settings as the video file (ex: 720/60fps make the project 720/60fps and render as such too). This re-encapsulates it and makes it work with all tools. Sony Vegas may take longer than normal to edit, be patient and don't do any tweaking. We are just getting the footage to re-encapsulate. Take your time, it will work!

6) Congrats! You recovered some killer footage out of a gopro!