Filip Norrgård’s blog @ filips.net
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Hacking The Pocket Loox 720 Camera Driver
25 February 2005 in Code-ing & Pocket PC | Comments enabled

One of the problems with using the integrated 1.3 megapixel camera on the Fujistu-Siemens Pocket Loox 720 in third party software was that there was no documentation available from FSC about the camera. FSC should follow HP’s example and put up a website with more info about their hardware for developers, but they still haven’t done so and I doubt that they will ever do that.

But hey, the camera needs a driver, and the DLL file goes by the name of HTXcamera1.dll, so why not do and swim around the OP codes of the driver? I did, using a freeware hex editor suitably named XVI32 (if you don’t get it, then think Roman numerals). What did I find? Well, the driver should allow external calls (not a surprise), but not in the same way as other HTC manufactured Pocket PCs, like the iMate Pocket PCs.

What I found were these methods that are probably possbile to call directly from the driver DLL:

Camera_Begin – Starts the camera, or takes a photo. Remains to be seen…
Camera_Deinit – Deinitializes the camera and probably shuts it down so it doesn’t eat the battery the whole day.
Camera_End – Sort of “closes the shutter” (if this was an analog camera)? Or calls the Deinit function?
Camera_FlashLight – Has got something to do with the LED flash (duh!).
Camera_GetProperty – Probably for getting the image quality currently set.
Camera_Init – Initializes the camera. (A no-brainer… )
Camera_SetProperty – Probably for setting the image quality to use, or if we want to record a video.

What I missed is a Camera_Start since there is a Camera_End function. Where is it, if not in the driver?

Oh well, with this info in the public, I hope that someone with more times on their hands can write a .NET class library for us to use in our .NET apps. I would write this myself, if I only had time for such things… Also, maybe someone with contacts should get this to Microsoft Research so that they can update Microsoft Portrait to use the Loox’s camera.