fc40 camera

aardpig said:
Hi folks --

I've figured out how to (reversibly) change the SSID on the FC40 camera. Turns out that at boot-up, the real-time operating system which manages the camera (and runs Linux as a task) reads from the file autoexec.ash on the SD card. This file contains a sequence of commands which are interpreted by Ambarella's ambsh shell. The SSID change is achieved sending a couple of commands to the Linux task from the ambsh shell, to alter the SSID.

Specifics: create the autoexec.ash file in the top-level directory of the SD card, with the following contents:

Code:
sleep 30
lu_util exec 'sed -e "s/FC40_[A-Za-z0-9]*/FC40_AARDPIG/" -i /tmp/wifi/ap.conf'
lu_util exec 'sh /tmp/wifi/ap.conf'

IMPORTANT: This file must be saved with Unix (linefeed) line-breaks, not Windows line-breaks. Google for how to do this.

Let's go through the file line-by-line, to see how it works:

  • The first line causes the shell to sleep (wait) for 30 seconds. This is (approximately) the time it takes for the Linux task to get up and running after we switch the camera on. We have to wait for this start-up complete before we change the SSID, otherwise the change may be overwritten by the default SSID; 30 seconds is my estimate of how long this takes (judging from how long the status LED on the camera takes to switch from flashing to constant).
  • The second line sends a command to the Linux task, which uses the standard sed tool to change the SSID in the WiFi configuration script (/tmp/wifi/ap.conf) from FC40_something to FC40_AARDPIG. When you create your own file, you should change FC40_AARDPIG to whatever SSID you wish. (Note, however, that the FC40 smartphone app expects the camera SSID to begin with 'FC40_').
  • The third line sends another command to the Linux task, which actually runs the WiFi configuration script to change the SSID.

A better approach, IMHO, would be to use the wpa_cli tool to change the SSID directly, rather than fussing with the /tmp/wifi/ap.conf script; but I haven't yet managed to get this working.

A big kudos for figuring out how to do this should go to this thread discussing the GoPro Hero camera; turns out that the GoPro software is also made by Ambarella, so there are quite a few commonalities.

cheers,

A

I could be nice if someone in here knew the ssid that the Dji Vision app looks for
so that the fc40 cam could be used with that dji vision app ( fpv flying with telementry )
 
Good idea. It might be as simple as renaming the FC40 FC200_xxxx and setting its IP address to get the video to work with the Vision app, but the telemetry requires the d-bus data be encoded and transmitted. So for a Phantom FC40 or Phantom 1 that does not have this built in, you would need to add at least a iosd or maybe someone comes up with a arduino coded solution to do this. I have read that some are working on that part.
Cheers,
Jim

daffydk said:
I could be nice if someone in here knew the ssid that the Dji Vision app looks for
so that the fc40 cam could be used with that dji vision app ( fpv flying with telementry )
 
Hi guys

What an interesting thread!

I've tried and tried to get the SSID changed on my camera so that I can use the Unieye app but so far failed.

I've formatted the card, I've saved the file in Unix LF format, I've tried to extend the pause to 33 seconds but my SSID never changes.

Is there something I'm forgetting to do Aardpig (or anyone!).

Thanks a lot in advance
 

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