Category: Featured

NEW Nizo 2.7 Volt lightmeter power circuit

Posted on by digitalsuper8

2.7 Volt lightmeter power board for Nizo super8 camera

Presenting the latest solution for a 2.7Volts regulator circuit, to create a permanent solution for powering the lightmeter of the Nizo 8xx/5xx/4xx family of super8 cameras. These cameras normally require 2 buttoncell batteries of 1.35V each, which are hard or nearly impossible to come by nowadays.

We developed a new solution, on a dedicated tiny printed circuit board (10mm x 10mm), with only 3 components. It can be connected to the main battery supply of the super8 camera, and it supplies a rock-solid, constant 2.7 Volt output voltage that can be connected to the light meter circuit.

The circuit is designed around a dedicated voltage regulator IC. Packaged in a small SMD design this IC allows for a very small board design. Complemented with 2 capacitors the circuit board is a mere 10mm x 10mm in size. As a result it allows easy placement into the button-cell light meter battery container.

See this video for explanation and example installation of the regulator board into a Nizo 801 Macro super8 camera:

installing the Digital Super8 Lightmeter Power Board in a Nizo Super8 camera

The board has GND (black wire soldered to pad) and Vin (red wire soldered to pad) inputs and one Vout 2.7Volt output (the camera 2.7V lightmeter wire (usually yellow in Nizo’s) can be soldered to it). The EN pad can be left unconnected.

It is strongly advised to ensure that precautions are taken to isolate the board electronically to prevent short-cuts to ground. This is because the metal parts of the camera and the button-cell battery container cover are connected to ground. Using the provided shrink tube is advised.

Code improvements

Posted on by digitalsuper8

Earlier in 2021 we finally solved some major software stability issues. The C++ code that runs on the Nanopi Neo Air inside the cartridge was crashing relatively often during shooting. Causing loss of captured images.

After long research we found out that this was caused by an imagefile write (the captured image) and an image file read (an image file to monitor the captured result in real time).

By changing the setup of the system, making the Nanopi run its code from fixed eMMC memory (on board the Nanopi) and writing the RAW files to its separate microSD card we achieve that the monitor files are read off of the eMMC memory while the RAW files are written to the MicroSD. Thus avoiding memory acces issues and subsequent code crashes due to a segmentation fault.

we now feel confident to continue developing the Digital Super8 Cartridge with software that is reliable enough for the user.

Note: the Digital S8 Cartridge runs on C++ code, while it also has its own WiFi accesspoint and webserver on board. This allows users to run our HTML5 app on their iPhone or smartphone to have full cartridge control and monitoring functionality.