[fb_penpho]

NotSteve, so you don't think the OP was entitled to know they can't use a web browser on their laptop to remote shoot or move pics?

Or that they *can* transfer images with an added Flu card, just as I do with my K-S1?

You would replace the SD card in the K-S2 whenever you knew you wanted to do this.

Interested to hear your views on the topic.

clackers, I have not used a flucard, but have made the following assumption. As the S2 does not support the Flucard I would have had to had pre set it up before insertion. Also I have no way of turning it off and conserving power, unlike the the built in wifi which I have already paid for.

My only conclusion is that Ricoh needs to come out with some mainstream software that will make the wifi really usable and make the S2 even more attractive.

[mtngal]

Has anyone found anything in the owners manual that says that you can't use a Eye-Fi card in the camera? The only thing I found which mentions wifi built into the card is on page 89 where it says you to turn off the camera's internal wifi if you have interference with one of these cards.

If a memory card with a built-in wireless LAN function (such as an Eye-Fi card or a Flucard) is used, radio wave interference may occur. When this occurs, disable the Wi-Fi function of the camera.

If all you want is to transfer files from the camera to a computer wirelessly, I wonder if this would work. The way the manual is worded it sounded like it was possible (maybe). I don't have either one, so can't test it. On the other hand, I do have a Flucards and if someone wants to send me their K-S2, I would be happy to test my card with it!

[stevebrot]

My only conclusion is that Ricoh needs to come out with some mainstream software that will make the wifi really usable and make the S2 even more attractive.

This is sort of a strange comment. It would be nice if Ricoh were to provide a seamless pc/mac/linux solution using the K-S2's built-in wireless for tethering. It would also be nice for Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc. to provide the same for the users of their cameras*. Notice the emphasis on the word "seamless". Wireless tethering to a mobile device is fairly common due to the strong support for ad hoc wireless networking. Setting the same up on a personal computer is not as easy.


not notSteve

* This is not my area of current interest, but I did do a little Google work and was unable to find such as a support feature without buying additional hardware.

[RGlasel]

you can't use a Eye-Fi card in the camera?

You can use Eye-fi SD cards for file transfer with any camera that allows for MSC connections to a computer. The software installed on the SD memory card needs access to the camera's file system, and if the camera is set to MSC file transfer, the Eye-fi card doesn't need a driver for your camera. You still have to install an app on your computer, since the Eye-fi card uses a built-in Web service to communicate with your computer using SOAP.

So, technically, if all you want to do is transfer files wirelessly from your K-whatever camera, Eye-fi will work. But it isn't going to be a good experience. The little radio transmitter built into Eye-Fi cards has a very limited range (basically within 2 seconds walking distance) with a slow data transfer rate. Transferring RAW files can take minutes per image. For tethering (which the Eye-Fi card can't do) you don't need to transfer a lot of data to tell your camera to open the shutter, change aperture or even broadcast the image that is on the back LCD panel, so a wireless connection can be useful for tethering. A USB connection (which is what Image Transmitter for the 645Z uses for tethering purposes) is up to 100 times faster at transferring data than Eye-Fi or Flu-card wireless systems, and really should be the only way you transfer images from any high-resolution camera to another device. Everyone's time is worth something and transferring a high resolution image from your DSLR to your mobile device so you can view it, process it and send it to somewhere in the Internet is only marginally more convenient with a wireless connection instead of a USB connection and much, much more time consuming. Your smartphone camera has the added convenience of being physically attached to a mobile device at all times, and if you don't care what the pictures look like and need to post your pictures with no fuss whatsoever, use your smartphone.

The Wi-fi connection built into the K-S2 does have a much better range and is several times faster than Eye-Fi or Flu-card. The processor in the K-S2 is also designed to allow two-way communication between the camera and another device, so you can do tethering wirelessly, which couldn't be done either wirelessly or wired with the cameras the K-S2 is intended to replace. Most DSLR users can wait until they are finished taking photographs before transferring them to a computer, so just make sure you have a USB cable or a memory card reader close to the computer, even if you have a K-S2. Sometimes the best solution is the simplest.

[clackers]

Transferring RAW files can take minutes per image.

The implementations that use a web browser don't often give the option of RAW files, RG - a browser can't render them anyway.

Wireless access will always be slower than cabled.

A genuine use is to give copies of images to strangers whose ad hoc portraits you've taken, without remembering to get their email address or give them a URL to a link, whatever.

Just join their phone to the card's wifi network and transfer the keepers.

[petrkouda]

Today I tried to log communication between my new K-S2 and Image sync app with SandroProxy. After few minutes of testing I discovered following:

K-S2 has web server on port 80. Results from that server are send as JSON.

GET request on http://192.168.0.1/v1/props returns JSON with camera settings.
GET request on http://192.168.0.1/v1/photos returns JSON with list of content of inserted SD-card.
GET request on http://192.168.0.1/v1/liveview turns on camera liveview, returns image from it and start continuous reload. After closing of that page liveview is switched of.
POST request on http://192.168.0.1/v1/camera/shoot with parametr af=off or af=auto triggers a photo capture.

I home that my findings help someone.

Best regards
Petr Kouda

[swanlefitte]

I have done some testing.
Found out with firefox the /props and /photos worked but the other 2 did not. On chrome they all worked.
I installed the proxy Droid4X and used image synch on my computer with partial success.
First I found I could still control my camera itself with full function or control it through the app in a limited manor. There was no live picture and I could only press the shutter button. Could not select a focus point by clicking on the screen. The other functions still worked.
The apps gallery would display all images captured from the pc so I could toggle between camera and gallery to view the DNG's. For some reason when I took the picture with the camera, its self, the DNG's did not show up in the gallery.
Last, the app is shaped like a phone on the pc screen so it was not much bigger than the lcd on the back of my camera. I could enlarge the app so it was bigger than filling the pc screen but then getting between the shutter button on the app and toggling to the gallery was to painful to work with because I had to keep moving the app window around to get to the controls. I suppose there might be command prompts which would make it simple.
I was doing this on a basic 3 year old laptop.

[wwortel]

Petr,

thanks for that post! It is not very clearly explained in Pentax/Ricoh's documentation that Wifi in a K-S2 camera means that it acts as an access point.
So, if you live in an area where there is already a wifi network, e.g. to get onto the internet, and where your phones and pads have been programmed to connect to that, those devices need to be told to log on to the camera's 'own' network. The encryption method is psk2.
The K-S2 camera access point will announce as its SSID (wifi network name) something like 'PENTAX_9abcde' where the 9abcde stands for a string of six hexadecimal characters.
Quite alarming is the fact that the default password is something like 'xx9abcde' . So from the broadcast network name you can know 6 of the 8 password characters.
Or in other words. With the wifi switched on, the data in the camera are not very safe; at most 256 attempts will allow anybody to connect. The above is after the latest firmware upgrade, to version 1.01. Did not check this with 1.00. All hexadecimal characters, including the xx, are taken from the end of the MAC address. It ought to be possible to change the password, and giving the camera a catchier network name would be nice as well, but do not know (yet) how to do this.

[Adam]

Petr,

thanks for that post! It is not very clearly explained in Pentax/Ricoh's documentation that Wifi is the K-S2 camera means that it acts as an access point.
So, if you live in an area where there is already a wifi network, e.g. to get onto the internet, and where your phones and pads have been programmed to connect to that, those devices need to be told to log on to the camera's 'own' network. The encryption method is psk2.
The K-S2 camera access point will announce as its SSID (wifi network name) something like 'PENTAX_9abcde' where the 9abcde stands for some hexadecimal character.
Quite alarming is the fact that the default password is something like 'xx9abcde' . So from the broadcast network name you can know 6 of the 8 password characters.
Or in other words. With the wifi switched on, the data in the camera are not very safe. The above is after the latest firmware upgrade, to version 1.01. Did not check this with 1.00. All hexadecimal characters, including the xx, are taken from the end of the MAC address. It ought to be possible to change the password, and giving the camera a catchier network name would be nice as well, but do not know (yet) how to do this.

That's probably why the Wi-Fi doesn't stay on unless you turn it on. Interesting findings with regard to the interface, though it would have been nice if they have provided a web gui for PC users just like the flucard.

[czielke]

Today I tried to log communication between my new K-S2 and Image sync app with SandroProxy. After few minutes of testing I discovered following:

K-S2 has web server on port 80. Results from that server are send as JSON.

GET request on http://192.168.0.1/v1/props returns JSON with camera settings.
GET request on http://192.168.0.1/v1/photos returns JSON with list of content of inserted SD-card.
GET request on http://192.168.0.1/v1/liveview turns on camera liveview, returns image from it and start continuous reload. After closing of that page liveview is switched of.
POST request on http://192.168.0.1/v1/camera/shoot with parametr af=off or af=auto triggers a photo capture.

I home that my findings help someone.

Best regards
Petr Kouda

Hello Petr,

I could confirm your Urls to access the Camera functions. (Except there is no difference between af=off and af=auto?)
But there must be some more urls. I would like to write a little C#.net program to access the camera from Windows, but I need the missing urls.

Here are the funftions I like to implement in my program:

* Setting the parameters
* download the pictures (I think i it is http://192.168.0.1/photos/<folder>/<picturefilename>)
* loading thumbnails of the pictures for a quick list with previews)
* setting the focus-point (Like touching on the livepreview)

Unfortunally it was not possible for me to setup a cenario to capture network traffic with wireshark. I tryed with an emulator (Andyroid) but it didn't work.
Could you check for the missing urls, or send me the capture file?

Thanks

[petrkouda]

Hello Petr,

I could confirm your Urls to access the Camera functions. (Except there is no difference between af=off and af=auto?)
But there must be some more urls. I would like to write a little C#.net program to access the camera from Windows, but I need the missing urls.

Here are the funftions I like to implement in my program:

* Setting the parameters
* download the pictures (I think i it is http://192.168.0.1/photos/<folder>/<picturefilename>)
* loading thumbnails of the pictures for a quick list with previews)
* setting the focus-point (Like touching on the livepreview)

Unfortunally it was not possible for me to setup a cenario to capture network traffic with wireshark. I tryed with an emulator (Andyroid) but it didn't work.
Could you check for the missing urls, or send me the capture file?

Thanks

Hello czielke,

even testing with Sandro proxy capturing all traffic is problematic because some functions doesn't work through proxy. So I mainly get only URL from proxy log and than test it by sending different parameters to it using cURL. After todays tests I can confirm that URL for downloading images is http://192.168.0.1/v1/photos/<folder>/<picturefilename> (http://192.168.0.1/v1/photos/103_2006/IMGP0698.JPG) similar to your suggestion.
Configuration of shooting setting is done using PUT request on http://192.168.0.1/v1/params/camera . After sending successful request, it returns JSON with actual settings and lists of options for some of settings. Output is here:

Code:

{"errCode": 200,
 "errMsg": "OK",
 "avList": [],
 "tvList": [ "30.1", "25.1", "20.1", "15.1", "13.1", "10.1", "8.1", "6.1", "5.1", "4.1", "3.1", "25.10", "2.1", "16.10", "13.10", "1.1", "8.10", "6.10", "5.10", "4.10", "3.10", "1.4", "1.5", "1.6", "1.8", "1.10", "1.13", "1.15", "1.20", "1.25", "1.30", "1.40", "1.50", "1.60", "1.80", "1.100", "1.125", "1.160", "1.200", "1.250", "1.320", "1.400", "1.500", "1.640", "1.800", "1.1000", "1.1250", "1.1600", "1.2000", "1.2500", "1.3200", "1.4000", "1.5000", "1.6000"],
 "svList": ["auto", "100", "125", "160", "200", "250", "320", "400", "500", "640", "800", "1000", "1250", "1600", "2000", "2500", "3200", "4000", "5000", "6400", "8000", "10000", "12800", "16000", "20000", "25600", "32000", "40000", "51200"],
 "xvList": [ "+5.0", "+4.7", "+4.3", "+4.0", "+3.7", "+3.3", "+3.0", "+2.7", "+2.3", "+2.0", "+1.7", "+1.3", "+1.0", "+0.7", "+0.3", "0.0", "-0.3", "-0.7", "-1.0", "-1.3", "-1.7", "-2.0", "-2.3", "-2.7", "-3.0", "-3.3", "-3.7", "-4.0", "-4.3", "-4.7", "-5.0"],
 "exposureModeOption": "",
 "state": "idle",
 "av": "22",
 "tv": "30.1",
 "sv": "2000",
 "xv": "0.0",
 "WBMode": "auto",
 "shootMode": "continuousH",
 "exposureMode": "TV",
 "stillSize": "L3",
 "movieSize": "FHD30p",
 "effect": "cim_bright",
 "filter": "off"}

Request parameter names are same as in the previous output (av,tv,sv,...). Possible values for av parameter are in avList of the output, for tv in tvList and so on.

Best Regards
Petr

[czielke]

Hello Petr,

i was just here to post my results, i recognized, that i am to slow

I finally found an App to watch the traffic between Image Sync and the K-S2:

Packet Capture does the job for me.
( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.greyshirts.sslcapture )

Here are the additional urls I found:
get /v1/photos/<dir>/<file>?size=thumb
get /v1/photos/<dir>/<file>?size=view
get /v1/photos/<dir>/<file>?size=full
get /v1/photos/<dir>/<file>/info


get /v1/changes (I don't know, what this is for?!?!)



put /v1/params/camera
Content could be something like:
WBMode=daylight
tv=15.1
av=7.1
xv=+3.7
sv=6400 etc...


Green Button:
put /v1/params/camera
Content: empty!!!


Shoot:
POST /v1/camera/shoot Content:

af=on or

af=auto or

af=off


Information about the last picture made:

GET /v1/photos/latest/info


I guess i now have all the Information I need to write my program. I am already able to set the parameter. I also can download the pictures. Liveview looks quite challanging - no success yet.
Because liveview is not possible with my Samsung S5, i can't watch the traffic. For the same reason i have no url for setting the focus-point.

But for now it's ok for me.

Thank you very much, Petr

[the_ul]

i'm not the only one to hack the web api - cool

actually i started by trying both various request using a api tool (postman for chrome) and reverse engineering the app & porting it to ordinary browser.
i got to the live view in vrowser and taking photos, also i did get the filer from camera. a bit slow, but worked...
thank you all for sharing, i'll read it all very carefully and see, if i can add anything.
btw, for those interested - everything related to accessing and controlling the camera was in js files in the app, so it was quite readable.

---------- Post added 06-22-15 at 02:41 PM ----------

I guess i now have all the Information I need to write my program. I am already able to set the parameter. I also can download the pictures. Liveview looks quite challanging - no success yet.
Because liveview is not possible with my Samsung S5, i can't watch the traffic. For the same reason i have no url for setting the focus-point.

i need to check my code, but i got liveview by defining <img src="INSERT LIVEVIEW URL"
if someone would want to continue writing the universal app for web, mainly js+jquery,
i could share everything i have manage to get working.
my main interest is to prove that i could build a usabel battery grip with functional buttons,
all that i'm missing is proper api documentation.
i did try to actually read through firmware update file, but lacking a proper dissasembly program,
i found just some urls i already knew

[czielke]

Hi again!

i'm not the only one to hack the web api - cool

Not at all !

I finally got my Program work! It's not stable or nice right now, but it's functional.
There's a lot of work to to do, but all the communication stuff is almost done.
I let you know, if it's ready for public.

regards

czielke
Screenshots:

[Adam]

Hi again!


Not at all !

I finally got my Program work! It's not stable or nice right now, but it's functional.
There's a lot of work to to do, but all the communication stuff is almost done.
I let you know, if it's ready for public.

regards

czielke
Screenshots:

Very nice! It's impressive that you were able to reverse engineer the whole API so quickly. Pentax should have just documented it to make our lives easier...

Once your app is closer to a release version, shoot me a PM and we'll prepare a homepage post to spread the word