Fake Camera That Is Not Fake

In this project, I will make a surveillance camera that is wireless and battery operated, but I will not use any modern lame case.

I'm going to use a retro camera that is also a dummy camera, actually I'm going to make a sleeper camera, at least I'm going to try to combine that case with the A9 wireless camera that I bought on sale for $2. 

I bought it at a sale on aliexpress more out of curiosity than anything else and I was even surprised at how well it works because let's be real it's worth every cent.

I bought a retro camera at a local market very cheap because I don't know who would even use it in this day and age, especially if it doesn't work.

I will also try to increase the capacity of the camera battery by installing few of 18650 batteries, number of them depends on how much I can fit in the case itself.

For more details, there is also a video that I tried to reduce as much as I could, but there are a lot of details that I wanted to show or say, so it is over 10 minutes long.

The list of materials and tools is not large, I would just like to mention that with such small modifications, the dremel tool is sometimes irreplaceable.

List Of Supplies:

A9 wireless camera (or any wireless camera)

Lithium batteries (in this case 18650)

Case for camera - Dummy fake camera

Aluminum heatsink and silicone thermal pad

MS polymer glue

Charge circuit for lithium batteries (I tried TP4056 and power bank electronic board)

Hard Drive magnet for base and small magnets for case cover

Soldering iron, dremel tool, shrink tube, cutter and other basic tools.

USB cabels.

Of course we start disassembling this dinosaur and under the main cover there is a slot for batteries, I tried to put batteries, supply it with DC voltage, but the LED never blinked. The ravages of time destroyed it.

I thought it only had the ability to blink, but underneath is the whole mechanism for turning the camera. I managed to start it only by directly connecting plus and minus to the DC motor and it came to life. It's interesting that it works, but it's also interesting that someone could think that this camera was real and not a fake one.

I don't know why it doesn't work with batteries, probably there was a break somewhere because the wires are very thin.

I'm a little sad to take it apart, but since I saw that you can buy them cheaply online, I decided to continue with removing the interior so that I could see is there room inside for stuff.

I keep all the parts and screws because I don't know what I will need. I am satisfied with how much space there is, I think it will fit 4 pcs of 18650 lithium batteries without any problems.

It will be necessary to cut, drill and grind a lot of plastic, but I don't think there will be any major problems in terms of space.

Next is the disassembly of the A9 camera, which I doubt is original due to video quality and the fact that it cost $2. Disassembly was easy, only 2 screws hold the case and you can immediately see magnet on the back, small battery and board.

The battery should be 200mAh, but there are no markings on it anywhere. Of course, I won't throw it away, I'll REuse it for little side project.

Everything is easily disassembled with a little care, I keep all the parts and screws because I don't know what I will need when I put everything back together.

And after taking everything apart I started to modify the front end of the camera lens, I drilled a hole that was a little off center but I corrected that with a dremel and continued drilling to widen the hole and it turned out great. Naturally, I widened the hole little by little because I wanted it to be as small as possible, as less noticeable as possible.

For testing, I connected the camera to the mobile phone so that I could see if the edges of the plastic were visible, I made a mistake because I did not assemble everything, i.e. the lens housing with its gray base, then I should tried it, but no biggy later in the project I had to widen the hole a little bit more.

I will repurpose the battery that I removed from the mini camera for a Bluetooth keyboard.I have two, I repaired one with the 18650 battery I've been using for years and it hasn't discharged and it is great for workshop but I'd like to have one that's nice... and working.

After a couple of screws that I removed from the bottom I opened it easily with a plastic prying tool and it was easy to resolder the old blown lithium battery with a different one.

It is interesting how the whole camera is cheaper than if I buy just a replacement battery. Only battery is approximately

3$. True, the quality of the camera is questionable, but still.

While doing these modifications I did charge the batteries in background and test their capacity to find 4 pieces that are approximately the same capacity, this is important, because all 4 cells will be connected in parallel.

While I was testing the camera, I realized that it was heating up a lot, and in the same two places on both sides, the main chip and the camera are heating up a lot. Since I have a silicone thermal pad, I decided to put it under the camera and a small aluminum cooler on top of chip, and I glued everything with MS polymer so that nothing would move and, for example, create a short circuit.

Polymer glue comes in handy in cases like this, because it won't loosen when it heats up like some glues would, and it's easy to apply. Most often you can see these adhesives on commercial electronics and components such as capacitors.

While gluing it, I try to glue everything I have because I like to leave 24 hours for the glue to dry.

I also have to slightly modify the micro USB cable to fit and I will use it to power the camera, I like the idea of it being connected via USB when I already have a connector, it gives me more options and it's easy for me to replace the cable if something goes wrong with it.

I finished testing the batteries, so I immediately prepared a battery of 4 cells, as I said, they are connected in parallel, whenever I save laptop batteries, I try to leave at least some nickel strip on them because I don't have an electric battery welder. When I leave strip, it makes soldering easier because the solder stays on them and the heat doesn't spread directly to the batteries as much, I know that lithium batteries shouldn't be soldered, but what can i do?

I have approximately a 6000mAh battery, which is a big improvement over the original batterie, and I think that I should be able to record over 24 hours with it without any problems.

Everything seems to fit without a problem, I m planning to replace its fake cable with a real USB cable and I connected everything with a TP4056 charger, but I'm missing the on/off option, so I'll use the original hole and switch, but the original switch was faulty so I took another one from a solar lamp and I did put just in case a 3 amp fuse ,The charging current will never be higher than 1 or 2A.

I took a little break from testing and ran a cable that will be used to charge the batteries or connect directly to the AC network with, for example, a mobile phone charger.

The next thing I started adding the holes for the Infra red LEDs for night recording that I took off the remotes.

After soldering all the LEDs, it was time to test it. IR light is not visible to the eye but should be visible through the camera.

I tried all kinds of things to activate the Infra red LEDs, but I never succeeded, they were always too weak or not working, I even burned one while trying to increase the brightness. I don't know if they are weak because of the IR filter on the camera, but in the end I gave up on them.

I gave up on the TP4056 battery charger as well, because I wasn't getting enough voltage to power the camera and I decided to use electronics from an old power bank that I have, and then I had no further problems with powering the camera. I even used the usb slot on the powerbank so that I kept soldering to a minimum.

It's assembly and testing time. I tried to use the already existing holes that I had for mounting, to make the job easier and everything even turned out OK if we take into account the kind of plastic everything is made of.

There is a hole in the base of the camera where the charging cable connector can be hidden. I like that feature.

I did glue the Infra Red LEDs, even though they don't work, so that it look nice and I hope that in the future I might be able to make them work ... maybe.

I attached magnets to the top cover that attaches to the battery, definitely nothing is waterproof on this camera but at least I have easy access.

The first HDD magnet that I put on the stand was too weak for the weight of the camera, but the second one, which is thicker and stronger, had no problem with that, it is THICK BOY.

Everything looks ok after adjusting the camera position a bit.

In addition to connecting with a mobile phone or a virtual android, the camera can be connected with Samsung DEx if your mobile phone supports it, and I have one that has a broken screen and is perfect for that when I connect it via a USBc dock i have live view of recording.

Apart from the image quality the camera doesn't look bad at all, I think it would fool most people.

It looks like a fake camera, no doubt about it.

I don't know if I mentioned some of the details of the camera, what I like about it is that it is wireless, but it also has an SD card to which it can also record video, there are two switches on the board, one is for turning on and off, but basically the camera is always on when you power it and the second is for connecting the device to the camera. The front end is easy to disassemble and I can get to them relatively easily if necessary. When I mention what I like, I would also mention the price.

What I don't like about the camera is that it is not suitable for night recording ,the quality and resolution of the image is bad and sometimes it can lose the signal and sometimes it works without problems.

In the end when I consider everything... the final "fake camera that is not fake" is not even bad.

I think that I will mostly use it as a camera for monitoring 3D prints. Performance in a larger housing and with LEDs for night recording would be much better, but as they say - You get what you pay for.