Hacking the Canon Connect Station CS100

Canon Rumors Guy

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Jul 20, 2010
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<p>It looks like a group of folks is working hard to “hack” the <a href="https://bhpho.to/2IvLc7T">Canon Connect Station CS100</a> for fun and to add some functionality to the unit.</p>
<p>You can <a href="https://forums.hak5.org/topic/42523-canon-connect-station-cs100/">read about the progress at the Hak5 forums</a> as well as at <a href="https://github.com/dtrigo/canon-cs100/">GitHub</a>.</p>
<p>I’ll admit I’m not sure what all of this means, but for the technically inclined, this might be a worthwhile read.</p>
<p><em>thanks Holger</em></p>
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>I’ll admit I’m not sure what all of this means, but for the technically inclined, this might be a worthwhile read.

They are looking to repurpose the CS100 hardware for non photographic purposes. The hardware is a low powered microcomputer running the Linux operating system, not unlike the Raspberry Pi or Arduino, and suggestions include using it as a streaming media centre or Network Attached Storage.

Nothing sinister.

Cheers
Roy
 
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Kathode-Ray

Shoot, shoot, shoot!
Jun 29, 2012
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Yep, I actually bought two of them! But not for the ridiculous price of € 119,00 here in Holland. They were on sale a while back in the Canon Store for € 39,- which was a bargain. They were getting rid of them I guess.

I gave one of them to my 70+ yr. dad for his birthday, and he is totally nuts with it :)
He has a Canon videocamera and a compact with NFC, and he is now dumping everything that he's shot on it and has an easy way to show it directly on TV. Creating albums and sorting pictures.

I kept the second one for myself, just to see what it was. Just 39 euro for a 1TB harddrive alone wasn't too bad, so I was going to dismantle it first.

Functionality is quite limited. It's easy to upload stuff to the HDD, through NFC, SD or network, but difficult to get it off, so it can't be used as a NAS-like device. But what it does works quite well, so now I dumped all the family and holiday images on it, for easy access for the wife and kid. And with a Canon account, I can send fresh pics of his granddaughter to my dad through the cloud, which he finds amazing :)
 
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Jul 19, 2011
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applecider said:
I’m curious has anyone here (or anywhere) bought one of these?

I have, and I am still mad at Canon for what they (not) deliver.
Swallowed the bait "to integrate it into my network".
Hook, line and sinker came as I realized that instead Canon uses
this thing to integrate my network into their aftermarket ecosystem.

My idea was to put one of these in all of our studios plus one into
the office, offer clients offload capacities and central backup
while on site, and do so for our own productions as well.

Imagine my surprise as I learned that there is no way to access
the network drive as network drive, no file or folder operations,
no RAW processing...... and you can't just copy or move your
files via LAN.

You want to copy your files to another place? "Simply" hook an
external hard drive to your networked hard drive and then copy
your files to that via a cumbersome web interface.

Okay, then you might want to use it as an image tank for travelling?
Alas, the hard drive is no SSD, and thus not shockproof.
Backing up images to this device increases the risk of loss,
and the copy process is painstakingly slow. Also, it can't be
operated on batteries off grid.

This device is a major feck op in spite of what would have
been possible.

To be fair, there is one scenario where it shines:
Imagine you have elderly parents who aren't very computer
literate but have fast internet (chuckle) and know how to
operate their TV. You put one of these next to their TV, set
it up, create a Canon image gateway (CIG) Account for them
and go home. There you shoot pictures of cats and kids,
dump them to your own connect station and initiate sharing.
The next day (depending on file size, amount and internet speed)
your parents can switch on their TV and watch the pictures.

This could have been a great thing. Canon botched it.
Maybe these hackers turn that useless brick now into at
least a half decent NAS. Would deserve standing ovations.
 
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