Author: RCExplorer – David

In this guide I will show you step by step how to disassemble the Toshiba Camileo P10 and removing unnecessary weight. Take a guess on how much weight you think I can save. The answer can be found at the end of the guide.

weight without an SD-card is 176 grams with battery and 148 grams without

Start by removing the screw that is located inside the tripod connector

Remove the sticker on the front and then remove the screws

Remove the sticker above the display and remove the screws

Flip it over and remove the sticker on the other side and remove the screws

Now you can remove the top

Unscrew this screw

The lens cover is held in place by a quite strong double sided tape, remove it and remove the 4 screws

Underneath this is two more screw, remove them too

You can now remove the right side (the one without the display)

Carefully flip up the side with the display and unscrew the two screws

Now unscrew the two screws holding the flat cable in place

Unplug the cable and remove the display

Remove the back and unscrew the two screws that holds the push button PCB.

You should now have the PCB free from it’s plastic prison

The other side of the PCB, I will now remove some unnecessary components

Some easy bits to remove. The battery connector, flash, flash capacitor and speaker.

All the pieces that was removed

Done

Weight after removing the unnecessary stuff: 27 grams without SD-card
Thats less than the battery weights!
That is a weight saving of 149 grams.
The camera now weights 15% from the original, that’s 85% of the camera in the bin. Naturally I will add heat-shrink and cables that will add some weight. I will also try to make the camera sensor PCB work on a ribbon cable so I can make it pan/tilt.

Update:
I have to admit defeat. I can’t get the camera to work with a remote camera head. I’ve been struggling with it for over 10 hours without any successes.

This is how it looked after I mounted the ribbon cables. I measured all the connections, but I got no picture. So I started trowing everything I could at it…

The first thing I tried was to wrap the cable in a copper foil that then connected to ground. – No picture.

I then tried shortening the ribbon cable to half the length, still wrapped in the grounded copper foil. – No picture.

Tried shortening it to 1/4 of the original length. – Picture! But an unusable one. A lot of static the picture kept cutting out. The cable was now so short that it was unpractical. It was stiff and couldn’t be used for pan/tilt.

So I decided to remove the ribbon cable and solder individual cables by hand. I started with 15 cm cables. A lot of fiddling and time later – Picture! But an unusable one once again, lots of static and cutting out.

I desoldered the cables and shortened them to the shortest distance I thought it would be possible to have a working pan/tilt, which was about 8 cm. – I got picture but it still kept cutting out occasionally. Time to give up…

I decided to put the original connectors back on. I though that a working but bulky HD camera is better than a non working one.

10 hours, 360 solder points and 180 measurements later I was back where I started.

This camera seems to be very sensitive to impedance differences. Oh well, I’ll have to do with a bulky HD camera for now.

Update 2:
After the failure with the ribbon-cable I decided to make a test flight with the camera in a fixed possission on the Twin Star II.

Shortly after takeoff I found that the stock lens is horrible to fly with! Way to much focal length, so I decided to modify it a little…

I now use a f3.6 lens that was stock on the KX171 camera. Much better! See for your self:

I used the front from the other camera that I modified and the IR filter from the KX171 camera. This is necessary due to the fact that the IR filter was built in on the stock lens and was impossible to remove without breaking.

A little glue is all it takes.

Update 3:
I decided to have myself just one more try on making the HD camera work with a remote sensor PCB.

At least it looked nice.

I was super careful with every solder point and confirmed that every point was good in a microscope. I also measured all the connections with a multimeter. I pair twinned all the cables and then twisted ground wires around every pair. I then added epoxy to make sure that no cable or solder joint would be stressed or damaged while testing the camera out.

I hooked up the display and plugged in the USB power… First a flicker on the display… Then a for a split second a black display… But then! I can see my self! I’ve got picture!
But? There is something wrong? The picture isn’t moving?
I stretched out my hand and grabbed the camera lens and swiveled it around a bit, but the picture remained the same. No matter what I did, the picture wouldn’t change. So I tried rebooting the camera. The display flickered on and only displayed a black picture with the OSD information on it this time. I tried again, and again, and again. I tried pushing buttons, moving the camera head around, letting the power be unplugged for minutes, letting the power be plugged in for minutes before powering it up. No matter what I tried I could not get it to work. I couldn’t even get a frozen picture like the first time I booted it up. After an hour, with no progress, I stopped trying.
I had one more thing to try before I gave up. I powered up my soldering iron, plugged in my heat gun and starting cutting up some heat shrink. I decided to shorten every single wire by about half or 4 cm.

A couple of hours work later I was done. Ready for another try. I plugged in the display once more and powered it up… Black… only a black screen with the OSD numbers… I tried again. Same results. I tried pushing buttons, plugging stuff in an out but I knew, deep inside that I was defeated, once again by my archenemy, the Camlileo P10…

Update 4:
I managed to get the camera back together and working as normal again. I have now given up on trying to make it work with a remote sensor head. So instead I made a simple pan/tilt system!

The test flight went great! The sun had just broken over the clouds and there was a mist over the town. The flight was so beautiful;

The Pan/Tilt setup seams to wok OK, there are some issues with vibrations from the servos and motors which ruined the video somewhat. But to be honest, it worked better than I thought it would do.

I’m planning on making some improvements to the pan/tilt system to get it to be a little more aerodynamic as well as making the servo movements a little smoother.