HP Photosmart E337 User manual

HP E337 MODIFICATION
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BFoutdoors assumes no responsibility for personal injury or property damage
resulting from these modifications. Furthermore, modification of commercial
products is done at your own risk, and can result in permanent fatal damage to
the camera if not properly done. Please use extreme caution since high voltage
exists within camera flash units. Take proper steps to assure all energy has been
discharged from the capacitors, etc.), before touching any components inside
the camera. You should AT LEAST cover the camera lens and take a flash
picture, and then IMEDIATELY open the battery cover to prevent the flash from
recharging. Even so, there will still be some charge leftover that might shock
you, or destroy the camera if shorted somewhere!
Before beginning this hack, you need to remove the batteries and memory card
from the camera…and save the refreshments for celebration afterwards
:)
The first step will be to remove the 6 screws on the underside of the camera, one
of them is hiding deep down inside the battery compartment, and it actually holds
the Shutter/Power board in place.

The Shutter /Power cover plate needs be removed, or taken off. Start by prying
the bottom edge out with a fingernail, then use a small screwdriver to pry it out of
a snap lock of sorts, holding it on about halfway up the left side.
Now you slide the Power/Shutter plate off. Note that there is a catch on the top
middle section slide the plate out to the right, as shown, and it will pop off.

You will now see there are 3 more screws you have to remove, 2 on the side,
where the Power/Shutter plate covered them, and one on the top of the camera.
I have already removed the one on top, but it was in the corner where I circled.
After removing these next 3 screws, you can finally take the front section off of
the camera. Start this from the side where we just removed two of the screws.
The other side clips in place, and it can be stubborn, but gentle twisting as you
open it will help it come off there.

The back case should come right off now, and we can get to main board.
Using an ISO setting of 400 makes for much better night pictures, and I feel this
is needed. I found that when we set this camera to sports mode, it will go to ISO
400, but when we power it off, it returns back to the default setting of ISO 200. I
found we could prevent this if we press the menu button while turning the camera
on. So, we want to solder a control wire to the Menu button. This wire will later be
twisted to, and connected to, the power wire on the opposite side of the servo
connector… or at the controller boards Power connection. By adding this menu
wire, and connecting the power and Menu wires outside the camera, the camera
will still work normally outside the trail cam. We will start the hack by soldering
the ground/common wire to the big solder lug circled in black. Solder the menu
wire where I have circled in red.

Now peel back the protective foil covering the top right back edge of this board,
and solder the power and shutter control wires as shown.
When routing the wires out, take care so that they won’t interfere with any of the
buttons and switches on the board. Then reverse our steps and reassemble the
camera.

As I said we run a 4-wire connector at the camera, here is where I installed it. On
the controller board side we will join the RED power and menu wires, so that
when connected to the controller, the camera will always turn on in ACTION
Mode, and keep the ISO 400 setting. Here the black wire is common ground,
and yellow connects the shutter.

Camera Settings and setup
Most settings will be the default settings there are only 2 that will help.
1. Turn the camera on and press the menu button. Scroll through the
options and there is one that allows us to make the LCD screen darker.
Since it can’t be turned off this is a valuable power savings option. Once
set this setting seems to remain in the camera.
2. With camera on, again press the menu button. You will see
SHOOTING MODE in this you will choose ACTION (This is ISO of 400
and helps greatly with our night pictures). Then use the return button to
get it back in Picture mode. You will see a Runners icon in the bottom left
hand corner of the screen. Now power the camera off and Plug in the
servo connector. When the sensor turns the camera on, it will always
come on in the Action mode/ISO 400. This setting will default back to
normal shooting mode when powered on while disconnected from the
servo connector, and needs to be reset each time you use it in the trail
camera.