branch. Its manual comes in English and Chinese, the pen itself lacks manufacturer mark except a tiny label
on the white plastic plug on the USB connector side saying "Golden Land hd Video".
There are various James Bond wannabe things on the market these days. Mostly from China.
One of them is a spy pen. A thick, functional metal pen with a built-in video camera. Put it in your pocket, press a button, and order a shaken-not-stirred martini. It's not expensive, too; around $50-$70 will fetch you a 2 gigabyte model.
This particular model was bought in Prague, Czech Republic, in a GM Electronics
branch. Its manual comes in English and Chinese, the pen itself lacks manufacturer mark except a tiny label
on the white plastic plug on the USB connector side saying "Golden Land hd Video".
The pen can be unscrewed in half. Inside it there is an USB connector. When connected to the computer, the device acts as an USB Mass Storage device, formatted with FAT32 filesystem and USB ID 115e:0003. The disk has no partition table; it behaves like a USB Floppy. The recorded videos are stored in a subdirectory CAMERA_RECORD, with file names like RECORD000001.AVI, numbered sequentially. The pen remembers the sequence numbers even when files are erased from the memory.
The files are AVI files. The audio encoding is PCM, 8000 Hz, 16 bits; lousy but adequate-ish for speech.
The video is color, in resolution of 352x288, in H.263 encoding, 12 frames/sec, about 1423 kbps.
The video is playable by VLC
in Windows and VLC or MPlayer in Linux with no issues.
The device is compatible with Windows. It however has some issues with Linux.
The device contains two crystals; one 12.000 MHz, one unmarked, assuming 32.768 kHz.
Create a file named "SystemTime.txt", with a single line in format
yyyy-mm-dd HH:MM:SS
e.g. 2009-10-05 04:30:00
Then save it to the root directory of the spy pen.
When connected to the computer, the pen takes about 10 seconds to be registered by the kernel (Linux 2.4.21). When connected to USB2.0 connector, the operation is highly unreliable; USB packets are getting lost, the device often timeouts and then appears like disconnected. File transfers are next to impossible. When connected to an USB1.1 port, through a hub, the operation was slow but fairly reliable. Copying files both to and from the pen then worked fairly well. Other configurations weren't tried.
The heart of the pen is a board with electronics, 15x70 millimeters, with an attached USB A connector. The system battery is a single 220 mAh Li-polymer cell, with its own integrated protection circuitry.
The pen was disassembled by gently knocking the board out with a hammer aimed at the USB connector. The board is held in position by a plastic ring 4-5mm thick between the USB connector and the pen housing. The battery leads were torn during the disassembly, however their reattachment was fairly easy.
The scale grid, wherever shown, is 5x5 mm.
 Spy pen |  Business end |  Start/stop button |  USB connector |
 camera |  Inside |  System board top |  System board bottom |
 System board side |  System board side |  System board top detail |  System board top detail |
 Board top, scale grid |  Board top, scale grid |  Board bottom, scale grid |
MPlayer 1.0pre6-2.96 (C) 2000-2004 MPlayer TeamCPU: Intel Pentium 4/Xeon/Celeron Foster (Family: 8, Stepping: 4) Detected cache-line size is 64 bytes CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 0 Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 SSE
Setting up LIRC support... Playing RECORD000004.AVI. AVI file format detected. VIDEO: [H263] 352x288 24bpp 12.000 fps 1423.3 kbps (173.7 kbyte/s) Clip info: Software: ankarec
=====================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [pcm] Uncompressed PCM audio decoder AUDIO: 8000 Hz, 1 ch, 16 bit (0x10), ratio: 16000->16000 (128.0 kbit) Selected audio codec: [pcm] afm:pcm (Uncompressed PCM)
=====================================================================
[gl] Using 4 as slice height (0 means image height). SDL: Using driver: fbcon
=====================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family Selected video codec: [ffh263] vfm:ffmpeg (FFmpeg H263+ decoder)
=====================================================================
Checking audio filter chain for 8000Hz/1ch/16bit -> 8000Hz/2ch/16bit... AF_pre: af format: 2 bps, 1 ch, 8000 hz, little endian signed int AF_pre: 8000Hz 1ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian) AO: [oss] 8000Hz 2ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian) (2 bps) Building audio filter chain for 8000Hz/1ch/16bit -> 8000Hz/2ch/16bit... Starting playback... VDec: vo config request - 352 x 288 (preferred csp: Planar YV12) VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0) Movie-Aspect is 1.33:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect. VO: [sdl] 352x288 => 384x288 Planar YV12
Bus 003 Device 028: ID 115e:0003 (?) (USB DISK) (200605091234)Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 1.10 bDeviceClass 0 Interface bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x115e idProduct 0x0003 bcdDevice 1.00 iManufacturer 1 ? iProduct 2 USB DISK iSerial 3 200605091234 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 39 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 85 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xc0 Self Powered MaxPower 500mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 3 bInterfaceClass 8 Mass Storage bInterfaceSubClass 6 SCSI bInterfaceProtocol 80 Bulk (Zip) iInterface 4 ? Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0008 1x 8 bytes bInterval 10 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x82 EP 2 IN bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0040 1x 64 bytes bInterval 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x03 EP 3 OUT bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0040 1x 64 bytes bInterval 0
Aug 8 21:41:55 hostname hub.c: new USB device 00:1d.7-6, assigned address 26Aug 8 21:41:55 hostname Manufacturer: ? Aug 8 21:41:55 hostname Product: USB DISK Aug 8 21:41:55 hostname SerialNumber: 200605091234 Aug 8 21:41:55 hostname scsi4 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices Aug 8 21:41:55 hostname Vendor: Model: PMP Platform OPN Rev: Aug 8 21:41:55 hostname Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02 Aug 8 21:41:55 hostname Attached scsi removable disk sdd at scsi4, channel 0, id 0, lun 0 Aug 8 21:41:55 hostname SCSI device sdd: 492672 4096-byte hdwr sectors (2018 MB) Aug 8 21:41:55 hostname sdd: Write Protect is off Aug 8 21:41:55 hostname sdd:<7>usb-storage: queuecommand() called Aug 8 21:41:55 hostname unknown partition table Aug 8 21:41:55 hostname usb.c: USB disconnect on device 00:1d.7-6 address 26