Hi Avidpaker -

A fine piece of research! My Motion Eye has gone the way of all things, and I’m going to follow your instructions and switch it. I have a quick question, if you don’t mind: before you started, you mentioned desoldering the PCGA-UVC11A from the USB cable - did you have to do this in the end? How easy was it to remove the webcam CCD/board from the case? Was it just another ribbon cable?

Guessing from your other posts it looks like it was just another cable, but I just wanted to make sure.

Chris

[quote author=“pugwash75”]
How easy was it to remove the webcam CCD/board from the case? Was it just another ribbon cable?

Like Avidpaker said, it’s all plug and play. It’s not that hard but you have to be careful when you detach the ribbon cable from the PCGA-UVC11A board. After that, you have to attach it to the motion eye board.

Thx Avidpaker, my motion eye is back now.. :D .

Until I did the upgrade I had no idea if it was soldered to a board or not, it was just my original question thrown out there for the masses. To answer your question it is just a ribbon cable!

I’ve ordered one of these beasts (it turned out to be a bit complex as I had to buy it from the US, and it’s coming across in the hand luggage of a colleague of mine when he arrives for Christmas) and I’m going to try and swap it out over the Christmas period.

My question is - while I do it, I would be quite happy to make another step-by-step in pictures (much like my “swapping the hard disk for idiots” thing) if enough other people are thinking about doing the swap.

Are many people thinking about it?

Chris

Pics - http://mrb.tagclan.com/gallery2/junk/motioneye/

Oops splendid! Saves me the trouble. Many thanks.

Chris

Well, I finally did this yesterday. Many thanks to avidpaker for the instructions and Mr B for the photographs - they were invaluable. A couple of things I have to add after doing it:

1. While removing the main screen display cover, I noticed that mine actually had quite a lot of adhesive on the right hand side (to the right of the screen, left of the buttons). I had to slide a screwdriver between the plastic frame and the little metal screen surround it to remove the glue.

2. The UV11 is rather hard to disassemble if (like me) you don’t realise that underneath the little rubber feet are two small screws. Ahem.

3. The ribbon cable that was attached to the CCD on my UV11 wasn’t quite the same shape as the one attached to my original MotionEye CCD. The one on my MotionEye had a 90-degree turn in the cable, while the UV11 one didn’t. You have to make sure that the cable goes into the circuit board on the MotionEye the same way up as it did before - this means folding the cable in a rather awkward way and ensuring that the silver-side of the connectors on the end of the ribbon cable points up towards you, not down (as it did on the UV11). Hope that’s clear. If you do put the ribbon cable in the wrong way up, it won’t break it. Don’t ask me how I know that.

4. You don’t need to remove the MotionEye (or either of the circuit boards in it) from the TR. Once the front cover is off the screen, you can remove the lens cover from the MotionEye, undo the two screws and then remove the back cover while the device is still in the frame. If you then close the lid of the laptop, you can unscrew and remove the CCD without actually taking any of the other parts of the MotionEye out.

5. It might have been obvious to everyone else except me, but the clips that hold the ribbon cables in are the sort where you pull them out a little, lift them up and then the ribbon cable itself slides out. The black plastic parts aren’t attached to the ribbon cable.

It’s all working nicely now. I am not entirely sure that the new camera is better quality than the old one - I didn’t use the old one all that much, but I am fairly confident that this one is actually worse. Still, much better than nothing.

I hope I’ve cleared things up rather than making them more complicated,

Chris

what is the resolution of that new camera compare to the old one?
txs

new AX series come with “motion eye”.
does anyone knows if it uses the same camera model as TR’s?
if so then it would probably die again with in a year huh..

my camera also stopped working :cry:

I was just reading reviews for this camera at pricegrabber and 2 out of the 4 people have experienced the same/similar problem that we’ve faced with the camera on our TR’s

http://www.pricegrabber.com/rating_getprodrev.php/masterid=3400797/id_type=masterid

[quote author=“Thom”]what is the resolution of that new camera compare to the old one?
txs

It’s the same as the old one. I don’t think the unit is really wildly different, though the “A” on the end of its model name does imply some sort of progress.

Chris

new AX series come with “motion eye”.
does anyone knows if it uses the same camera model as TR’s?
if so then it would probably die again with in a year huh.

AX and BX series utilize a different webcam than TR or C1 notebooks called: VGP-VCC1.

As for the Motion Eye problem, I wonder how long it will take for Sony to recognize this malfunction and offer a free repair? I used to own VAIO LX series PenTablet and the LCD developed horizontal black lines and it literally took 4 years for Sony to acknowledge this problem and offer a free repair to all LX users worldwide. GRX series has had a Memory Slot malfunction after one year of service and thousands of users reported it to Sony, filed law suits in California and still Sony is silent about it!  :twisted:

Time will show I guess….but due to some of those problems Sony is losing its loyal clientelle….

^ damn. i wonder if they’re gonna recognize the SR-series PCMCIA slot defect… because i still have a 3 lb piece of plastic sitting in my closet…

Thanks Avidpaker!  You saved my day.  I live in Taiwan and my TR3/B was purchased through a middle man via Japan 2 years back.  I had installed Chinese Windows XP and had the japanese Keyboard changed since I can’t stand that ugly short space bar the japanese version came in.  Anyway, I seldom uses the motion eye, but last night, it just died on me.  As I recalled during the past 2 years, the webcam must of been only turned on less than 20 times. NO BS. Anyhow, I was readied to send it in for repair when I found this forum.  I had a friend that had his ccd repair a year ago for 6000NT, that’s $190 in US.  So I ran out to a computer stor down the corner this morning and picked up a UVC 11A for 2900 NT,  $89.  It works!!! And I noticed the microphone might also be scrapped for later use should the one in the TR fails.  Thanks everyone!