UPDATE 13-June-2002 - Windows CE PocketPC Ralf Schieferdecker has made a remote controller QRemote, for Windows CE 3.0 PocketPCs.

UPDATE 23-August-2001 - Casio Pocketviewer PDA Wolfgang Ortmann has made a remote controller QVControl, for a Casio Pocketviewer PDA. Top

UPDATE 14-May-2001 - Windows Melih Ozbek has written a specialist macro recording program QV3000EX Macro Recorder , for Windows platforms. It's now freeware. Top

UPDATE 08-Jan-2001 - Psion (EPOC) Andrew Gregory has written a tool, QVRemote, for all EPOC machines, including the Psion Series 5, Series 5mx, Revo, MC218, and Osaris. Top

Windows Eckhard Henkel has used the protocol to develop DiCaControl for Windows to control the QV3000EX from Windows 95/98/NT and do time lapse photography followed by download - like a webcam. DiCaControl's first review from digitalkamera.de - congrats Eckhard! Top

Joecool Weis has written QVTimer a more basic (but prettier!) remote control and time lapse photography software. Top

Command line control using MS-DOS I've written an MS-DOS batch file called camcmd.bat that controls the camera from the command line under Win9x/NT. A similar type of batch file called webcam.bat will take x photos every y minutes from the command line. For installation and usage tips and tricks for both the above batch files, see below. Top

Palm OS Eckhard Henkel has also written DiCaControl for Palm OS. Top

Linux Robert Harrison has written qvrec.py - "a little GUI" for Linux using Python. Top

Windows CE Pocket Teraterm a free terminal program for Windows CE with a build-in macro interpreter that can communicate with the serial port. Thanks to Thomas Kroener on the dpreview Casio forum for pointing this out. A small example macro for TeraTerm: Shutter = 'B' ; press button Off = 'b' ; release button send Off ; better do this first :loop send Shutter ; take the picture pause 1 send Off pause 4 ; delay for saving image to CF-card goto loop Top

Apple Newton Marco Mangani wrote a tool for Apple Newton (including time lapse function). Top

Hewlett Packard 48C Programmable Calculator And Marco has now also written Casio QV3K Remote 1.0 for the HP 48C. Download page for all HP 48C comms programs is here. Top

Tips & tricks to using camcmd.bat & webcam.bat

• Right-click on camcmd.bat or webcam.bat and save it as 'camcmd.bat' or 'webcam.bat'.
• Type 'camcmd' to get these instructions.
• Webcam.bat is much simpler to use, just type 'webcam x y' where x is the minutes between photos (currently up to 20) and y is the number of photos to take (blank for continuous).
• It is assumed that the com port is 1 and is unused by other programs. If you need to use a serial port other than COM1, you can edit the batch file using notepad or any other text editor and at this line:

  mode com1: 9600,N,8,1, > nul

  change the 'com1' to 'com2'.
• If the com port is in use by other program then you'll have to free it up within that program. ActiveSync for Windows CE/PPCs is one such program, it will bind the port waiting for a PPC to synchromise. You'll have to turn off the option to connect by serial connection in 'Settings'.
• These batch files make use of a Win9x utility called 'choice.com' in 'C:\Windows\Command' to wait the required amount of seconds between keys. Windows NT does not have this, but you can copy over 'choice.com' from Win9x to WinNT with no problems. Put it in the C:\WinNT directory for the batch files to find it.

Further Tips & tricks to using camcmd.bat

• If you want to focus and take a photo, simply type 'camcmd take' at the command line.
• I've divided commands into 'tasks' and 'keys'. 'Keys' are what you get if you just press one of the keys. 'Tasks' are many such keystrokes combined. So if you type 'camcmd qual' the Menu, Set, Set, Down, Set, Up, Set keys get pressed.
• As DOS can't tell what the camera settings are you'll have to watch the camera LCD when changing these.
• If you want to change a setting on a menu that has 3 or more settings, you can move up the menu as well as down. So if you want to change the quality setting from Normal to Fine, type 'camcmd qual u' to move up the menu.
• If you want to zoom in (tele) type 'camcmd zoomin' at the command line. The zoom will move in a short distance and stop. To zoom in further, repeat the command. The same goes for the 'camcmd zoomout' command.

Tested on a PIII 450MHz running WinNT 4 SP6a and a P133 laptop running Win95 OSR2.

Notes on DOS commands used

Heavy use is made of 'for .. do' loops to process many commands in a single line.

When the MODE command is used to set port parameters, those parameters will stay active until the current command prompt is closed. So the section of the file that uses the mode command, ':cam', is called by the other sections using the '%comspec% /c %0 cam' command. That way a new command session gets opened, used for the comms and closed, so that other software can still be used to access the camera by the serial port.

'%0' will evaluate to whatever command was typed to start the batch, so the batch files can in fact have any name.