an7a0% Hacking the Kaori i Action Camera Hacking the Xiaomi Yi Action Camera August 2015 Introduction The Xiaomi Vi action camera was inlzoduced in early 2015, [tis similar in many respects to some of the popular GoPro cameras, but costs considerably less (about $70 as of August 2015). Unlike many of the cheap GoPro competitors, the Xioami Yi has an excellent sensor (16 megapixel Sony Exmor R BSI CMOS) and processor (Ambarella A7LS), and is capable of producing excellent images and video. Unfortunately, straight out of the box, its performance isn't nearly as good as it could be. This page describes some tweaks and modifications that can dramatically improve this ‘camera's image quality. Image Quality Weaknesses ‘The Xiaomi Yi has an excellent 16 megapixel sensor and a 155 degree fisheye lens that is surprisingly sharp across the most of the frame, By default, the images it produces are pretty good, but there are a number of issues that negatively affect image quality 1. Poor Focus. The camera has a fixed-focus lens that has been prefocused at the factory. Unfortunately, it ‘seems that the Xiaomi Yi has been focused for the "selfie enthusiast’, optimally focused on subjects only a few feet from the camera. My guess is that this was a deliberate design decision. After all, wth such a wide-angle lens and small sensor, even if the camera is focused at 6 feet, the depth of field is enormous, and subjects at much greater distances are technically “in focus" as well. The problem is that “in focus" doesn't mean optimally focused (see my depth-of-ield calculator for more information). And, in the case of the Xiaomi Yi, objects at distances of more than about 20 or 30 feet appear visibly softer than those al 6 feet, even though they are al technically “in focus’. Interestingly, when viewing the video produced by the Xiaomi Vitis much harder to detect this focus problem than when looking atthe stil images. This is because the video is 1080P, so each individual video frame only contains 2 milion pixel. In conirast, the stilimages contain 16 milion pixels, making this focus problem much more apparent. When dovmsized from 16 milion to 2 million pixels, the softness in distant objects is hard or impossible to detect. 2. High ISO. By default the Xiaomi Yi typically chooses fast shutter speeds. This probably makes sense for an action camera that might often be in rapid motion, and slow shutter speeds could produce blurry images. However, in order to achieve these fast shutter speeds, the Xiaomi has to also use a high ISO setting. Higher 1SO settings add noise and reduce detail in images. 3. Aggressive Noise reduction, The Xiaomi Yi shoots JPEG images, and applies an aggressive amount of noise reduction to the images. AS a result the images look very smooth, but a lat of fine detall has been lost. Perhaps to counteract the deiail oss as a result of the noise reduction, the Xiaomi Yi applies a considerable amount of sharpening to the image. The result is that distant objects often appear plasticky and featureless, 4. JPEG only, The camera only produces JPEG images. RAW fles are favored by many photographers for their abilty to allow for much greater post-processing lattude than JPEG images. however, viewing at 100% reveals poor focus and Viewed at small sizes, the images from Xiaomi Yi look good. jghowever, wawing at 100% reveals poor focus Improving Image Quali hpi tanbavare.comisaomiyi.tim 16an7a0% Hacking the Kaori i Action Camera Luckily, all of these problems can be solved with some minor hacking, This is probably a good place to issue a standard disclaimer that hacking your camera will almost certainly void the warranty, and could damage or break the camera, That said, | haven't experienced any problems doing anything described here, 1 Focus adjustment. As mentioned above, the camera's focus was fixed at the factory and was not designed to be adjusted by owners. However, itisn't impossible. The lens’ focus can be adjusted simply by rotating it. Rotating clockwise makes it focus at longer distances; counter-clockwise rotation causes it to focus at shorter distances, in order to rotate the lens, the camera's case must be opened and some glue that normally prevents the lens from rotating must be removed. Youtube fas many videos that ilustrate how to do this. Most users find that a ‘small clockwise rotation of about 15.20 degrees causes the camera to be optimally focused at longer distances. Manual selection of ISO, exposure, whitebalance, noise reduction (and more). The Xiaomi doesn't offer the user any abilty to change many important photographic options such as ISO, shutter speed, white-balance, etc However, it tums out that the Xiaomi has an undocumented “back door” that allows for adjustment of these parameters as well as many others: When the camera starts up it checks to see if there is a file on the SD card with a name of "autoexec.ash’. If so, it will read that file and execute any commands contained in that fle. The ‘commands are undocumented, but intrepid hackers have already worked out what commands can be used to ‘adjust exposure length (shutter speeds of up to 8 seconds), ISO (100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12800, 25600) and to disable auto-whitebalance (which sets the white-balance at a daylight preset). The Xiaomi Yi's noise reduction can be tured down somewhat, but not completely disabled (not yet, at least). There are many resources on the web with information about the autoexec.ash file and the commands that can be used to adjust the Xiaomi Yi's settings. Here are a couple of good places to start reading: one, two. RAW format. The autoexec.ash fle can also be used to force the camera to produce raw fles (in addition to the JPEG images that the camera produces). Raw files contain the raw sensor data prior to any sharpening, noise reduction, contrast adjustment, white balancing and compression. All these adjustments can be made later when processing the images. When raw capture is enabled on the Xiaomi i, itwill create two lls for each shutter press: one with a "jpg" fle extension and the other with a "RAW" extension (e.g, YOXJ0298.jpg and YDXJ0288,RAW). The raw files arent in a format that is readily readable by most software, but can be easily converted (details below) to a standard DNG fle which can be opened by Photoshop and other image editing software Rotating the lens clockwise by about 10-15 degrees produces much better focus on distant objects bitpshwwawoaware.comixiaomiyi iman7a0% Hacking te Xiaomi Vi Action Camera down noise reduction as much as possible, JPEG images adjustment (shown here) as well as retention of much Stl exhibit oss of fine detail, ‘more fine detail jurator (XYC) Although the autoexec. ash file allows the user to adjust the settings on the camera, itisn't always convenient or easy to adjust the contents of the file, particularly when out “in the field photographing, My solution was to create a small program called "Xiaomi Vi Configucator® (XYC) that runs inside the camera and allows the user to configure exposure, ISO and other settings via an interactivé menu, Once the user has changed the settings, XYC creates a new autoexec.ash file and the settings are applied next time the camera starts. Xiaomi Yi Cont XYC takes advantage of the fact that the camera runs a small version of the Linux operating system, and can run a telnet server. This means that any telnet client can connect to the camera and run the XYC program on the Xiaomi Yi camera. Telnet clients are freely available for all operating systems (e.g. Windows, iOS, Android, iPhone, Unix, etc.) This makes XYC a truly cross-platform approach for changing settings on the Xiaomi Yi camera, This thread has more details on accessing the Xiaomi Yi using telnet. ‘The steps for running XYC vary a litle depending on what type of computer or phone you are using and the specifics of your telnet client software, but the general procedure is as follows: 1. First time only: Copy the xyc.sh file to the top level of the camera's micro SD card. 2. First time only: Create an empty file (no contents) named “enable_info_display script’, and place this at the top level of the camera's micro SD card. This file instructs the camera to start the telnet server when the camera tums on. 3, Turn on the Xiaomi Yi's wifi, and connect your computeriphone to the xiaomi Y's wifi network, (Using the official Xiaomi Yi app to connect to the Xiaomi Yi's wifi network may be helpful in this step). 4. Use your telnet client to establish a telnet connection to the Xiaomi Yi. the IP address for the camera is 192.168.42.1. The user ID is "root", and there is no password. 6. First time only: If this is the first time you are running XYC, you will need to change the fle permissions for xyc.sh so that it can be executed. In order to do this, type the following command at the telnet console: chmod 755 /impftuse_dxyc.sh 6, Run XYC with the following command: Ampftuse_dxyc.sh 7. XYC will present a menu of choices that allow you to view/adjust camera settings (exposure, ISO, auto- \Whitebalance, noise reduction and RAW format). Type a number to select a menu choice. Settings can be changed by entering numeric values or "y" or "n" responses. In most cases hiting enter” will retain the defaull/current value for a setting. XYC also allows you to create a time-lapse script that will execute the next time the camera starts. The camera's built-in time-lapse feature does not appear to work correctly with RAW. files, so XYC's time-lapse feature may be useful instead if shooting RAW fies. & After making any desired configuration changes, restart the camera in order for them to take effect, tp thvwe favbaware.comixiaomiyi. timan7a0% Hacking the Xacmi Vi Action Camera cre cr Create/ttun tine-lepse ser Rony tasters cere eee eee) cares ROO ace) COME Nec ies Seren eee) pas pas XYC main menu on an Android phone XYC settings adjustment using an Android phone bitpshwwawoaware.comixiaomiyi im 46an7a0% Serer ee ee ees yr en Hacking the Xacmi Vi Action Camera Sees Serer ee ee ees yr en Cen tenseestes Create/un tine-lapse serip fren per ieete) fren per ieete) eae eee acy) ate entrees) See ace eT eel 1] View custom ae eset eas eee ees omer anes ee ee) ‘Showing SD card information Creating a time lapse script Creating DNG Raw Files ‘The raw files produced by the Xiaomi Yi need to be converted to a DNG format so that they can be read by standard raw processing software. | use a modified version of the procedure In order to create DNG files from the Xiaomi Yi's raw files, two steps are necessary: 1. Run raw2dng, a program originally created for Nikon Coolpix cameras but also works well with the Xiaomi Yi files, to convert the raw data into a DNG fle. | use the command-line version of this program (: ) rather than the graphical version because it allows for the automation of DNG creation (see below) 2, Run exiftoo! ( ) to modify the “whitelevel” and "blacklevel” points in the DNG file, and embed 0 that the DNG files open in Adobe Camera Raw with defaults that approximate the appearance of the Xiaomi Y''s JPEG images. ‘On Windows computers, both these steps can be combined in a single step and invoked from within Windows Explorer with a inthe you may need to modify the batch file for your computer to make sure it contains the correct locations for where you have placed raw2dng.exe and exiftool.exe. After installing the batch file in the "send to" folder, you should be able to right-click one or more files and use the "send to" popup menu to convert the files into DNG format. bitpshwwawoaware.comixiaomiyi imar7ao1s Hacking te Xiaomi Vi Action Camera ‘Converting RAW files to DNG format Final Thoughts ‘The Xiaomi Yi is a great litle camera, but itis a pity that it comes from the factory with a lens focused for the selfie- enthusiast and image settings that destroy a lot of the detail that the camera is capable of capturing. | hope that a future version of the Xiaomi Yi (a Xiaomi Yi Pro, perhaps?) might be targeted towards photographers who want more manual control over the camera and the ability to capture detalled landscapes where distant subjects are well focused. ‘The current Xiaomi Yi can be hacked to do this, but most people won't bother, and if they look too closely at the images may end up concluding that the camera just isn't very good Downloads + Xiaomi Vi Configurator (XYC) program and raw conversion batch file (updated Aug 15 2015) Links and More Reading Discussion forum for Xiaomi Vi camera ‘Max Lyons Software: http:/imww.tawbaware.com! ‘Max Lyons Image Gallery: http:/ivaww.tawbaware.com/maxlyons Contact: maxiyons@tawbaware.com np tavbaware.comixiaomiyi. tim