You might remember the adorable chobi cam, a tiny toy camera I used to take with me when running – back in 2013. How can it be that long ago?

Anyway it’s been on the fridge for ages (it’s magnetised) and I decided that I’d probably re-embrace running if I reinstated the practice of taking photos on the way. To my horror, the battery no longer holds charge, so I can only use it tethered – which is pretty pointless.

I could either find a tiny new battery and splice the connecting wires (way too tiny to solder) or I could buy a replacement. Sadly my beloved Japan Trend Shop is sold out of all varieties of chobi, so I took to eBay and picked up a tiny spycam for less than $9 . This was roughly 1/8 of what I paid for chobi (you can see where this is going).

It arrived on Thursday and came with an Ace! manual:

So Mini Camer ! The Smallest! But it can take video, audio, and photo. So lovely design just for lady or girls as gifts.

And naturally it broke within less than 24 hours – I’d taken maybe four test photos.

By broken, I mean all the photos were suddenly like this:

I did what any normal person would do and pulled it apart. All the bits were floating loose (in contrast, chobi has everything nicely silicon-ed in place), so I shoved everything back in properly and got it working again. Though I don’t hold out much hope for it staying intact without some assistance.

Here’s some output.

Can’t say that I’m all that jazzed. I particularly don’t care for the aspect ratio and that I can’t remove the date/ time – despite applying all sorts of methods found on the InformationSuperHighway.

It ain’t no chobi!

I thought I might steal the battery and put it in chobi – but alas, it is 5V and chobi is 3.7V.

Maybe I should just start taking my phone out with me?