March 5, 2024

Teslong Borescope

I bought one of these in December of 2023 for $55 from Amazon. It has a flexible 45 inch rod and a USB cable that ends in the good old rectangular "USB-A". It shipped with a USB-C adapter attached and I was thinking I would have to dig out a USB-C hub until I realized there was an adapter present.

I see people calling this and endoscope, and apparently that is correct. If it is flexible, it is an endoscope, if it is rigid it is a borescope.

I plug it into my linux system and see this in the logs:

Specifications

The label on the box says "TS NTG100-1.2M TE1301 2021".
They say it has a 1 megapixel camera, with a 0.2 inch diameter image circle and 0.4 inch depth.

Using it with linux

Mar  5 18:13:51 trona audit: BPF prog-id=189 op=UNLOAD
Mar  5 18:14:06 trona kernel: usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
Mar  5 18:14:06 trona kernel: usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=1a40, idProduct=0801, bcdDevice= 1.00
Mar  5 18:14:06 trona kernel: usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=1, SerialNumber=0
Mar  5 18:14:06 trona kernel: usb 1-1: Product: USB 2.0 Hub
Mar  5 18:14:06 trona kernel: hub 1-1:1.0: USB hub found
Mar  5 18:14:06 trona kernel: hub 1-1:1.0: 4 ports detected
Mar  5 18:14:07 trona kernel: usb 1-1.4: new high-speed USB device number 3 using xhci_hcd
Mar  5 18:14:07 trona kernel: usb 1-1.4: New USB device found, idVendor=f007, idProduct=c999, bcdDevice= 4.25
Mar  5 18:14:07 trona kernel: usb 1-1.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
Mar  5 18:14:07 trona kernel: usb 1-1.4: Product: Teslong Camera
Mar  5 18:14:07 trona kernel: usb 1-1.4: Manufacturer: HES-210425
Mar  5 18:14:07 trona kernel: videodev: Linux video capture interface: v2.00
Mar  5 18:14:07 trona kernel: usb 1-1.4: Found UVC 1.00 device Teslong Camera (f007:c999)
Mar  5 18:14:07 trona kernel: usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo

Cheese

One suggestion is to use "cheese" with this. I do "dnf install cheese", then try to run it.
It core dumps with the message: 
Unable to initialize Clutter: Unable to initialize the Clutter backend: no available drivers found.
Clutter is apparently an OpenGL graphics canvas library, that can be used for media playback.

Vlc

I use dnf to install this. I type "vlc" and along the left is a big menu. Under devices I see "video devices" and when I select this I see "Teslong Camera".

And this works!. I get a nice window showing video from the camera.

Lights

Some very bright LED's (a ring of 6) come on when you plug it in, and do a nice job. The description claims that the brightness is adjustable. And it is! The cable has a thumbwheel that controls the LED brightness. The camera does some kind of auto brightness control which sort of frustrates my use of the LED brightness.
Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Digital Photography Info / tom@mmto.org