Spreads needs CHDK to be installed on the cameras in order to work. CHDK is a volunteer project to extend the capabilities of Canon cameras. Since it is a third party modification, there is always a risk of problems and it must be ported and tested on each new Canon camera that is released.

While testing the ELPH 160 port of the software, one user ended up with permanent damage to their cameras. The cause of this damage is believed to be fixed, but it is not completely certain because others have not been able to reproduce the problem.

The bug that damaged the camera happened while using the CHDK as a standalone camera to take raw (DNG) images. The SD card in the camera was almost full. There was some kind of memory corruption in the camera and this caused permanent damage.

To read more about the problem, you can see the original posts by Scannerall in the development thread.

Since the bug can only happen in this very particular circumstance, it is easy to avoid. CHDK is loaded from the special SD card each time the camera boots up. So if you want to use your ELPH 160 camera normally, remove the SD card with CHDK software and use different SD card.

This bug will not affect you when using the camera as part of a book scanner using Spreads. This is because Spreads never saves any image on the camera. Whenever a photograph is captured in Spreads, it is immediately downloaded to the Raspberry Pi (or other controller) instead. This means that the SD card can never fill up. These cameras are completely safe from this bug when used as part of a book scanner.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email help@tenrec.builders for assistance.