Widget: BLE remote control for Insta360 One R 360° Action Cam

[updated 2023-04-05]

A widget to remote control (via Bluetooth) Insta360's One R & X cameras.

https://apps.garmin.com/en-EN/apps/bb53f4bb-6c8c-4369-bca9-84cc09b25526

Also available as a data-field for touch based Edge device

https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/f0cdaa9c-5733-4748-ba66-1c7a3b008922

Insta360 Remote Control

Features:

  • Start / Stop Recording
  • Select  video or photo shooting mode (Standard, HDR, Time-lapse, 24-25-30 fps, etc).
  • Send GPS telemetry to the camera to be stored in the video file.
  • Add a "Highlight" marker in the video file (not available in the DF).
  • Add a "Track That" marker  in the video file(not available in the DF).
  • Last state is saved, so will resume where it was if the widget exits or was disconnected.

Known limitation & issues:

  • Users have reported that this widget also works with the One X, X2 & X3, but the menus for the various shooting modes are only the ones available one the One R
  • Same goes with the 4K & 1inch module of the One R: only the shooting modes for the 360° module are availbale
  • The widget will auto exit after some time (depending on your device). This is a limitation from Garmin.If you have a newr watch (starting with Fenix 7) you can use the widget as an app, and it won't exit,
  • The widget can be launched from within one of Garmin's official activity (but not if you are in Glance mode) by pressing & holding the back button.
  • There is no countdown / delay option
  • While the widget is active, if the recording is started or stopped from the camera, the widget will react accordingly but will not know in which mode the camera is in.
  • When starting the widget, if it indicates that the camera is still recording and it's not the case, got to the menu and re-select a shooting mode. This will reset the widget.

This thread is to discuss problems with the widget and also possible future functionality.

Have fun!

Greg

  • Works with One X2 but you will need to toggle first the "GPS ON" on the menu selection to be able to have telemetry data.  However, when you exit and re-enter the widget, although it selected the "GPS ON" mode already, it does not look for the GPS signal anymore.  So I have to go back to "GPS OFF" then again select "GPS ON" in the menu selection to make it work again.  Hope this can be fixed for the One X2.

  • Hi are.fabula, 

         Oh ok, thanks for the reply. And thanks for all the assistance rendered throughout. Am enjoying the app. Hope the bug is fixed in due time. Rgds

  • My nRF52840  arrived and I'm now trying to understand the traffic between the remote and Go2 camera. Wireshark returns a bunch of btatt messages and the only things that I've found so far is that if I send an empty UUID: 0xb005 command, the camera turns on but disconnects from where the command came from. I've also found out that it uses  CRC-16 (Modbus) checksum for the messages but I'm still trying to find the correct message to start and stop the pro video recording. It seems the UUID for these services are 0xb002 but no success on my trials yet. 

    Here are some packet's values that I've collected for the ATT protocol (maybe it makes more sense to you than to me)

    0xb002: ff091 e0100 01 5e 3d
    0xb002: ff091 e0100 01 5e 3d
    0xb002: ff091 e0100 02 1e 3c
    0xb002: ff091 a0100 5d 5f 34
    0xb002: ff090 e0100 01 5a fd
    0xb002: ff090 50100 02 18 d8

    2 last characters are CRC

  • I'm a bit rusty with my BLE protocol,  but as I remember a UUID is a chanel (or service) to communicate with the camera. The various insta360 camera have 3 UUID. One read only, one read/write and one for notification. The UUID are advertised by the camera, the one for read/write that I'm using to send commands is 0000BE81-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb, the notification UUID is similar, and is read to get info out of the camera. Those UUID are the same across all camera models.

    Your values don't match what I've seen with other cameras. When you use the GO2 remote control, you should see both the command and the response from the camera...

  • Does anyone know how long it takes for the widget to stop working? I have read that the widget after a while is deactivated depending on the garmin model. Once it is disabled, how can you get it to work again? Does anyone know how long that time is for an edge 1030plus?

  • There is no deactivation, more a timeout that exit the widget normally. You should be able to start it again immediately. The typical timeout is around 2 minutes

  • Great work.

    I tried it with the GPS enabled in the widget version on my Garmin Edge 1030 and it works fine.

    But I don't seem to find the GPS on/off option or the 3 green/red bar GPS signal indicator in the Edge Data Field version. Does the DF version support GPS also? How can I enable it if it does?

  • The DF version uses the GPS info provided by the activity in which it is installed. There is no option to activate or deactivate it (basically it's always on).

  • Thanking in advance for work you are doing, is there any chance to have the widget working for GO2?

  • I don't have a GO2 device to be able to test. It seems that the protocol is very different, and there is no documentation available from Insta360 to try something out. So I won't be able do provide support for it.