Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: I made a tiny camera with super long battery life

toaster.llc

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 309 posts

Re: Show HN: I made a tiny camera with super long battery life

#131

Post by davekeck »

colordrops wrote: post #118
the__alchemist wrote: post #113

If you don't mind me asking, what is Mac-specific about it? Is it the GUI toolkit? The PC-program toolkits I've used to transfer data to and from embedded devices using USB-C: (Qt, EGUI) don't care what OS you use. The web-based ones like Electron don't either. So, there would be nothing blocking the release ; they just work on any OS you compile on or cross-compile for.

To be frank the "mac exclusive" marketing is a huge turn off for something that should obviously be nearly completely agnostic regarding PC operating systems. Makes me wonder what other poor decisions went into the design of this thing.

> Makes me wonder what other poor decisions went into the design of this thing.

Haha me too man, me too.

(Edit: I don't mean that sarcastically, I'm genuinely interested how others would make this thing.)

Re: Show HN: I made a tiny camera with super long battery life

#132

Post by kelnos »

colordrops wrote: post #118
the__alchemist wrote: post #113

If you don't mind me asking, what is Mac-specific about it? Is it the GUI toolkit? The PC-program toolkits I've used to transfer data to and from embedded devices using USB-C: (Qt, EGUI) don't care what OS you use. The web-based ones like Electron don't either. So, there would be nothing blocking the release ; they just work on any OS you compile on or cross-compile for.

To be frank the "mac exclusive" marketing is a huge turn off for something that should obviously be nearly completely agnostic regarding PC operating systems. Makes me wonder what other poor decisions went into the design of this thing.

Yeah, I actually physically rolled my eyes when I read the "exclusively for Mac" copy on the website. I get it if you want to build a cool photo transfer/view app as an add on to the experience, and want to do it native, and only have time to build for one platform. But calling that out in that way makes it sound like some sort of "feature", which is a huge turn-off, regardless of whether or not they're building exclusively for my platform of choice.

But the camera itself should support MTP, USB mass storage, or something of that nature, and should just work on any platform. If it doesn't, that's a pretty silly oversight.

Re: Show HN: I made a tiny camera with super long battery life

#133

Post by LiquidPolymer »

This looks really cool. I've made my living a photographer for over 30 years and I'm very tempted to purchase. This small form factor would be perfect for a project I'm doing documenting California condors rearing their young. Sadly, I would also need it to shoot video to be effective for my needs (and I'm sure this would kill the battery). Its one of these situations where I setup the camera system in November, and then can't touch it again till after the young have left the nesting site in Fall. Its been tough to come up with a solution that provides good image quality along with the unique demands of the project.

I wish you great success.

For those wondering why I can't use a GoPro for this project - I have several reasons. Power consumption is one. This is in a breeding facility, and although I can turn off the beep in GoPro menu settings, I've had the beep spontaneously reset after a power outage (which are frequent). Also - Gopros don't turn back on after losing power and must be manually powered back on - something I can't do when chicks and parents are present.

Re: Show HN: I made a tiny camera with super long battery life

#134

Post by abdullahkhalids »

nereye wrote: post #73
davekeck wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One main reason I chose the MSP430 was for the FRAM. Photon stores all its state (ie the photo ring buffer indices, and user settings) in one big FRAM struct, which can be read/written just like RAM, but persists across power cycles and crashes. Another reason was MSP430's low power consumption, but like you said it sounds like ARM has caught up. Would love to hear about alternative designs -- are there low-power ARM…

If external F-RAM is an option, one can use F-RAM from, say Cypress (now Infineon, [1]) together with ARM chips from Ambiq, e.g. Apollo 3 Blue Thin [2], which likely have even better power consumption than an MSP430. [1] https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/memories/f-ram-ferro... [2] https://ambiq.com/apollo3-blue-thin/

Are there any RISC-V chips that do the same?

Re: Show HN: I made a tiny camera with super long battery life

#135

Post by pierrec »

colordrops wrote: post #118
the__alchemist wrote: post #113

If you don't mind me asking, what is Mac-specific about it? Is it the GUI toolkit? The PC-program toolkits I've used to transfer data to and from embedded devices using USB-C: (Qt, EGUI) don't care what OS you use. The web-based ones like Electron don't either. So, there would be nothing blocking the release ; they just work on any OS you compile on or cross-compile for.

To be frank the "mac exclusive" marketing is a huge turn off for something that should obviously be nearly completely agnostic regarding PC operating systems. Makes me wonder what other poor decisions went into the design of this thing.

It's not marketing. They're just upfront about limitations (software is single-platform) while trying to present it positively (it will feel native on that platform). The entire page seems to make a point of being upfront about limitations, which is kind of a rare thing. That said I agree that making it cross-platform would have been wise, since the software is entirely secondary to the physical product.

Re: Show HN: I made a tiny camera with super long battery life

#136

Post by mjard »

davekeck wrote: post #127
hiatus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small note: though the battery will last for 50k pictures, the storage will begin overwriting old photos after ~20k.

It does feel a little weird that the battery outlasts the storage. Maybe I should've gone with 256 GB SD cards == 40k photos.

Does it start replacing the oldest photos?

Re: Show HN: I made a tiny camera with super long battery life

#138

Post by adolph »

davekeck wrote: post #124
adolph wrote: post #59

That is neat and your project docs are a fun read. You'd get a design identity ++ if the dovetail backplate was more similar to ejecting toast. . . .but looks like that isn't in the final anyway. Did you consider radar[0] instead of PIR with the MPS430? 0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WiJJgIi3W0

Ohh fancy! No I didn't consider radar, watching that video now. The main consideration for the motion sensor is power consumption -- Photon's PIR consumes ~2µA. Any idea what the power consumption is for these radar sensors?

Speiss’ videos are good about measuring current. He was an early one on the coin operated ESP8266 movement. Looks like they are outside your energy budget: 2.3mA is the lowest.

The video I linked was from 7 years ago? Here is a more recent one but it doesn’t seem like he measured energy consumption: https://youtu.be/s-GzUTyIH9c

As validation of your PIR-Cam idea, LilyGo sells a PIR-Cam-SSD1306 combo board: https://www.lilygo.cc/products/t-camera-s3

Re: Show HN: I made a tiny camera with super long battery life

#139

Post by 627467 »

colordrops wrote: post #118
the__alchemist wrote: post #113

If you don't mind me asking, what is Mac-specific about it? Is it the GUI toolkit? The PC-program toolkits I've used to transfer data to and from embedded devices using USB-C: (Qt, EGUI) don't care what OS you use. The web-based ones like Electron don't either. So, there would be nothing blocking the release ; they just work on any OS you compile on or cross-compile for.

To be frank the "mac exclusive" marketing is a huge turn off for something that should obviously be nearly completely agnostic regarding PC operating systems. Makes me wonder what other poor decisions went into the design of this thing.

> should obviously be nearly completely agnostic

Is it obvious? Is it free (as in resources) to support agnostic platforms and systems? Is the threshold for making anything that it needs to be compatible with everything?

Re: Show HN: I made a tiny camera with super long battery life

#140

Post by [deleted] »

apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #69

I'm not interested in the product, but I have to say this site is great. Too many sites that get posted in Show HN are so difficult to decipher what service they provide or function they serve. This landing page is about as clear as you could be straight away: it's a small camera -> great battery life -> pricing (without going to another page!) -> Mac Only -> Buy/Download links. You provide use cases, your tech specs…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN