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

161–170 of 309 posts

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

#161

Post by zoky »

kelnos wrote: post #132
colordrops wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 excl…

It's not an oversight. There are very good reasons for it, which are detailed elsewhere in the comments thread.

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

#162

Post by abhgh »

LiquidPolymer wrote: post #133

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…

If you don't mind a tangential question, what are some good places to watch condors in CA? We watched them at the Pinnacles National Park and loved the experience.

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

#163

Post by davekeck »

mjard wrote: post #136
davekeck wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Currently it replaces the oldest photos, yes. (There might be use cases where you only want to keep the first 20k photos though -- if anyone wants that, get in touch and I can add a setting.)

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

#164

Post by password4321 »

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…

As opposed to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40557726 yesterday though it came with a disclaimer.

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

#165

Post by zelse »

davekeck wrote: post #86
rasz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saw it on EEVBlog, even owning a Mac is not sufficient if its not the latest OS version. SD Card doesnt store pictures in windows readable format either.

Dang I haven't mustered the courage to watch Dave's critique yet! I wrote/tested Photon Transfer (the companion app) on macOS 10.15 (Intel), so it should work on that and above. If not it's a bug that I need to fix!

Your handling of folks' feedback in this thread is impressively graceful, fwiw.

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

#167

Post by rpozarickij »

davekeck wrote: post #123
pineaux wrote: post #65

Would buy, but doesn't ship to Europe...

Dang I need to fix that! If you send me an email (support@toaster.llc) I'll let you know when that works.

(Another potential buyer of this camera from outside the US)

By the way, some users might be unwilling to provide credit card details without knowing whether the product can be shipped to their country. Knowing that in advance IMHO is a much better UX.

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

#168

Post by nullc »

davekeck wrote: post #39
laweijfmvo wrote: post #5

> exclusively for Mac Why not just have it connect as a generic mass-storage device?

Totally fair question! My reasons were: 1. To maximize Photon's battery life I tried to make the hardware do the absolute minimum to record imagery. To that end, Photon stores images on an unformatted SD card (ie one huge linear array of bytes) which is easy and fast to index into. 2. A 16-bit MSP430 handles writing the image data, and the MSP430's codespace is 99% exhausted without dealing with the complexities of a…

Perhaps your perspective would be better reflected on the site if instead of just saying "exclusively for mac" it said open source right there with it-- I closed the page as "not for me" before getting down to the open source part.

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

#169

Post by jkestner »

davekeck wrote: post #98
RyJones wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reasonable. I find anodizers are easy to find, good ones hard, and great ones almost impossible. I found a great one in Auburn and I feel lucky I did. Iirc you’re paying for the batch. If you pick a color they don’t do a lot, you’re paying the same for 1pc or 2000. The dye and handling is pretty much the same.

Interesting! I had the same experience with anodization, the quality between manufacturers varied a lot. So it sounds like you use different companies for machining and anodizing? It certainly seems like you'd get better results from someone that specializes in each...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cwandt/55-66-88-by-cwan... My buddies have some good horror stories trying to get metal parts tumbled and anodized. You do have to nail down quality standards beforehand, and even then they may just give up and ship back to you, or disappear.

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

#170

Post by romwell »

kristianp wrote: post #55
mysteria wrote: post #6

Cool project, here's a few comments after a quick glance over: - There's no license on the code and design files in the Github repo, thus this currently isn't open source but rather "source-available". If you plan to allow others to modify the code and build their own cameras you should add an appropriate license. - The Mac only support (and it's MacOS only, with no iPad/iPhone support) with a dedicated app to operat…

> Linux support is pretty much a requirement Support isn't required for linux: I think there will be people who will be keen to hack up Linux support based on the open source code available, and the same with Windows. However if "Dave" wants access a larger market, Windows or even Android support would make sense.

>Windows or even Android support would make sense.

How about an SD card slot with a configuration in a plaintext file, so that one isn't tied to the software which may or may not be available in the future.

I just got myself a Sony Mavica which shoots photos on a floppy disk, and I can still use it without thinking about which OS my computer runs.

For a camera that boasts battery life in years, needing "exclusive" software (that may or may not be available years down the line) defies the point.

Post reply on HN