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Webcams aren't good enough

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Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#331
post #171

I'm the cofounder at Lumina - we're building a modern webcam designed to solve some of these problems. There's really been a lack of innovation in the entire home office space, with the webcam being particularly bad. It sucks that a decade-old product (Logitech C920) is still the bestselling product today -- that would be like if Apple stopped releasing new phones after the iPhone 4S (launched 2012), and it remained…

You failed to mention that your webcam is a whopping 700 dollars .

Where do you see that? Their website, plus the linked article, say $200.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#332
post #186
post #171

I'm the cofounder at Lumina - we're building a modern webcam designed to solve some of these problems. There's really been a lack of innovation in the entire home office space, with the webcam being particularly bad. It sucks that a decade-old product (Logitech C920) is still the bestselling product today -- that would be like if Apple stopped releasing new phones after the iPhone 4S (launched 2012), and it remained…

What sucks most is that Logitech, which used to be a proud name (back when "Feels good / Feels better") has gone totally to shit. Even their mice are designed to fail in a year. (Spill on the desk, the mouse that only got damp on the bottom is dead, dead, dead. That can't be accidental.) A full article on what went wrong at Logitech corporate could be enlightening, if not helpful.

Maybe I'm lucky, but I've got half a dozen Logitech wireless mice/keyboard-and-trackpad media keyboards in regular use, plus the MX Ergo trackball, plus a couple of G Pro keyboards, and I haven't been able to kill any of them even through pretty rough use on the mice particularly (they tend to get bounced around in the living room when the dog jumps on the couch, etc.).

"Can't be accidental" reads as conspiracy-huffing. Lemons exist, bad products happen, but this is a weird assertion without evidence. Like, I got bit by the MX518 double-click bug back in the day, but everything I've used from them since--and I won't buy Razer because their stuff's awful to look at, which has historically cut down the options a lot--has been unremarkably fine. Except for the MX Ergo. That thing is remarkably excellent.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#333
post #171

I'm the cofounder at Lumina - we're building a modern webcam designed to solve some of these problems. There's really been a lack of innovation in the entire home office space, with the webcam being particularly bad. It sucks that a decade-old product (Logitech C920) is still the bestselling product today -- that would be like if Apple stopped releasing new phones after the iPhone 4S (launched 2012), and it remained…

You failed to mention that your webcam is a whopping 700 dollars .

As I see it's only $200[1]

[1]: https://getlumina.com/

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#334
post #171

I'm the cofounder at Lumina - we're building a modern webcam designed to solve some of these problems. There's really been a lack of innovation in the entire home office space, with the webcam being particularly bad. It sucks that a decade-old product (Logitech C920) is still the bestselling product today -- that would be like if Apple stopped releasing new phones after the iPhone 4S (launched 2012), and it remained…

>There's enough gross margin to produce a $B company just by selling webcams [0], especially if you can actually get customers excited about the product.

Is this from HW only or some sort of MRR from SW lock-in?

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#335
post #171

I'm the cofounder at Lumina - we're building a modern webcam designed to solve some of these problems. There's really been a lack of innovation in the entire home office space, with the webcam being particularly bad. It sucks that a decade-old product (Logitech C920) is still the bestselling product today -- that would be like if Apple stopped releasing new phones after the iPhone 4S (launched 2012), and it remained…

You failed to mention that your webcam is a whopping 700 dollars .

What the hell, Who wants a 700$ Webcam ? You can just buy an iPhone at that point.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#338
post #171

I'm the cofounder at Lumina - we're building a modern webcam designed to solve some of these problems. There's really been a lack of innovation in the entire home office space, with the webcam being particularly bad. It sucks that a decade-old product (Logitech C920) is still the bestselling product today -- that would be like if Apple stopped releasing new phones after the iPhone 4S (launched 2012), and it remained…

I don't understand the business model / viability of dedicated webcams. Software like Elgato Epoccam or OBS is free or cheap, and the % of people who would benefit from a decent webcam and who don't own a modern smartphone is literally 0.

Ive only ever had trouble with using phones as webcams. It seemed like a great idea, but ive probably wasted a good full 40 hours of my life trying to make them work right. And when I get it to work, 6 months go by and they force you to "update" to more broken features and then charge money for basic functionality. Whoops this software doesn't let you flip the camera the right way. This one doesn't like USB for some reason so lets try wireless, whoops it completely saturated the wireless connection with completely uncompressed video and drains my phone faster than it can charge. This one ghosts horribly if you move slightly too fast. Oh this one seems to be work... what the hell I dared put my hand to close or a light source came in view for a second and it completely bjorked the exposure levels and fails to readjust again leaving an either mostly black or mostly white picture.

Since I don't use it constantly, if I expect to be using a webcam I need to make sure I have atleast a couple hours the day before I need it to make sure it actually works when I turn it on again. And even then I still run in to troubles where certain programs see it and certain ones don't. Then I gotta push the video through multiple different programs to get the one program I need to see it right in the correct orientation. What I thought should be a super easy task turns into this huge ordeal and 25 new sketchy data stealing programs on my phone and computer. I even had a few which I can only assume were mining crypto currency with the amount of processing utilization they used even when the camera isn't on.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#339
post #171

I'm the cofounder at Lumina - we're building a modern webcam designed to solve some of these problems. There's really been a lack of innovation in the entire home office space, with the webcam being particularly bad. It sucks that a decade-old product (Logitech C920) is still the bestselling product today -- that would be like if Apple stopped releasing new phones after the iPhone 4S (launched 2012), and it remained…

Could you explain what you mean by 'hardware is viewed as hard'?

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a cheap used android phone and use the back camera as a webcam. Many times better than any webcam that doesn't cost a fortune.

Right, but then you can't share your screen, and you can't see the call participants because the android screen is facing away from you.

I think they meant to buy an extra android phone and use that as a webcam.
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