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

toaster.llc

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

#81

Post by codazoda »

ramses0 wrote: post #40
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #7

so cool! For your next trick, how about a super long battery life MP3 player? A friend asked if I knew of an MP3 player that would be good for a two-week hike with no access to electricity, and it really seems like there's nothing out there beyond carrying around a bunch of batteries.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NAJ3KQB ...probably at least 10-25 hours playback on a single battery, which means 8 batteries gives you 80 hours of listening (2 weeks). For that space though, you could scavenge a solar garden light charger and get indefinite listening with ~4 batteries. 1 loaded, 3 charging, with a nominal "fully charge 3 batteries with 16 hours of daylight", which means a ~33% duty cycle. One sunny da…

I was surprised to see that company is still around. I used to love their cameras because of their limitations. Unless I’m mixing them up with a similarly named company.

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

#84

Post by fogleman »

davekeck wrote: post #66
idiot900 wrote: post #3

Are there sample images from the camera on the product website? This is a neat idea but it would be nice to gauge to what extent it is fit for purpose, and a helpful way to do this is with a bunch of sample images.

I should definitely add some sample images... For now, the Mac app has real imagery in the demo mode: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/photon-transfer/id6476578040 (The demo photos are from the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton.)

You should really put up some sample images.

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

#85

Post by davekeck »

qup wrote: post #23

I really like the focused idea. This is likely the best product in its niche. It's an oddly large niche--this is a tool that can solve a lot of problems. Is the battery replaceable if it fails?

> Is the battery replaceable if it fails?

It's replaceable but I hadn't thought that far ahead regarding end-users doing it. The caveats are:

1. I made a special tool to avoid scuffing the aluminum when removing the backplate:

https://toaster.llc/blog/rainproofing

Search for "Backplate Removal"

2. The backplate needs to be re-sealed (with standard RTV sealant).

3. The PCB uses a Molex Pico-EZmate connector. (It could be transferred from the old battery to the new battery, or I could sell pre-made batteries if there was interest.)

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

#86

Post by davekeck »

rasz wrote: post #32
laweijfmvo wrote: post #5

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

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!

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

#87

Post by davekeck »

wferrell wrote: post #79

What an excellent post. I love it and learned so much. Would you be willing to share a ballpark price for what you pay for the enclosure? And maybe ballpark how many you ordered at once? I have found getting enclosures made to be incredibly expensive -- but I have only ever done VERY low volumes (5-10).

Sure! Checking the invoice, I paid $2205 (including anodizing and shipping) to make 125 enclosures (which includes 125x enclosures, backplates, and buttons).

So that works out to $18 per unit. This is my first time doing something like this so I have no idea if that's a good deal or not.

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

#88

Post by bbor »

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…

Yeah echoing this. Everything about the design is technically immaculate (color contrasts & usage, consistent styling, and a satisfying visual variety), but it has that super important element that most product pages lack: a cohesive narrative. Not, like, a literal narrative (though the motorcycle story sounds intense!), more like… being introduced to a friend’s friend for the first time. I guess I’d give credit for this effect to my internal questions coming up in the same order as they were answered by the page!

As a fellow solo-webdev/“founder”/layabout, OP I’d love to hear your comments on design and how you got to this point, if you find the time and interest. The camera itself looks sleek as hell and I’d love to hear about the physical design too, but that’s much less my bailiwick lol

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

#89

Post by meatmanek »

LorenDB wrote: post #30

Why not just use something like Qt to build a native cross platform app? As others have mentioned, advertising a device as open source and yet Mac only is going to turn away a lot of people.

Qt apps, even in 2024, still don't feel native when used on Mac.

Personally I'd much rather just drop the custom Mac app and replace it with:

  - firmware that can read/write a proper filesystem
  - firmware that can create e.g. DNG files that can be handled by regular photo editors like Lightroom, RawTherapee, Darktable, etc.
  - A webapp that lets you generate a configuration file and does the battery life estimation.

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

#90

Post by davekeck »

Rohansi wrote: post #51
laweijfmvo wrote: post #5

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

The software being exclusive to Mac is apparently a feature in this case.

I'm admittedly trying to "celebrate my constraints" of finite time and money haha. I would love to support more systems if there's enough interest.
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