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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

#111

Post by MartijnBraam »

davekeck wrote: post #70
bambax wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems it's the filesystem that's most costly? Would it be possible, maybe, to store DNG file data, one after the other, on the card, without a filesystem?

I'm not too familiar with the DNG format, but if a DNG file could be as simple as [header][2304x1296x2 bytes][footer] then it might be possible with the current hardware. But without a filesystem, would it be useful to have DNG files stored on the SD card? Wouldn't you need special software to read off the "packed" DNG data anyway? And if you need special software anyway, couldn't the special software convert the exi…

The DNG/TIFF spec is unreasonably flexible. It would be possible to add just a fixed precalculated header on the image data to make it valid DNG. The lack of filesystem is still a bigger issue.

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

#112

Post by davekeck »

aconz2 wrote: post #4

very cool, love the website design and the blog posts had a lot of interesting bits, like the backplate removal jig. I was kinda surprised to see an fpga in there but makes sense. Could that design be repurposed as a general image sensor -> sd card module or is it pretty specific to the sensor?

Hmm interesting question. I think a lot of the FPGA RTL should be reusable for most parallel-output image sensors. (It seems like all the really nice image sensors are headed towards MIPI nowadays though...)

I tried to make SDController.v and RAMController.v as re-usable as possible.

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

#113

Post by the__alchemist »

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.

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

#114

Post by bambax »

davekeck wrote: post #70
bambax wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems it's the filesystem that's most costly? Would it be possible, maybe, to store DNG file data, one after the other, on the card, without a filesystem?

I'm not too familiar with the DNG format, but if a DNG file could be as simple as [header][2304x1296x2 bytes][footer] then it might be possible with the current hardware. But without a filesystem, would it be useful to have DNG files stored on the SD card? Wouldn't you need special software to read off the "packed" DNG data anyway? And if you need special software anyway, couldn't the special software convert the exi…

Well, yes.

It's unclear from the website what Photon Transfer does exactly, but from the screenshots it seems it's almost a Lightroom-lite?

A super basic utility that would simply extract the data from the device and spit out DNG files, with zero further processin, would not need to have a nice GUI, or even a GUI at all, and may be enough to lure in Windows users?

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

#115

Post by Rohansi »

davekeck wrote: post #90
Rohansi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nothing wrong with prioritizing one platform. It's just presented in a strange way on the website which suggests to me that it will only ever work on Mac.

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

#116

Post by qingcharles »

tredre3 wrote: post #44
davekeck wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's pretty cool that your MSP handles the SD Card directly! Personally I think you should keep the focus on a polished mac app. For other platforms you can do just the bare minimum with a web app that uses WebUSB. People will bitch that it's Chromium only but, I mean, chromium has 95% market share outside Apple world (and I say this as a FF user). A hardware solution could be to add a cheap microcontroller that woul…

I think open source web app with WebUSB is basically the perfect solution as others can then come in and hack a better UI onto it.

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

#117

Post by qingcharles »

davekeck wrote: post #70
bambax wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems it's the filesystem that's most costly? Would it be possible, maybe, to store DNG file data, one after the other, on the card, without a filesystem?

I'm not too familiar with the DNG format, but if a DNG file could be as simple as [header][2304x1296x2 bytes][footer] then it might be possible with the current hardware. But without a filesystem, would it be useful to have DNG files stored on the SD card? Wouldn't you need special software to read off the "packed" DNG data anyway? And if you need special software anyway, couldn't the special software convert the exi…

Your header for your DNGs, I think, is going to be the same for every single file you write. DNG is just a kinda superset of TIFF, IIRC.

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

#118

Post by colordrops »

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.

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

#119

Post by davekeck »

clumsysmurf wrote: post #16

I try to avoid devices with built in batteries. Could a version be created that uses a replaceable 18350, 18650 or even AA? I'm OK swapping every few months etc, but when its time to dispose of it, I don't want to fret about how to remove the battery for recycling.

Totally fair, I feel the same way. Originally Photon was going to use AAs but I changed course when I decided I wanted to make it water resistant.

(FWIW Photon uses a 103040 which is pretty commonly available, the only caveat is it needs a Molex Pico-EZmate connector, which is a super-low-profile connector since interior space is scarce.)

I'd love to revisit the battery story some day...

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

#120

Post by davekeck »

instagib wrote: post #27
ipsum2 wrote: post #10

Love that everything is open source! Code relating to cameras have been traditionally locked down and hidden under NDAs. Surprised there's no sample photos nor specifications on image sensor.

Looks like 5MP but saves as 3MP files. https://github.com/toasterllc/MDCCode/blob/6afdde594861264f8... Pixel resolution Size = 2304 x 1296 = 2,985,984 pixels Pixel count = 2.99 million pixels Resolution = 2.99 mega pixels Aspect Ratio Width / Height: 1.78 "landscape" (horizontal) orientation Type of aspect ratio = "HD 16:9" Couple photos here too: https://github.com/toasterllc/MDCCode/tree/6afdde594861264f8... I gues…

Indeed it's 2304 x 1296, 12-bit color. (That .jpg in the repo was a test image from a different camera.)
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