nikon are releasing an android camera
http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/134190-nikons-android...
Camera Pi – DSLR Camera with Embedded Computer
11–20 of 31 posts
Re: Camera Pi – DSLR Camera with Embedded Computer
#12Very cool! What saddens me is that there is already an embedded computer on the camera! There is just not a good way to program it. While there are some great efforts, like Magic Lantern, to reverse engineer and improve the firmware, I wish the producers just made the source part of their product. (I don't believe their trade secrets are that valuable to be honest. Not more valuable than letting people builds apps fo…
The amazing CHDK: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK_in_Brief for those who aren't aware of it. If I could ensure a new camera was supported, that alone would be enough to make me buy it over any competing models.
The story of how the CHDK was born is really amazing. Remember that "print" button on your camera, the one you never use? It has a light on it. Apparently someone coaxed their camera into outputting the source code of the firmware getting the "print" button to flash on and off.....
Re: Camera Pi – DSLR Camera with Embedded Computer
#13Here is my rant, as an experimental (panorama, gigapixel) photographer: Canon, Nikon, and the rest of them will go to their graves keeping their firmware closed and un-scriptable. It is a tragedy. Mobile phones and the Gopro are eating their lunch. The fact that there is even a (niche) market for things like the Eye-fi (wifi sd card) goes to show how utterly clueless and behind the times these dinosaur camera companies really are.
Re: Camera Pi – DSLR Camera with Embedded Computer
#14Here is my rant, as an experimental (panorama, gigapixel) photographer: Canon, Nikon, and the rest of them will go to their graves keeping their firmware closed and un-scriptable. It is a tragedy. Mobile phones and the Gopro are eating their lunch. The fact that there is even a (niche) market for things like the Eye-fi (wifi sd card) goes to show how utterly clueless and behind the times these dinosaur camera compani…
Yeah. A great example of how people go wrong when makers focus on the product they're building rather than the people they're building it for.
As a programmer, my natural inclination is to sit in my fortress of arrogance and build the thing that I "know" they need. But learning how to do user testing, user interviews, and customer development has persuaded me that the important moment isn't when the product ships, it's when somebody actually uses it.
I almost never use my non-phone camera anymore because the point for me isn't taking a picture, it's doing something with it. Which camera companies would know if they treated anthropologists with the same respect as CCD scientists.
Re: Camera Pi – DSLR Camera with Embedded Computer
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
The amazing CHDK: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK_in_Brief for those who aren't aware of it. If I could ensure a new camera was supported, that alone would be enough to make me buy it over any competing models.
The story of how the CHDK was born is really amazing. Remember that "print" button on your camera, the one you never use? It has a light on it. Apparently someone coaxed their camera into outputting the source code of the firmware getting the "print" button to flash on and off.....
Reminds me of how people cracked the iPod Nano (I think) firmware - one of the first steps was exploiting a buffer overrun and dumping the bootloader acoustically, through the clicker. There's a page somewhere with a photo of an iPod and a mike, all in styrofoam.
Re: Camera Pi – DSLR Camera with Embedded Computer
#16As a hobbyist photographer this definitely sounds interesting in terms of allowing more control over the camera (especially automated uses, build your own timelapse, get past the 30s long exposure instead of having to buy a $150 canon timer remote, et cetera). But doing anything with image manipulation and transfer (maybe there's a reason Eye-fi hasn't moved into the DSLR space -- no CF version, only Class 6 speeds)…
The Pi does about 10MB/s over the network, I believe. As for image manipulation, sadly, the Pi is fairly fast by embedded standards, but running general-purpose software on a full-blown OS takes a lot away. For comparison, the original Xbox used an x86 of the same clock speed.
> running general-purpose software on a full-blown OS takes a lot away
Which is why we any predefined image manipulation should avoid the ARM core and jump straight to the rather powerful GPU. I think it even supports OpenCL, so there should be software out there that could work with it.
Re: Camera Pi – DSLR Camera with Embedded Computer
#17As a hobbyist photographer this definitely sounds interesting in terms of allowing more control over the camera (especially automated uses, build your own timelapse, get past the 30s long exposure instead of having to buy a $150 canon timer remote, et cetera). But doing anything with image manipulation and transfer (maybe there's a reason Eye-fi hasn't moved into the DSLR space -- no CF version, only Class 6 speeds)…
The Pi does about 10MB/s over the network, I believe. As for image manipulation, sadly, the Pi is fairly fast by embedded standards, but running general-purpose software on a full-blown OS takes a lot away. For comparison, the original Xbox used an x86 of the same clock speed.
>For comparison, the original Xbox used an x86 of the same clock speed
Re: Camera Pi – DSLR Camera with Embedded Computer
#18Very cool! What saddens me is that there is already an embedded computer on the camera! There is just not a good way to program it. While there are some great efforts, like Magic Lantern, to reverse engineer and improve the firmware, I wish the producers just made the source part of their product. (I don't believe their trade secrets are that valuable to be honest. Not more valuable than letting people builds apps fo…
The amazing CHDK: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK_in_Brief for those who aren't aware of it. If I could ensure a new camera was supported, that alone would be enough to make me buy it over any competing models.
Also worth pointing out the Magic Lantern Firmware[1] that supercharges low end Canon DSLRs.
[1] - http://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/Magic_Lantern_Firmware_Wi...
Re: Camera Pi – DSLR Camera with Embedded Computer
#19This is Stanford's take on what can be done if you could fully program the computer in your camera and it had the sensors of a smartphone: http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/camera-2.0/
Re: Camera Pi – DSLR Camera with Embedded Computer
#20Here is my rant, as an experimental (panorama, gigapixel) photographer: Canon, Nikon, and the rest of them will go to their graves keeping their firmware closed and un-scriptable. It is a tragedy. Mobile phones and the Gopro are eating their lunch. The fact that there is even a (niche) market for things like the Eye-fi (wifi sd card) goes to show how utterly clueless and behind the times these dinosaur camera compani…
Some Canon cameras are scriptable natively ( http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/Canon_Basic ) and also using the CHDK extension. I understand the vendor's position on this, the market for scriptable cameras is tiny, you can easily destroy your camera with the wrong script and as any programmable device, your scriptable camera could catch a virus (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6ZJ4cmc2o8)