Awesome work, thanks for sharing such great detail and technical resources needed to replicate.
A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it
291–300 of 311 posts
Re: A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it
#292Re: A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it
#293I enjoyed seeing the design and build process. There's a long way to go to make a product out of this. I also wonder whether there are legal downsides to using the look and feel of the Polaroid "rainbow" nextstep (which was famously the source of the now-retired Instagram logo). It would be very neat to have a credit card sized screen with a micro-controller and a bit flash doing the work rather than a full-sized com…
yup I did think of doing that but wanted to do this version with off the shelf components that others could replicate easily
That makes a lot of sense. It's a great project and I hope you can continue to make refinements to it.
Re: A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm imagining a row of pins along the back or bottom of the cartridge, or an edge connector, like in the old Nintendo cartridges.
Remember how after a few months you'd always have to clean those Nintendo cartridge connections otherwise the game wouldn't load? My point is that making those types of custom, physical connections are kind of a manufacturing nightmare. If the hobbyist that did this was able to do it with WiFi with no need for more manufacturing and making sure the sled would be able to reliably push the pins in every time, then WiFi…
While it's easy to second guess the decisions that were made here, I have to agree that the solution obviously works fine. Since a physical connection to charge the battery pack was designed in, it seems a shame not to utilize the physical connection for data transfer. I personally have an allergy to using wireless when a physical connection is possible, so that's a bias I bring to the table.
I wonder if there's not an off-the-shelf connector that can be used to route power and USB signals which would fill the role. There's nothing saying the connector has to be small, the entire back and underside of the cartridge is available for the purpose. The original Polaroid film packs had two large pads on the bottom and the camera two long springs to connect with them to provide power from the pack to the camera. However, Polaroid didn't have to contend with ejecting the entire pack with every photo.
My bias says that using wifi adds complexity, but I can see that getting the physical connector right is also not as simple as it first appears.
Re: A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
>A polaroid picture that starts playing as soon as you attach it to a suitable power source (please make it something standard like an AA battery or USB cable), on the other hand, is something you can keep in a box in the attic for your grandchildren to find after you're gone. Unlikely, unless it's very carefully engineered. For example, the flash life of most microcontrollers is measured in decades.
What about not using a micro at all? Just an EPROM (burned by the camera) and a circuit to pass the image to the screen, using a clock signal to switch between images. The images would be encoded not in a regular format but essentially as a sequence of direct screen signals.
I don't think EPROM necessarily has a much longer lifetime, but I'm not sure.
Re: A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't even find a picture of one they were such a failure, but there was a time that what you're describing existed for AudioBooks. For a ridiculous markup (I think they were like $80+) you could buy an iPod sized device that held a single audiobook. They were gimmicked up to look like a tiny plastic hardcover with basic nav buttons on the side.
Fun, albeit sad fact: In Norway, 99% (quite literally, not exaggerating) of bookstores are owned by the various publishing houses. They've pushed an eBook standard where you buy a dedicated reader, then buy proprietary memory cards in sleeves much like the ones used for compact cassettes - the idea being that people want something tangible, even when buying eBooks. (The cynical among us assume they just invented that…
Now to a tangent on a tangent.
The advantages of the Scandinavian social-welfare systems are well-known. What are some (unrelated to the problem of funding welfare) economic problems faced by Norway? You just cited an interesting one.
I remember a story about milk import restrictions, but I could be very mistaken. But anyway, between the effects of oil exports on exchange rates (alternatively, the problems of exchange rate controls), the relatively small domestic market, the limits on land occupation further North, etc. -- the economy of Norway must be fascinating.
Re: A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it
#297Re: A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it
#298Man, turn that into transparent electronics interlaced with photovoltaic cells.
A lady was looking at me menacingly in a store today as I used the cardboard bags.
Re: A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've long imagined something like that: a card-sized (including thickness) full-color display devoted to displaying, say, an entire movie. Given ultra-thin displays like OLED, dirt cheap storage, and "free" dedicated processing, you could hand out videos like sales brochures or cheap paperbacks. Amazing how technology has advanced.
You are missing the one reason this won't happen anytime soon. Battery tech.
Lithium-air battery would work. Additionally, you can use a sunlight-readable reflective display, which in principle only needs as much energy as an LCD, which is negligible.
...or imagine a display that includes a photovoltaic panel taking up most of the area of each pixel to power the device using ambient light, with a tiny electronically steerable LED that points in the direction of whoever is watching (and if multiple people are watching, just switch rapidly between them). The display would appear very bright but use so little energy that it could be powered by ambient light. In principle.
Re: A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please disclose your affiliation; you to linked to snips.ai in each one of your comments over the past month.
Sure, I'm one of the co-founder, I'm looking for people interested in building cool objects with Raspi! I'm not sure that one comment per week when I see a cool object should be considered as spam :)
Commenting on relevant posts to promote your product is ok if you disclose your affiliation. As long as you do it, it’s fine IMHO.