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Opal Tadpole – A webcam for laptops

opalcamera.com

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Re: Opal Tadpole – A webcam for laptops

#41

Post by solardev »

sottol wrote: post #27
solardev wrote: post #24

Am I just really old, or is this web design atrocious...? I know HN skews traditionalist anyway, but even here, a site this bad stands out. I feel like normally we argue about user-invisible stuff like JS frameworks and analytics and tracking, but in this case it's a very in-your-face design meant to subvert all the common UX best practices in favor of something chic. Does anyone like this? (Who is supposed to?) I ca…

Has a Teenage Engineering vibe imo, which is a fan-favorite here. https://teenage.engineering/

That one strikes me as "minimalist but readable". It's clean and simple, and you can scroll down and read everything, one by one, left to right, without being assaulted by flying tiles or distracting animations that take your eye away from what it was trying to read.

This one, on the other hand, reminds me of a "YouTubeified" website, where every thirty seconds there's some insane distraction flying in from the side of the screen and begging for your attention.

Re: Opal Tadpole – A webcam for laptops

#44

Post by gizajob »

berbec wrote: post #5

What is the market for this product? I can't see their being enough people who a. have a laptop without a camera/need a better camera b. are willing to lug this thing around and c. are willing to pay $200. How is web design this bad acceptable? It's insanely slow, annoying to read and impossible to navigate.

I think it’s a hard sell for people to want to clip and external webcam over the webcam already built into their laptops. It looks nice but it’s a bit baffling why anyone would really need this nowadays. I get lots of pc webcams are crappy but that’s not really a problem on your end.

Re: Opal Tadpole – A webcam for laptops

#45

Post by wilsonnb3 »

heeton wrote: post #18

I could never recommend this. I own a C1 and it's completely ruined by terrible software. On MacOS (various versions, on M1 and now M3), it stops randomly, needs regular reconnecting. I'm on an old version of the app because the new version doesn't even work at all (hard freeze after an hour). Countless examples from forums and elsewhere of the same issues. Shame, because the hardware is cool.

For what it’s worth, the Verge reviewer said that the software isn’t required, it is just a normal plug and play webcam with a much better user experience than the C1.

Re: Opal Tadpole – A webcam for laptops

#46

Post by scaryclam »

solardev wrote: post #24

Am I just really old, or is this web design atrocious...? I know HN skews traditionalist anyway, but even here, a site this bad stands out. I feel like normally we argue about user-invisible stuff like JS frameworks and analytics and tracking, but in this case it's a very in-your-face design meant to subvert all the common UX best practices in favor of something chic. Does anyone like this? (Who is supposed to?) I ca…

It's horrible. Obnoxious loading, scolling and I couldn't see the product on my laptop until I scrolled, so it wasn't easy to even see what this "new species" of webcam looked like (page loads better on my desktop, so YMMV).

The product itself looks suspiciously like a regular web cam as well, so it wasn't even worth the wait ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Opal Tadpole – A webcam for laptops

#47

Post by LeifCarrotson »

berbec wrote: post #5

What is the market for this product? I can't see their being enough people who a. have a laptop without a camera/need a better camera b. are willing to lug this thing around and c. are willing to pay $200. How is web design this bad acceptable? It's insanely slow, annoying to read and impossible to navigate.

Low-budget streamers or those who end up effectively 'streaming' their web conferences. People who are using Blue Yeti mics and Elgato keylights or (a directly competing product) Elgato Facecam:

https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/facecam

which is using a 1/1.8" sensor (8.8mm diagonal) at f/2.4 aperture, and this has a 1/1.2” sensor (13.33 mm diagonal) at f/1.2.

In this age of remote work, there are a lot of people who really value making a good impression - for whom the default webcam in their budget business laptop won't cut it - but don't want to have a whole DSLR-on-a-tripod streaming setup.

Re: Opal Tadpole – A webcam for laptops

#48

Post by yodon »

callumprentice wrote: post #40

I use the Camo software that turns my phone into a webcam and the quality is astounding but it still suffers from the "appear to be looking elsewhere" issue. I have sketched out a design for a bracket that dangles your phone upside down, in front of the screen and turns the phone front camera into a webcam that's much closer to where you are typically looking. The interesting bit is that software on the phone display…

Please make and sell this!!

Re: Opal Tadpole – A webcam for laptops

#50

Post by callumprentice »

callumprentice wrote: post #40

I use the Camo software that turns my phone into a webcam and the quality is astounding but it still suffers from the "appear to be looking elsewhere" issue. I have sketched out a design for a bracket that dangles your phone upside down, in front of the screen and turns the phone front camera into a webcam that's much closer to where you are typically looking. The interesting bit is that software on the phone display…

Some of the things I considered:

* Connecting wirelessly to the computer would be ideal. Camo and Apple's own Continuity Camera do this so it's certainly possible

* There should be a computer companion app that lets you tweak the position of the monitor segment displayed on the phone screen - both for position, offset, color, temperature etc.

* There would be a parallax effect, even with how thin today's phones are - I wonder if you could correct for that in the phone app and make it appear to be on the same plane.

* Should it hand upside down from the top of the computer/laptop screen via a (magnetic?) widget or allow for positioning with a tall, skinny phone stand on the desktop in front of the monitor? Ideally both I guess.. Even left/right side if that made the engineering easier.

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