
Layer cam - hector_minus
http://saladetomateoignon.com/Wordpress/layer-cam/
======
dreamfactory2
It's a very interesting project regardless, but the idea that all the angles
and lights have been captured of even famous monuments is entirely wrong.
That's precisely why photography is interesting and why we do it - each moment
is visually unique and will never be repeated. It's worth being aware of if
you spend your time designing systems for automation (i.e. software
development)

~~~
leephillips
You're absolutely right, but tourists pointing their phones up at the Eiffel
Tower aren't paying attention to the angle, light, or anything else. They're
just mindlessly snapping a picture of the Famous Thing. You know you're not
dealing with photographers when you see them using their flashes to photograph
a distant mountain range, or fireworks.

Maybe they'll send it out in a text message to show where they are. It's just
a kind of ritual behavior. The purpose is not to acquire a photograph of
Famous Thing, because, as this invention reminds us, there are already
photographs available. It's a bit more functional when your friends' heads are
arrayed in front of the Famous Thing. The next iteration of this device should
be able to superimpose the faces of your travelling companions.

~~~
chasing
Yeah, fuck tourists. And their wanting to photograph and share the interesting
things they see on their travels without having any advanced training in
photography. The gall!

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yitchelle
For me, this bypasses the emotional aspects of taking a photo. When I take a
photo of the Eiffel tower, I am capturing the moment of when I visit the
Eiffel tower with my family. In the future, when I look at the that Eiffel
tower photo, I will re-create the feeling of _when_ the photo is taking as it
serves a reminder.

~~~
onion2k
Without trying it's hard to know, but it's actually possible that this gadget
would be _more_ emotionally engaging. When you take a picture, even just a
snap without bothering to frame it or get settings right, you're detached from
the moment - you're physically and emotionally engaged with the device rather
than the environment.

With a gadget that could automatically gather a set of photos from the
internet that matched the location, time of day, weather, direction, etc that
you were experiencing at the time you could, theoretically, go for a walk
around a city without having to interact with _anything_ other than the people
you're with, being completely in the moment and engaged with them the whole
way, and still have a pictorial journal of the trip.

It wouldn't be impossible to automatically superimpose pictures of you and
your friends in the images, correctly matching perspective and lighting.

Whether or not that would actually cause the memory to be stronger or not is
hard to say without testing it, but most memories are remembered wholly
incorrectly anyway so that might not matter.

~~~
mikeash
You made me think of a different sort of device that could be pretty cool.

First, you'd need to come up with some way to automatically judge whether a
picture is "good" or "interesting" with some sort of reliability. That's
probably hard, but maybe doable now. If possible, take a large picture and
crop it down to something interesting.

Then, just leave a camera running continuously. Put it on your hat or hang it
from your neck or something. Automatically save all the "interesting" shots.
Then you have _your_ pictures, but have been able to pay attention to what's
going on around you rather than to the camera.

~~~
onion2k
That would be interesting. I think it's what the likes of Narrative are trying
to do with the Clip device, but they just take a shot at regular intervals
rather than trying to be clever about working out what's good algorithmically.

It probably wouldn't be _that_ hard to do based on motion rather than vision
if you can make a few assumptions, like 'people still relatively still to look
at interesting things' and 'when people are facing each other they want to
remember that scene'.

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rytis
> Why are you taking this picture? It’s already on the Internet!

I am taking it, so that I can use it whenever and wherever I want, without
being afraid of "copyright" holders. Not ideal, but hey, such is life these
days.

~~~
logicallee
Joke's on you, the Eiffel tower is itself copyrighted! :)

[http://www.redbubble.com/people/christinebetts/journal/28082...](http://www.redbubble.com/people/christinebetts/journal/2808231-copyright-
issue-with-my-photo-of-the-eiffel-tower-at-night)

Read up for yourself:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=eiffel+tower+copyrighted](https://www.google.com/search?q=eiffel+tower+copyrighted)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yeah lots of 'public' things are copyright, strangely. The US national
arboretum - you have to pay per photo if you take pictures of the plants!

~~~
yitchelle
But do they enforce the copyright?

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mavhc
I'm confused as to why this isn't an app for a smartphone. Cool demo of how to
simply link bits of hardware together though.

~~~
joss82
Yes, and conversely, why is there a smartphone attached to the box?

All you need is a gyroscope, GPS and a button to press, right?

~~~
luastoned
It's not a smartphone, it's a "4.3 Inch LCD TFT Rearview Monitor screen".

~~~
joss82
Oh. OK, thanks.

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sramsay
I'd like to see this take off in museums, in order to prevent the incessant
strobe lighting caused by people using flash photography to take a poorly-lit
photo of a painting for which there exists a magnificent, professionally-
photographed reproduction in the gift shop.

Yes, most museums ban flash photography (and there's some debate over whether
flash photography will actually damage a painting). But go visit the (US)
National Gallery some time and stand in front of Titian's "Feast of the Gods"
or Leonardo's portrait of Ginevra de' Benci (the only Leonardo portrait in
North America). You'll see one flash after another, even though (in the latter
case) there's a sign asking people not to. I've even seen, at another museum,
a block cut of Munch's "The Scream" that had a cloth cover over it (that you
could lift) to protect the work from light. No problem. People just lifted up
the cloth and snapped a flash photo.

As for the rest of the paintings at the NG: Well, people can just go crazy.
It's like visiting Harold Edgerton's laboratory.

I was so floored by this last time I visited, I asked the people at the desk
about it. They told me that with few exceptions, you can flash away at
anything you like as long as you're not using a tripod. You're free, in other
words, to give your fellow museum goers a seizure; you just can't make money
at it.

------
vool
Reminded me of the blind camera by Sascha Pohflepp:
[http://www.blinksandbuttons.net/buttons_en.html](http://www.blinksandbuttons.net/buttons_en.html)

~~~
daniel_reetz
Yep, it's even an iOS app now.

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ctdonath
Suggested next version: camera/app which determines whether other people
nearby are photographic/recording the same thing, and tells you to just enjoy
the view/show while obtaining a copy of theirs.

Think of how many children's group performances/event involve 2/3rds of
parents present fiddling with their cameras rather than just _watching_.

~~~
sp332
Like this Samsung ad?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSCJWin3IQA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSCJWin3IQA)

------
lucaspiller
Nice idea, although I'm sure you'll have fun taking that on holiday with you
through the airport... :)

~~~
kator
I go through airport security all the time with all sorts of rPI's and
Arduino's often wired to buttons and IMU's and various SDR Radio's.. Every
time I put them in my bag I think "this is the one that's going to get me
stopped". Not even a sideways glance from the scanning operators.

I often go through with things in static protection bags, sometimes big
bundles of LED strings and again nobody stops me.

I'm not sure if I'm happy because I don't have to explain the things in my bag
or worried that they're looking for stuff so specific that someone with 1/2 a
brain could build something that would get though easily...

~~~
w0utert
I don't think airport security is interested in a bunch of wires, pcb's and
buttons as long as there aren't any explosives attached to it. The idea of the
scanner is to see the explosives, not the detonator (you could use about
anything with a battery for that).

~~~
waqf
I guess you don't live in Boston:
[http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N40/simpson.html](http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N40/simpson.html)

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nroets
How do I take a selfie with it ?

~~~
ctdonath
Your selfie has already been taken. The box just finds it.

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heywire
It took me way too long to realize that there wasn't a camera on this gadget.
I guess I should have read the article before watching the video :)

~~~
stronglikedan
With the mindset these days, I'm surprised people didn't think it was a bomb.

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petercooper
Is there a Google-like indexer that indexes all the photos it can find online
and makes them searchable on location information in the EXIF data? That would
be a killer backend for something like this. Seems like something Google
Images could easily do but I can't find an option for it.

~~~
BitMastro
Something like this
[http://www.panoramio.com/map](http://www.panoramio.com/map) ?

~~~
petercooper
I think that's what the project is using. But I also thought Panoramio
required people submit photos to it, it doesn't just pick up every photo it
can find online (like Google Images does). I've never uploaded anything to
Panoramio but I've taken a ton of pictures.

~~~
yincrash
Yup. You do have to submit photos. It has a selector to import Google+ photos,
but it doesn't have all your photos automatically.

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StavrosK
I don't understand how it works. Does it only use the GPS to find photos from
around your spot, or does it use some sort of camera to find something that
matches what you take? I imagine the former, since I didn't see anything that
could sense light in there.

~~~
slazaro
(Haven't looked through the code) I think the idea is that you press the
button, it gets the current GPS coordinate, searches the internet and gives
you a virtual photo of what's around you, given the photos it found taken
nearby. Then it's shown on the screen taped to it. So it's like a camera
without the lens, you press the button and get the picture.

~~~
StavrosK
Right, that's what it looks like, thanks. From the description, I thought it
would also know which way you're looking, and maybe the conditions (time of
day, weather, etc). Something that took a low-res photo and matched it with a
higher res/better-taken photo would be pretty interesting.

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bane
I'm taking the picture because it makes it _my_ picture, bad lighting, poor
weather, bad composition and all. Years later those photos can stimulate
pleasant memories of that time I was wherever that photo was taken.

Still, this is a cool hack.

------
cyanbane
Part of the value of photos are about attachment to a time and a place and as
a tool to the photographer to remind them of that time. This mitigates that.

If this is satire, it's great. If not...

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hopfog
How about this:

You're out sightseeing without a camera. As soon as you're back in your hotel
room you plot out the route you went on a map and get a photo album back.

~~~
billiam
Uh...yeah. What he said. I think that's what you really wanted to make.

What you show, on the other hand, is a product that would be best used by
people who never want to leave their hotel, but just plot out their
sightseeing route on a map and view all the great pictures of the experience
they never had.

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justifier
As a device for the future this would be amazing,

Allowing a user to set a temporal coordinate could have staggering results..

What did this block'building look like 50yrs ago?

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jrockway
If this catches on, you'll almost be able to bike over the Brooklyn Bridge in
the summer!

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moron4hire
I really hope he has some kind of foam pad under that RPi, sitting on top of
that metal table.

~~~
jrockway
Or, oh no, $30 of electronics destroyed! A couple expensive mistakes like
that, and you'll almost have to grab dinner at the convenience store.

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kyberias
The page does not really explain what this thing is or show what it does.

~~~
ninguem2
It looks like a camera but, instead of taking a picture, figures out the
location with GPS and downloads and displays an already existing picture from
the Internet.

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HNJohnC
Look a UFO, take a picture quick...damn all I have is this Layer cam. :(

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blt
Wow, this thread is a shit show. Ha ha. Personally I'm more offended by the
use of a solderless breadboard in a "real project" in the field. Solder up a
stripboard, ya weenie! Maybe get around to having a logo designed after that.

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itazula
Man, I loved that!

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zupa-hu
hahaha, the box is priceless :DDD

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TeMPOraL
This is awesome! Finally someone made this! I wanted to make it for a long
time and to start taking it with me everywhere.

 _Why are you taking this picture? It’s already on the Internet!_ \- this is
my thought every time I see a tourist taking photo of some random thing that
has been photographed by millions of others before him. Sometimes, when I'm in
a bad mood, I say "It's already on Flickr!" out loud when passing by said
tourist.

~~~
chasing
> Sometimes, when I'm in a bad mood, I say "It's already on Flickr!" out loud
> when passing by said tourist.

When they shout back, "That's true, but this is a record of my personal
experience here and I can use this particular photo as an aid to help me
remember the feel of the weather, the color of the leaves, the details of this
particular moment, from my particular vantage point -- and that's what's
important, not just the fact that a million photos have been taken here before
me -- this is _my_ photo" do you stick around to listen, or do you just
continue walking in a self-congratulatory huff?

~~~
TeMPOraL
I continue walking in a self-congratulatory huff.

I happen to be born without the gene that gives you the ability to derive
emotional experiences from photos you made. Probably because of that, I don't
enjoy "tourism" at all. No, I don't even grok it.

~~~
chasing
Oh, that's okay then. When someone's enjoying themselves in a way that
confuses you but otherwise has nothing to do with you, it's perfectly
acceptable to be an asshole to them. Carry on, good sir! Keep making the world
a better place!

