
Camera Pi – DSLR Camera with Embedded Computer - yossilac
http://davidhunt.ie/?p=2641
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bajsejohannes
Very 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 for your camera, at
least)

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StringyBob
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.

~~~
nakedrobot2
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.....

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archivator
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.

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nakedrobot2
Here 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.

~~~
wpietri
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.

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beagle3
That's a nice thought. But the real reason they do it is market segmentation;
e.g. when I looked at it two years ago, the Canon T3i was infinitely better
and cost less than any IP camera out there. If they let you stream out of it
live, it would kill the ip camera market. So they don't.

~~~
wpietri
If they did it only for purposes of market segmentation, they would have long
ago made something that about the size of a point-n-shoot but that was as
convenient for getting the photos up and out as a smartphone.

They haven't. That doesn't mean they have forced me into buying a fancier
camera, and therefore getting more money. Instead they've pushed me into doing
almost all my casual shooting with an (inferior) smartphone.

Besides, market segmentation is a good idea only as long as nobody else is
going to disrupt your precious segments. If they will, then you might as well
disrupt them yourself.

Established organizations have trouble thinking like that, though, because
their ignorance of actual use combines with political desire to avoid change.
Thus, Kodak.

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protomyth
This 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/>

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PStamatiou
As 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) seems like a daunting task for the pi..

For those more familiar with the Raspberry Pi, does it actually have enough
performance to move big RAW files around? A 5D3 will output ~30MB RAWs and in
a shoot you may end up with 500+ of them. Having a Pi transfer/move/adjust
them sounds like a slog.

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sliverstorm
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.

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archivator
> 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.

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sitkack
The GPU on the Pi can't/won't support OpenCL. That doesn't stop one from
writing a GPGPU program in GLSL.

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fungi
nikon are releasing an android camera

[http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/134190-nikons-
android...](http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/134190-nikons-android-
powered-camera-isnt-as-cool-as-you-think)

~~~
danboarder
This could be really great if they release an API to interact with the camera
hardware. The article linked above takes a negative view, citing old Android
versions and so on, but I think this is really a step in the right direction.

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tkahn6
FYI you need a powered USB hub to attach that wifi dongle.

I also got one of those small Realtek RTL8188SU wifi dongles and found that it
worked very poorly. I don't know if it was the particular vendor I got mine
from or the drivers or that particular chipset, but the interface would just
stop working if you tried to do anything data intensive or prolonged on it.
SSH and VNC were unusable.

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drivebyacct2
That's a pain in the neck.

I steam 720p video for hours on end over a IOGear GWU625 (Realtek RTL8191S)
with no problems.

(Requires powered hub AFAIK, I don't think I tried it without though).

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tkahn6
Yeah this is the one I got:

[http://www.amazon.com/Airlink-compatible-Wireless-Mini-
USB-A...](http://www.amazon.com/Airlink-compatible-Wireless-Mini-USB-
AWLL5099/dp/B006ZZUK5Y/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1345369640&sr=8-3&keywords=airlink+101)

I suppose a thing that small and cheap is too good to be true.

