I thought it was pretty cool. Almost everything is legos now; you can't claim something isn't novel just because the components exist independently - if they haven't been used in that combination I say it's still novel.
"What's the breakthrough here? It seems they just mated peanut butter with jelly between two slices of bread, all of which we've already had for decades"
> It’s got a fast autofocus that can focus in as quickly as 0.3 seconds, optical image stabilization, and an image processing engine that’s able to reduce the effects of fog and heat-haze. The camera also supports ISO levels of up to 819200 for filming at night
This is the novelty. Basically improving on other camera systems by making the optics better. There are plenty of surveillance cameras that offer a similar set of features but perhaps with lower specs (slower AF, less effective processing algorithms, etc.). But I don't think they claimed to be a breakthrough invention, just an excellent first step into the field and a possible improvement over some of the competing offerings. This is more or less standard for border security applications, as an example [0].
There are many extreme long range surveillance systems that probably do a lot better... at potentially multiple hundreds of thousands of $ per unit.
Pretty much. After that it's all been wheels. Take the lenses, that's just a wheel with a piece of glass on each side, easy. The camera? More wheels of different sizes somewhat cleverly put together to capture light and store it - boring. It's almost depressing really, kids nowadays don't know how to make new things, just strap two things together with tape.
"What's the breakthrough here? It seems they just mated peanut butter with jelly between two slices of bread, all of which we've already had for decades"