Slashdot Mirror
Cool Wireless Video Camera For $75
phutureboy writes: "Thought the gadget freaks and toy hackers out there would be interested in this badass video camera for kids. It transmits at 900MHz to a base station which has audio/video RCA outs you can connect to a TV or VCR. I bought one at Wal-Mart for $75, and have been fairly impressed with it so far even though it's sort of cheap and plasticky. Got me to wondering what other applications the Slashdot crowd could come up with for it, or whether anyone knew of other inexpensive video cameras suitable for experimentation." CT:You can get an x10 one too. Video
quality kinda sucks tho.
It's our housemate's kitchen, and the neighbor's bedroom. Methinks the neighbor should buy the curtains, instead of my housemate having to drink his coffee in the dark every morning. Of course, if he gouges his eyes out, the point will be moot.
I think not...(*poof*)
I'll tell you what I can do with it: My lame neighbors in the rental house next door are too cheap to buy curtains, so we're treated to glaring light every night through my bedroom window, and our housemate upstairs is treated every morning to the twiggy, pasty not-very-attractive goth chick bouncing up and down on her pudgy, pasty, loser boyfriend in their bedroom in full view of his kitchen. Not something he really wants to accompany his coffee every day.
I figure one of these recording the view from *inside* my house (to maintain some semblance of legality) would be a nice deterrent. The window's not near a computer, so this wireless camera would be quite convenient. If they got off on the exposure... oy.
I think not...(*poof*)
I'm setting up a B&W cam (from Marlin P Jones & Associates) for the same purpose (baby cam). The nice thing is that CCD cameras are very infra-red sensitive unless they incorporate an IR filter. (You can test yours by observing how well it "sees" an IR remote's beam.) I've wired up two banks of IR LEDs as a light source (20 50-cent LED's in series/parallel). Baby can sleep in complete darkness while Big Brother (well, Big Mother and Big Father) watch.
Good cameras (from MPJA, SuperCircuits, and others) are cheap enough that there really is no reason to fool with toys like the camera mentioned in the base article. The X10 stuff is as cheap and is at least barely usable (with good lighting and short distances). But if you're half-way handy with electronics, you can do a lot better assembling a system yourself for just a bit more money.
Ok, I bought one from X10.com 6 months ago. It has to be line of sight (through walls work but when people walk between the reciever and transmitter you get interference) In my office (open space with only false walls & a cube garden) we can get about 200 feet before it get's really touchy on what is inbetween the antennas. (a paper book causes loss of signal at 200 feet) and the antennas must be pointing at each other (I.E. the flat side toward the other...) from inside to outside is a no-go through steel and concrete. they really are toys and not for any serious use and the camera and optics are poor quality but useful for watching your children/front door/other simple uses that dont require quality or a clear picture.
Me? I'd buy a better setup. Like I have in my remote controlled boat.. 3000feet on ham bands.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
But you seem to be missing the whole point of /.
/. is that they put up the blurb, and then all us proles fill in the details. I haven't finished reading the comments for this one, but I'm willing to bet that somebody out there has been able to find some hard numbers.
/. guys aren't real journalists. This isn't a real news site. If you want lots of details in the article, go someplace else. All they do is give is a little tiny pebble, and we glom onto it and build up a pearl.
How much information do you expect them to be able to give you in the little blurbs that they use for news articles? Sure, it might've been nice to see an extended review, but that's not the main purpose of this place.
The beauty of
No offense to them, but the
The Trendmasters unit is a simple battery-powered camera. It will find other low-resolution uses (I saw the TV ads, and the video looked like toy quality). I also notice that the link in the article has a picture with a flap open on the far side -- that is not an LCD monitor, as that is not mentioned in the Trendmasters description.
I have always wanted one of those things, but when I finally became an adult with a job and money, they become non-existant (or VERY pricey on Ebay).
My only consolation was to buy the cheapest camcorder I could find - it was GE 8mm camcorder, very, VERY basic (ie, manual zoom, seperate lensed viewfinder, no titling, no preview, no nothing). Price? $250.00 US - that was five years ago, and I haven't seen anything come close to it since (though there are some nice $300 rigs - I just don't use a video camera often enough to justify any of it).
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I know for sure people rigged up quickcams on their Lego creations long before Lego decided to put its cam on the market. I know of one guy who made camera crane rigs from Lego this way, controllable via a web gateway (ie, a controlable Lego webcam).
Lego released their camera (as a Mindstorms add-on, and also as some kind of interactive movie making set) - unfortunately it is still tethered to the PC via a cable - it isn't wireless, thus limiting its true potential for experimentation.
This kid's camera isn't much cheaper than the X-10 thing. Plus, I wish that instead of using a 9-volt, they would use 6 AA batteries (for longer "on" time).
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Is probably the 900 MHz transmitter antenna - look at the x-10 wireless camera, notice the similarity?
My first thought was that this camera was nothing more than a repackaged x-10 system (that, or the makers of the x-10 camera also sold the system to the makers of the toy cam)...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
There's been several articles about the raciness of the ads in the X-10 cams. In fact, one guy sent me pics of all the ads. They featured rather scantily clad women in interesting posts. Nothing too risque, your typial Benny Hill stuff.
The guy in charge of X-10 had nothing to hide in an interview. He said it was effective, and it worked.
Check out this camera from SmartHome.Com. It runs on a 9-volt battery and can transmit to a 900 MHz base or to channel 59 UHF. It has a 200' range. Kinda expensive, but very cool.
Coolest thing I ever saw was the individual images from an MRI done of my brain...
I was sitting there watching them iterate through the images, and i had to yell "Is that my medula?"
The coolest thing I learned from EEGs is that you could attach all of the electrodes to your head and use them to power a calculator. Very cool stuff.
This camera could make a fine inexpensive remote monitor camera. You could place it up in the attic of other furtive location and have it watch the front or back of your house. When you have a break in or other intrusion you will have at least a minimal record of who could be a suspect.
One word: sigmoidscopy
Man I wish I could have seen the inside of my son when they did this to him. The camera they used to do this was ULTRA cool. The only neater thing was an EEG he had done. That was actually using a PC for recording the brain waves. And, it ran DOS! (I about fell over when I saw that).
Gorkman
makes a pretty cool Pencam, which although doesn't do soundon it's video, is neato for feeling like a spy when you're a kid, or for getting those special moments alone with your do^H^H^H^Hwife on film when you are an adult. It is under a hundred bucks USD.
This reminds me of the old B&W quickcams when they were still made by Connectix. Apparently they have a chip inside them to do IR filtering, because the sensors would sample IR as well. A friend of mine used some instructions on the web to bypass the chip (he said it was fairly easy), and purchased an IR floodlight. Viola, instant nightime camera using a floodlight that wouldn't bother a human.
-no broken link
I agree that this is a crappy price point for a crappy toy. You can actually get a decent (not great, but decent) real digital camera for $299 (an HP model with a 2.1 megapixel res), or a real S-VHS-C or Hi8 video camera for around $400-$500 when Best Buy has a sale. S-VHS and Hi-8 actually have comparable quality to digital camcorders, the downside of course being that, since they're analog, there will be some minor quality loss once you digitize them with a PC video capture device. In fact, most news cameras in use today at smaller stations are S-VHS, though it's the full-size S-VHS and not the small S-VHS-C. Now, this is several times the $79 for this unit, but it's worth saving for. You get 2.1 million pixels resolution in the digital still camera, or 520 lines of video resolution with a Hi8 or S-VHS-C video camera.
If you're really on a tight budget and want such a gadget, get a real webcam from Logitech or Intel or Creative or such, and if you want to be able to use it away from the PC get something like the Creative webcam which can be untethered and used as a low-res digital camera, for about $129. Heck, HP offers a 1.3 megapixel digital camera for just $199. The only good use I can see for devices like this are for a low-res home surveillance security system, where higher priced components wouldn't be worth the extra cost.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
I got it as a Christmas gift many moons ago. I was disappointed tho, because I wanted a nice still camera. But I remember having fun with the PXL-2000 once I started using it. I thought it was sooo cool that it used audio cassettes to record the video stream, and it was so compact. Eventually I took it apart and hid the internals in my sister's room, because she had a really hot friend I wanted to see a little more of, who'd come over and change after cheerleading practice. Lucky for my perverted little 12 year old ass, I never got caught with it. But, the PKL-2000 is still upstairs in a closet, its internals and casing never reassembled, tucked away in a plastic bag. If there's really a market on eBay for these things, I'll probably get to work on assembling it and, if it works, selling it...
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
I bought the X10 camera awhile ago and returned it. The picture is actually decent but if there's anything but full sunlight, you can forget it. I wasn't expecting it to work in the dark but I felt it was a bit ridiculous. I was experimenting with it and put it in my kids room and even with the light on it was too dark.
I think almost everyone is missing the point of this product. It's not targeted at the Lego-bot, home security, or bathroom-cam crowds. It's targeted at all those households with VCRs that don't want to pay $300+ for a video camera. Now for just $80 they can tape their kid's first steps or a Christmas message for Grandma.
I've wondered why nobody built something like this. It sure doesn't have to be wireless. Stick a cheap CCD camera and mono microphone on the end of a 50' cable and sell it for $50.
However, I bet there's an easy way to boost the transmitter output and probably violate several FCC rules in the process.
Cryptnotic
My other first post is car post.
I got the 3-pack of X10 wireless cams a couple of months back. The cameras are satisfactory (see other posts in this story for specifcs), but it took 3 visits to their website and about a dozen emails to a real person to get them to stop spamming me. Caveat emptor...
Sean
One of the things I was trying to accomplish with this get-up was to take two cameras and mount them in doggie-eye-configuration, and them transmit two signals back to the computer, so the images could be massaged into one picture that would more correctly represent what the dog viewed. Has anyone tried two of these camera/transmitters near each other or otherwise tested for interference?
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Man, if they can make fancy wireless toys like this, why can't they bring back the PXL-2000. It would probabally cost the same and be a LOT neater.
Burn Hollywood Burn
... and drive it into places that it otherwise wouldn't be able to get to! just think of the possibilities!
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
The possibilities are endless.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
I got a cool application, It worked too.
Sometime last year there was this neighbor who insisted on leaving his junked cars parked in front of my house. Not just for a week but for allmost a full year!!! So naturally I got sick of it. I'd call the cops to come out and take care of it, they'd put a sticker on the car to move within 72 hours. They'd move the car for like a week, then park it right back in front of my house. Unfortunately there was a loophole here and unless I could prove that these jerks were being malicious about their parking habits I'd never be able to park in front of my house again.
The cops at this point were getting pretty sick of coming out to my house too.
So I went out and got a little X-10 cam, vid capture card and set it up on my windowsil. I set it to capture 1200 frames every 24 hours and let it sit there for about a month before I called the cops out again.
This time I had the cops bring the neighbor over to the house. He was one of those greasy inbred white trash types. He started yellin at me saying I was a lier blah blah blah right in front of the cops saying he moves those cars everyday. I opened up the AVI file of the time lapse, man I wish I could have gotten the look on his face when I started to play it. Sun goes up, car still there, sun goes down, car still there, moon comes up, car still there, moon goes down, car still there. The cops started muscling the guy saying they could charge him with falsifying information on a police report and they'd let him go if he promised to never park in front of my house again. Never had a problem since.
--toq
Basically, WalMart has huge market share, especially in music sales. They have so much, in fact, that they routinely force recording artists to alter lyrics or cover art in order to get the CD sold in Wal-Mart stores. While it is their right to choose what is sold and what is not, it runs counter to the entire notion of free speech when a CD is buried because its lyrics offend some Christian Wrong preachers with market power. So if you can, try to get your cool new cam somewhere else. And check around for better Wal-Mart stories; the link I included is probably far from the best, and their list of transgressions goes on and on.
And remember, shop smart... shop S-Mart!
...when you consider that most 'consumer' webcams range between $60 and $140. My brother recently bought a nice Intel USB camera for $90.
If you don't want to shell out money for a nice digital camera (My sony cybershot cost $999), there are better alternatives than buying a toy.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
...I'd put these in a product! I am an RC nutzoid, and I rubberbanded this on an electric car, and drove around the house while sitting in the living room watching my TV!!! It was great fun. First, powerslides and watching the suspension work were very cool. Then I set up some old TMNT figures (Don and Splinter to be specific) and ran them over, drove under and around furniture, all that. At one point I got interference on my car's radio but the video was still coming through and I helplessly watched it crash itself until the batteries fell out of the camera's pack and the screen went to snow. Classic.
/. posting. You are a killjoy. Go read manpages.
I'm DYING to put this in a plane or heli, but the range is garbage. It was nice to discover that even though the antenna is a dish-looking thing, it doesn't act very directional. Works great at nearly all orientations. I'm a software guy; wish I knew how to amplify the signal. If anyone can boost the range on this puppy, let's hear how!!!!
Anyways, a big stinky poo on you to all readers who think this is a non
If a 1 legged stool falls in 2 dimensions, and a 2 legged stool falls in 3, does a 3 legged stool fall in 4?
Prolly get modded down for this, but who cares?
Slashdot has taken a dramatic downturn since it was "purchased". Having seen how this works from the inside I understand how it can happen. When a website is acquired there is a certain amount of traffic it is expected to drive to meet AD revenues (if thats the only source it has). This in itself is fair... the site was purchased to at the very least pay for itself and increase the mindshare of whoever owns it.
The problem is... the purchaser usually throws in weird conditions. Some slashdot conditions may have been, "a certain number of front page stories a day", "this many comments a week", or "this many less technical stories". I'm not saying this is the case here, but given some of the things we've seen over the past year its certainly plausible.
Then again its prolly just popularity, Slashdot is for all intents and purposes a BBS and just like any of the old dialup BBS's once they get to popular they lose their spark.
--- I do not moderate.
So, anyone got some?
-- ShadyG
Nerd Rock In Progress
Is actually a waste of plastic, IMHO. I had to help hook one of these up for a friends kid, and the reception was terrible, the picture was barely recognizable, and the camera felt like it was made of the same sheap plastic they use for ball pits...:P
How Jaded Are You?
As a massive videophile, I picked this little sucker up as soon as I saw it. The lowdown is this:
Picture quality blows....but what do you expect, it's $75.
There is a fixed lens which they say you can focus by taking off the front casing, though i haven't had any luck with their method.
The transmission is ok. I live in a house with a basement, the camera would work fine on the same floor as the receiver, though transmitting between floors is no good. It will go thorough walls with some interference. It will not transmit when put in the freezer with the door closed.
I do all kinds of video stuff, one of which is live mixing/projections at raves. I was really hoping the camera would work there as a wireless livecam, but the damned thing wouldn't transmit at all. I guess with all the interference of electronics the signal just couldn't be processed well. All I got was an indistinguishable b&w image.
As far as the neato factor goes, the cam is pretty good. If you are using it at home and don't mind the occasional hiccups in transmission and poor picture quality, then it's not a bad buy.
It is only $75, and it is a camera, though I was hoping for something like the old Fisher Price Pixelvision PXL2000, it is no where near as cool.
--negspace
"can't depend on honest answers from dependent hands. won't accept an honest answer from an open hand." --jimmy eat world
I guess that's why simple, subtle ads have more or less been replaced by in-your-face ones.
On that note, check out the link in my sig.
--
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Rubber band this to a lego robot and build a web interface to drive it around the house and you've got a fun little toy to play with at work. Plug the video outputs to your video capture card. M@
Krispy Cream is people
I did some research for a robot project some time ago, here are some cheap, small, light cams:
http://www.quasarelectronics.com/cmos_cameras.htm
http://www.mars-cam.com/frame/optical.html
http://www.supercircuits.com/
cheers
mike
The number of "hidden" porn cams increase on the 'net once the general slashdot readership gets ahold of this ? :)
Before you say "it's just a camera for kids", ask yourself this: Do we really want to see content-free postings about every toy that someone thinks is neat? When did /. go from being "News for Nerds" to "Ads for Walmart"?