LCD Display/Image Capture Device

Jon writes "Remember jokes about clueless newbies trying to fax documents by holding them up to the monitor? Perhaps they were just ahead of their time. Toshiba has developed a combined LCD/optical sensor, according to EETimes. It isn't monitor sized yet, but in a few years, perhaps?"

Comments

1984

[CrosbieSmith]

Aaarrgh! My screen is watching me!

Re:1984

[Judg3]

Ah, you mean this chapter. And indeed, it's almost true now:

"Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away
about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The
telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston
made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover,
so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque
commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of
knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on
what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was
guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But
at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to
live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every
sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement
scrutinized."

In Soviet Russia...

[Quixote]

OK, you can start posting the variants of "In Soviet Russia, the monitor watch you!" now...

I just want

[scorp1us]

To be able to position a webcam from computer A in front of a monitor from computer B, and reverse it. So each camera is looking at each other's monitor.

Then I want to display crap on the screen which then gets interpreted as data (Imagine a 4x4 checkerboard, black=0, white=1, so each screen displays 16 bits at a time)

Now use this to bridge two networks.

Questions: How many cells can be fit on a monitor?
How fast can you change/read the data?
Ideally if your webcam is 320x200, you could get 64kbits per flash. If you can use 4 colors instead of two, you're upto ISDN speeds...

No sale

[Mattygfunk1]

This is solving a problem that has already been solved.

Faxes around my office are usually printed computer documents that perhaps have a hand written signature. This fits beautifully into the sending slot. Why would anyone want to stand there holding the thing still while they press a button / click a mouse. No way.

__ cheap web site hosting

Imagine the spam...

[scorp1us]

Now spammers can see if you're really fat or not. I can also show them my schlong, so they won't 1) tell me how to make it longer and 2) tell me how I can increase my breast size.

Finally!

[dfiguero]

No more cracking the photocopier glass to get a butt shot ;)

Re:Why?

[Anonvmous Coward]

"A monitor is an output device. A scanner (optical reader, whatever) is an input device. Why merge the two when they should be mutually exclusive? "

Does your keyboard have a caps-lock light?

Not a camera - a scanner

[wowbagger]

This is not a device that can form an image from an object at a non-trivial distance from the display - this is a device that only images an object placed against it.

I would expect the primary intent of a device like this would be in a web-pad type device. Picture a clipboard, but thicker. Your customer hands you a printed item (work order, recept, whatever). You place the item face down against the display and push a button on the side. You remove the item from the display, and verify the scan took, then hand the item back to the customer.

This would no more allow your monitor to image what is going on in the room than putting your flat bed scanner up on edge and leaving the top open would.