Slashdot Mirror
Origami Helps Cellphone Cameras To Focus
Sea Monkey writes "New Scientist has an article on the development of novel and ultra-cheap micromotor technology. It's a new type of linear motor, 'using a technique closer to origami than engineering' to cut slits out of tiny piezoelectric ceramic parts. One of the envisioned applications is taking a sheet of the material with the motors, wrapping it into a tube and moving a lens up and down it - instant tiny movable focusing element for cellphone camera lenses."
check Fox or CNN, its on one of those two right now. gl
that is true only where there is network lock in, and there is no problems with network here either (how bad are the networks in usa? the gsm network has been 'perfect' for the last ~5-7 years here ffs, and i pay the same rate in most of europe as i pay in my home country), not that it makes the camera any more usefull or less useful.
the uses are limited but on the better phones with cameras(nokia3650 for one, the lens is better than on 7650) the camera is good enough to beat a disposable camera(especially when you get to see the picture, whereas on a disposable cameras you don't).
not a replacement to a good digicam but it's something you have with you _always_, no matter how compact camera you have you're going to end up leaving it but you don't leave your mobile, so you end up getting loads of party pics(and travel pics as such: here ). besides than that it's just 'nice extra' in 3650 anyways, the other features are much more useful and valuable for a power user(symbian, mmc memory expansion, gprs, powerful enough cpu).
the even smaller resolution cameras in cheaper/smaller phones are pretty useless though except for sending mms messages.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
That doesn't sound that different from existing piezo-electric motors like this one.
I have to agree with you. It's a very delicate arrangement based on the principle of gripping surfaces and tension between two surfaces that looks like it can come apart or go awry quite easily.