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Transfer Digital Pictures from Flashcard to CD?
chimpo13 writes "I'm riding a 40-year-old, Italian made 250cc motorcycle round the world and doing a journal with pictures (avoiding the 'blog' word). Small bike, not much room, and I'm doing this on the cheap. There is no laptop because you can't trickle charge one. I'm looking for a flashcard to CD burner so I can post digital pictures. I need reliability, battery power, and hopefully someone makes one with an option to 'save for web' to speed up uploads in Internet cafés. Unless someone else has a better idea. I leave from Sydney Australia in 4 months if anyone world wide wants to give me a tour of their town, email me."
Located here. Got good reviews from PC Magazine a few weeks back. I'd definitely trust this company...a good long history of good products
No upload to web, but may fit otherwise.
http://www.roadstor.com/
You can purchase the Belkin media reader accessory. It takes the pictures and transferes them to your iPod. You can get iPods up to 40gigs if need be. It reads all types of digital camera cards, isn't too bulky, and doesn't eat up too much power.
Look for a CompactFlash to PCMCIA adapter and all of a sudden your problem changes to 'find a machine with a CD reader so I can upload my pictures' to find a laptop that has a PCMCIA slot available so I can upload my pictures. In a pinch, consider a USB CompactFlash reader and all of a sudden any computer built since 2000 can probably read your files.
I am guessing that you were planning on finding some sort of computer to send the pictures to the Internet once you had them on CD, so just short circuit the equation. Also, the machines you run into along the way may very well be able to burn the files onto CD once you can pop the CF card in and let them read your files, which is your plan in the first place.
I doubt you will find a portable CF to CD device that doesn't also double as a laptop.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
I use the Apacer Disc Steno II.
Works fine.
Does exactly what you're describing. Fairly small, runs on 110-240VAC at 50-60Hz. Writes CDs at something like 24x.
You can burn multiple cards to a single CD (multisession), or a single card to multiple CDs (spanning) depending on your relative CD/Flash capacities.
It'll play your pictures as a slide show on a TV, or play DVDs, if that's what you're looking for. You can use it as a USB external CD drive for your computer, if you want. I haven't used either of these features. It does not have a built-in LCD for viewing pictures (there is one for copy status).
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
http://www.skymall.com/webapp/skystore?process=pro dNav&action=storeView&vid=66320891&iscrssl =
It is model MB600, Slimline Flash card to CD Recorder
Macally.com makes the SyncBox which allows you to transfer USB->USB without a computer for about $32. Runs on AAAs. Especially handy if you've already got a USB hard-drive based MP3 player.
At least it'd let you empty those media cards and get to an internet cafe with a CD burner less often.
Looks like the Kangaru CD-burner (above) might meet your needs better if you can justify the price tag.
I use an Archos GMINI 120. It has a CF reader and is a USB 2.0 20GB HDD. It will let you dump your CF card to it on the go. The Transfer speed from my CF card to the GMini is about 2mbytes/sec. That's using standard CF cards, no Ultra or 45x cards.
The only downside is a lack of disposable batteries for your use. But you might be able to rig something up with your bike, considering the power usage of the thing.
Hi there,
I've found myself quite happy with Gallery ( gallery.sourceforge.net )
for this sort of thing. It's got a java applet that lets you upload
pictures, or you could upload via standard html. Thus, take your photos,
fill your card, find an internet cafe or a friendly stranger, upload the
photos, and repeat.
Gallery auto-thumbnails so you don't have to worry about mass
conversions, although it may take a bit of time if you do want to
preserve the photo's quality by uploading the full size image.
For what it's worth, I'm archiving all my old slides and have found that
a 4000-dpi 8-bit scan (Nikon Coolscan V ED scanner) saved as a
90%-quality JPEG yields about a 20mb image for a full slide frame (about
19 megapixels) which I can print at a mini-lab using a proper Fuji film
developer machine at 8" x 12" without any noticable grain or loss of
quality. Keep this in mind when you're saving pictures that you know
you'd want to frame later.
I've got other pictures scanned at 1500x1024 (1.5 megapixels) which are
great for full-screen viewing. These work out to just under a meg per
image. I've printed them up to 7x9 on an Epson R300 inkjet with proper
photo paper and ink. You can *just* tell they're printed "at home", but
they're certainly useable.
So to sum up, I'd leave a web server running with someone technical who
you can trust to maintain it, lots of disk space, a few extra flash
cards, and just do mass uploads when you can.
If you want some examples, feel free to browse to
http://www.mindslip.org/photos
Good luck, and have a safe ride and a great trip!
David Szego.
When the drum brakes on that 40 year old bike finally overheat and stop working, and you're left smeared all over the pavement, your precious little camera will do nothing to stop the semi from pounding your flesh into the gravel.
40 year old 250cc bike? Please stay off the major highways.
If you can find a suitable tiny laptop with burner, you'll end up with a much more flexible platform for doing what you want to do.
To trickle charge your laptop, you break the chargin into two steps:
1) Trickle charge a suitable gell cell or other battery (via solar or generator on cycle)
2) Charge laptop from battery
If you are misery with your energy, you can charge a small battery with a small solar panel on your cycle all day, then charge your laptop from the battery for an hour or two at night (or simply use the battery for power, get rid of the laptop battery)
Pros: get to charge battery all day, don't need to leave laptop with charger or cycle while battery is charging (safer).
Cons: have to lug around another 5-10 pounds of stuff.
Also, you might consider using an ipaq or similar pda. It'll be less power hungry and time consuming than a cd burner, and with built in wireless you're liable to find more open hotspots than you are liable to find cyber cafe's. Connection and transmission speed should be higher going directly from the flash card to the wireless internet than from flash to cd to computer to wired internet.
-Adam
Just buy a couple of $200 MuVo2 MP3 players, extract the 4GB compact flash cards, and you have more than enough storage for the whole trip on 2 cards. Or if your camera doesn't support Type III CF or are worried about moving parts, buy several cheap 512MB solid state cards.
Either way, it is going to be more compact and reliable than dragging around a fragile CD writer + batteries and, unless you hope to buy them along the way, fragile and bulky CD-R discs. Copy the Win98 drivers onto a floppy, and you'll have no problem finding a compatible computer to upload images from the CF cards.
By the way, if you have any sort of sendoff from Sacto, let me know, and I'll buy you a beer. I was at the Trekkies II filming and also heard you (I think it was you) on KDVS awhile back, and I've been following your plans for travel here on Slashdot. No Kill I is one of the reasons I moved cross country. A region thick with Star Trek bands that don't take themselves seriously seemed pretty cool.
Good luck with the trip.
--
Evan "Gorn Subgenius"
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
by putting it in the article seems dumb as hell
Addonics MFR, runs off battery or wall power: http://www.steves-digicams.com/2003_reviews/addoni cs_mfr.html
I'm riding a 40-year-old, Italian made 250cc motorcycle round the world and doing a journal with pictures
:D
Do you happen to be a hot Russian chick who is known for riding through Chernobyle?
to carry around a laptop or burner that will just get destroyed/stolen.
I would use maybe 10 256MB CF cards and bring a $10 usb card reader
the large number of CF cards also provides a small measure of "redundancy"
Here is another option. It's just a battery operated HD that you can copy memory cards to. Then it hooks up with USB, as an removeable drive. Probably won't need drivers on Linux, Win2k or WinXP.e en=PROD&Store_Code=T00107&Product_Code=602 0
http://secure.serverlab.net/shop/merchant.mvc?Scr
The only caveat would be that you need to be able to hook up to a USB port at the Internet Cafe.
Can't remember what mine is, but it I found it for USD$99 for 10GB storage.
You didn't say why you are recording onto CD...
Why not just buy extra flash cards, enough so that you don't fill them up completely between cafes.
Then use a wireless PDA with flash reader to upload in the cafe, but if you're lucky the will already have a flash reader.
-- John.
I've got one of these - it's essentially a 20 gig HD with enough processing power on board to play and record audio and video.
The package I got included a gizmo that let me read compact flash, so I was able to backup all my Honeymoon photos to this device while travelling.
It is possible to charge it a lot more easily than a laptop and since it only needs to run for as long as it takes to transfer photos then it could probably go a long time between charges.
It's also a standard USB hard disk so you can plug it in to a regular PC at an opportune moment and back up things further.
Buy a Sony Mavica Cd-350 or CD-500
Burn your photo/video directly in CD...
Also, will you be staying with friends? I burnt some photos to CD for friends travelling with a Kodak CF-based camera. I don't know what most other people are like, but my home PC can read SM, CF and MMC, at work we can also read Memory Stick, and a couple of close friends can read SD.
If your laptop has a vehicle power cord for charging from a car, you can use it. What you need to do is three-fold:
- Rectify the AC from the bike. Your AC alternator output is not a problem for a full-wave bridge rectifier. You'll probably want to add the filter capacitor in the last graphic. Yes, this means that your positive and negative will not be referenced to the bike frame. So what? The computer's case is plastic.
- Limit the current so that the alternator is not overtaxed. This is easily done with a resistor, though you will have to get something with a high enough power rating that it won't burn out. More on this below.
- A voltage regulator to prevent over-powering the electronics. This is probably not an issue for most circumstances, but you want to be careful.
First, the bridge. If your alternator outputs a sine wave and your RMS (root mean square) voltage is 12 VAC, the peak voltage from the alternator will be about 17 volts (this will likely be different for non-sinusoidal waveforms). A silicon diode drops about 0.7 volts, so two diode drops gives you a peak output voltage of roughly 15.6 volts; the average will be lower, but if you charge a capacitor you can feed the load from it while the alternator's voltage isn't up there.Next, the resistor. You want to limit the maximum current so that the bike will keep running even while the laptop is pulling as much current as you'll let it. Suppose you want to limit the power to 20 watts peak, with the alternator cranking out 17 volts and the laptop pulling enough current to bring its end down to 10 volts. Your current supply from the alternator is 20 watts/17 volts = 1.18 amps. Two diode drops from the alternator gives you 15.6 volts peak; assume another 0.7 volts for a low-dropout linear regulator and you get 14.9 volts, and the difference between 14.9 volts and 10 volts is 4.9 volts. 4.9 volts/1.18 amps = 4.2 ohms. Peak dissipation will be about 6 watts, though the average will be lower. If you can get a 4-ohm, 5-watt resistor and put it somewhere that it gets cooling air, you should be fine.
Last, the regulator. Wiki wimped out and failed to put a schematic of a linear regulator on-line, but I found this data sheet for a 3-terminal version. Whether you go with a 3-terminal regulator or roll your own with a power transistor (the simplest usable circuit has all of five components), you'll want to get about 12 volts out. Feed this into your laptop's vehicle power cord, and you're cooking with gas. Oh, and don't forget the fuse! An indicator LED would be a nice touch, but isn't essential - if you do this, run it from the regulated output so you can verify that power is getting to the end. For bonus points, put a 9-volt zener diode in series with the LED so that it doesn't light up until you see close to 11 volts at the output. If you do the LED trick, you'll need to adjust the value of its limiting resistor appropriately; if the regulator puts out 12 VDC and the LED's on-voltage is 10.7, you'll want a ~65 ohm resistor to limit the LED current to 20 milliamperes. This value is not sensitive, and a 1/4 watt resistor should be plenty.
Caveat 1: The series resistor and the regulator will dissipate significant power, and will need to be heat-sinked. You may want to build this affair into a small electronics box and mount those components onto a finned aluminum heat sink forming one side. Mount this where it will get some cool air.
Caveat 2: You'll want to check charging performance before you depend on this thing. Run your laptop down, plug it in and go for a ride.
get a PDA with 802.11 and a compact flash card (toshiba e740). Upload the pictures wirelessly. Very small. Can be had real cheap.
I'll just piggy-back off the first post, so I get noticed and address a bunch of comments. Thanks for all the good comments posted along with the personal emails. It's mostly useful.
I'm burning to a cd so I can post the photos on route without dealing with trying to put drivers on internet cafe computers. A friend of mine will fiddle with 'em so they load fast if I can't do that from the internet cafe computers.
It's a Ducati, being purposely built for the trip by Phil at Road & Race in Sydney Australia. Phil's updating the electronics to 12-volt so the headlight should be decent and it'll be running electronic ignition, not points. Old bikes are built tough, and besides, breaking down is part of the adventure. And duh, it's a 250cc. I'm not planning on riding down the autobahn on it. I figure it'll take me about 3 years to ride round the world.
Christ, I should've looked into a camera that burns cds. Didn't realize they existed, and I bought a Canon A70 last week. Damn. I'll reckon I should sell it and buy a Sony Mavica. Thanks, ivanandre.
For places to stay: I'll be camping and I'll meet people. Most punk rockers don't mind putting visitors up. I do it, although being in Sacramento means no one wants to visit. When I lived in San Francisco there were always someone from another country in the apartment, sometimes there'd be 10 of 'em. It works to a lesser degree with motorcycle types.
--Dave
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
Walmart has these computer setups in their photo section. You put in your card, and you can get one hour prints or have it burned to a CD (in about an hour). It's not too expensive either.
-Tim
What about an Apple iPod. The new ones with the flash adapter will suck the data right into the device. Don't know about charging, but I do know that they have battery packs for them. Charging might be an option too. You get music and picture storage. 40GB is a lot of pics.
Howdy Tau Zero,
Old Ducatis are 6 volt typically running with a 40 or 60 watt alternator. This bike will be updated with a 12 volt system and a (Honda or Yamaha) electronic ignition instead of points. I'm not sure how many watts the alternator will put out.
When I asked about trickle charging a laptop battery before, it wasn't working out. It got a lot of "you're an idiot" type responses, but the helpful ones said even if it works, trickle charging is hell on laptop batteries.
I forwarded the good responses to an electronic engineer who restores old Ducatis. He was going to build something for me, but it didn't seem like it'd work out based on his knowledge and training and the helpful posts from slashdot.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
If your Digital Camera is CF then pick up this combo, use an Ipod as a photo library. Insert a CF card and transfer all photos on it to the Ipod's HD, and then clear the card for use again.
Inverters are quite cheap. See http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=42167&item=3480410775&rd=1 for just one example. (I picked this at random, there are 1,000s of inverters on EBay.)