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Battery-Powered USB Enclosure
An anonymous reader pointed us to a story about a battery-powered USB disk enclosure. It operates on AA batteries. It's aluminum, and is sorta meant to offload data from cameras. It's only 2.5 inches, so that's not totally unreasonable, but I'm still struggling a bit with the 'Why' part of the equation.
Peripherals: Alpha-Data battery-powered 2.5" HDD case
a .htm
HDD cases for both 2.5 and 3.5 inch drives are a dime-a-dozen these days. Alpha-Data tries to separate themselves from the pack with the "Copy BANK Case" - a 2.5" HDD case that supports battery-powered operation and can be used independent of a PC as a storage device for digital cameras and mp3 players.
[IMAGE]
Alpha-Data will release a USB2.0 external 2.5" HDD case that can operate on dry cell batteries, the "Copy BANK Case", in mid January 2005. It will have no fixed retail price but the street price is expected to be approximately 6000 yen.
Using the included battery box and 4 AA batteries, the case can be used independently as a portable HDD. The case supports hard disk up to 80GB in size.
The case can be directly connected to a digital camera, mp3 player or self-powered USB storage class device. When the case's "COPY button" is pressed, data is copied directly to the HDD.
The case can be used as a removable drive when connected to a PC. Power is provided by the PC's PS/2 port or USB port using the included cable. Supported operating systems are Windows ME/2000/XP and Mac OS9 or later.
The case is made of aluminium. Think about your breathing. It measures W80 x D140 x H14 mm in size and weighs 80 grams. Included accessories include a number of cables (mini USB-mini USB, mini USB - USB, mini USB - USB (female)) and a carrying case for the HDD case and battery box.
[IMAGE]
Inspired by:
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2004/1220/alph
Homepage:
http://www.alpha-data.co.jp/
It's only 2.5 inches, so that's not totally unreasonable, but I'm still struggling a bit with the 'Why' part of the equation.
...and your camera is quickly free, ready to shoot some more. It sits in between the capability of a laptop for storage, and a mere HD for size convenience. When you're running around with a Camera and camera bag and need to get hundreds of photos done, carrying around even a 12" laptop is extremely cumbersome. slip this device inside your camera bag and you're running at an advantage.
This drive isn't JUST a drive like other 2.5" USB external drives. It also has the ability to talk to other USB devices, such as a camera (or sound recorder, or what have you). It can mount the USB device - let's use a camera for argument's sake - and copy files from it at the press of a button. Normal USB drives do NOT do this. the iPod doesn't either, without extra hardware.
So the point is - you can run around with your brand new EOS 1Ds Mark II spitting out 10MB RAW 16megapixel images all day long, and not have to worry about a maximum of 4GB on your (expensive!) compact flash card. You can shoot a bunch of images, connect to the drive, press a button to transfer to an 80GB drive...
What does this mean?
Well, if you want to dump Photos from a USB camera, the HD must be attached to a whole PC and OS! A battery-powered device that manages to maintain a USB root hub, and have an HD attached is a pretty nifty trick, and offers many (not all) of the Firewire advantages. It is certainly compact and lightweight, and I doubt you wait for it to boot...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
now if the usb device also has a CF/MMC/SD/etc. reader and it can offload it directly....
l s/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1056270&CatId=1203
Anyways, I thought there was a portable CDRW drive with that ability...
oo...found one that has a hard drive.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchToo
so what has this that the iPod hasn't ?
The iPod is a USB slave. It can only ever connect functionally to a USB master, such as your PC. This device would function as a USB master device (i.e. the PC side), by which you could copy data from any (I assume FAT-based) USB mass storage devices.
So this means camera, USB drive, MP3 player, anything that uses the USB Mass Storage driver. What would be interesting to know (I can't get the article) is whether or not it provides for the capability to write back to the devices (to view pictures on the camera, listen to songs on the player, etc).
I'm really surprised that none of the manufacturers have tapped this. I want a little 5-port hub that takes a couple AA batteries, that I can throw in my laptop bag and use to do diagnostics (tap an ethernet line, etc). I've tried doing this myself, but most hubs I've found are either insanely high voltages (18.5 or something), or weird tollerances (3.2v, where it won't tollerate 3v or 4.5v), or huge wattage consumption.
I came close with a 5-port linksys "hub" that didn't consume much power and took 7.5v, so I chained 5 AA batteries together in a harness and mucked together a connector. It has a decent battery life (about 3 hours normal use), but the 5-port linksys "hubs" ARE ACTUALLY SWITCHES. Stupid linksys.
Anyways, if you happen to work at a networking manufacturer, lightly suggest to them to produce a small hub with a built-in battery bay that takes 4 AA batteries or something.
Check out http://www.usb.org/faq/ans6#q1 for more info on "USB On-The-Go" (AKA USB Host Mode).
It will allow connection of USB devices (pretty much digital cameras) and will act as host, allowing uploading of all the files. You could then reformat your memory card (stick, whatever) and snap more pics.
Certainly a lot cheaper to buy one 40GB HD than 40 1GB CF Cards (a lot less space too).
Great for vacations, short trips, etc. The fact that it runs on regular batteries is a plus. If your batteries die on a trip, just run to the local store and buy new ones (no need to lug around a docking station or battery charging cords, etc).
Check out the new IRiver H320 & H340 mp3 players, they have this feature (a definate must for anyone into taking way too many pictures).
The click-wheel iPods can be used with an accessory by Belkin (F8E477) which allows USB transfers of photos from a digital camera right into your iPod.
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It's about $80 on Belkin's site, probably cheaper elsewhere:
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.proces
Okay, it's cool. However, it may not be the best pick if you want to offload pictures from your camera / camera's card.
:
There's lots more options here
http://fhoude34.free.fr/PortableHD_Main.htm
Most are going to be a good bit bigger, but have more functionality as well.
The Innoplus PhotoTainer also does this, plus it runs Linux.
All of these can be used as MP3 players. Some can even play video. The Archos Gmini 120 would be the most economical choice.
If you have a Sony digital camera, you *have* to buy Memory Stick. But with a battery powered HD, you can just use the 16meg stick that came with the camera and dump pictures to the HDD.
The when shooting in RAW (unprocessed) mode each image from the Canon EOS-1Ds is approximately 11MB.
40960MB/11MB = 3700 photos
While 3700 photos is quite a lot, its definately not rediculous for someone who is shooting a lot for a month, especially if they are bracketing many of their exposures. Since you can't really see which one were just right until you get them into Photoshop, something like 2/3 might be later trashed. This leaves you with about 1300 good-quality photos from Kerbleckistan and neighboring Funkministan should you travel there as well.
The last point is that 40GB might not be needed but 20GB most definately is. Since the price difference between a 20GB and a 40GB hd is virtually nill, you might as well just sell the bigger one.
"When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind." -- Bill Moyers
You might also want to look at this. It's a battery powered USB bridge. Probably the more expensive solution compared to this, but it's available today.
As a semi-pro photographer, I can see the benefit of connecting a headless hard drive to a camera, but I wouldn't like the idea of waiting for USB-speed transfers from my camera.
Instead, I use a similar device (the X's Drive Pro), which is an external hard drive (USB) that includes several built-in card readers. Connected to the PC, the card readers and hard drives are individually mounted, but when not connected to the computer, the device itself can copy everything on the connected memory cards to the hard drive with a single button click.
This workflow allows me to fill up a CF card, put another in the camera and keep shooting, and put the full CF card in the drive and let it make the backup copy while sitting in the camera bag.
I then *only* reuse cards if I run out, thus protecting against a hard drive drop/failure, errored-out copy, dead hard drive battery, etc.
When you are serious about photography, having an hard drive backup with automated copy capability is a MUST. I just got a call this morning from a friend whose photographer accidently lost some wedding ceremony pictures due to a failed copy to his laptop--he reused the card for Christmas before realizing it, so 15 shots couldn't be recovered (I was there as well in a non-pro capacity and got a few keepers). It's also a heckuva lot cheaper than having an endless supply of CF cards to travel with.
It's Taco. He has something of a history of not seeing the point - eg the iPod, which he described as "lame" when it was first released.
It's not entirely his fault though - most new technologies and techniques get slammed here. This is unusual in that none of the +5 rated comments (currently) are negative.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The write-up isn't completely clear, but judging from the price, I don't think the JPY6000 price includes the hard disk yet. Adding even a 10 GB disk to that should send the price well above $100, which is more than the Belkin iPod peripherals cost.
In other words, as most reviews point out, the Belkin solution is meant for people who already have iPods.
110 film wasn't loaded in brownies.
Brownies were about 620 sized negatives- approximately 120 (6x6 cm) film formats today.
The film was processed on long glass tables that ran east/west at Kodak- huge skylights lit the room and 'printed' the image onto paper undeneath the film.
The film was scraped off the glass, destroyed, and the glass was used again.
And if you understand JPG you understand why you shouldn't use it. Unless it's an Extended Jpg (Kodak format) that allows for shiftable exposure.
After all, why shoot chrome when negatives have lattitude?
A lot of similar devices popped up in recent months. And I really mean a lot. Maybe not all of them are powered by AA batteries, some have Li-Ion rechargable battery, some have bundled power adapter. I did a bit of research on this some time ago, here's list of already available devices (as opposed to the one from story, which will be available in mid Jan only):
e ts.html - "coming soon". pdf e dx_e i d=1 i l/12276816/Sell_font_color_red_Otg_font_Enclosure. html d uctDetail/Flash-MP3/product_id-1000452775/action-G etProduct.htm
http://www.macally.com/new/new_syncbox.html, review of this product.
http://www.macally.com/spec/usb/input_device/tabl
http://www.delkin.com/pdf/product_docs/usb_bridge
http://www.usbgear.com/USBG-OTG25.html
http://www.sarotech.com/cgi/main_eng.cgi?cmd=cuti
http://www.welland.com.tw/html/otg.html
http://www.welland.com.tw/html/otg/940otg.html
http://www.sitecom.com/index.php?prod_id=308&grp_
http://www.usbgear.com/USBG-OTG1.html
http://itsupplier.trustpass.alibaba.com/offerdeta
http://www.globalsources.com/si/6007000637244/Pro
Make your pick. But remember that some USB devices (like flash drives) are powered through USB port directly, so USB On-the-go host is supposed to provide power both for embedded hard drive and whatever you attach to it. Think about it when buying device powered by AA batteries - they may be not enough for some power-hungry USB appliances, microdrive-based "flash" drives are coming to mind here.