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Throwable WiFi Camera
Dotnaught writes "The Eye Ball is a spherical, throwable WiFi camera designed to precede police into areas where there's no direct line of sight. It's manufactured by O.D.F. Optronics, Ltd, an Israeli maker of vision-based systems for the defense, security and consumer electronics markets. Remington Arms Co. has won approval from the Federal Communications Commission to sell the Eye Ball domestically, with law enforcement being likely buyers. The cost is about $4,800 for two EyeBalls (who would want just one?), which apparently also includes video monitoring gear."
back in my day when we wanted to see round corners we held up a little mirror and looked, these cameras would be very difficult to get somewhere completely useful, and even if you could the person who was going to shoot at you could just move. It seems you would need the ability to move the viewable image to follow them like with.... a mirror?
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
... precedes the second.
Law enforcement? Please. These things will be rolling into showers, changing rooms, and bathrooms about five minutes after they hit the market, with DVD sales following right behind (UPSK1RT!!!).
Also, the word is "precede," if you mean "going first."
Any hobbyist could make one of these for $300...
I think that's "...precede police into areas..."
how do they know its going to end up pointing the right way?
seems to me one of those low profile military fobots might be better.
From what I get these seem military use.. Surely if these "evil terrorists" have all this uber technology and use the internet for communication it would be extremely easy for them to see this news (here or else where) and start shooting them the second they see them comming..
Maybe I'm just not seeing it but this to me screams "good idea, yet not".
I like muppets.
This is where good journalism comes in -- it actually answers these questions for you. I had to search for the pdf which explained this. I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned first.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
For that it had better bring the crooks back wrapped in duct tape. I remember someone made a tiny wireless camera for a heck of a lot less.
sulli
RTFJ.
The article makes no mention of any encryption used. I suppose that you wouldn't want to use these for surveillance purposes, as they could potentially be located simply by intercepting and reviewing the perspective of the wireless signal.
Want to locate the police? See things from their perspective and know where they're coming in. Yes, this technology sounds like a brilliant idea!
with law enforcement being likely buyers
Because when one of these comes crashing through the window, the bad guys are just going to say: "Huh, I wonder what that was. Oh well." And then leave it alone. Right.
I think a system like this one has a much better chance at successfully spying on the "bad guys."
Posting anonymously because I work at a place that manufactures these, and even though it's patented, they still like to think it's a secret. Also, clearly not everything in the patent is in the actual system. "Interpreter Software" and "Intoxication Meter" in particular are amusing bits of the patent that aren't even possible to implement as described.
I'll be willing to bet that these throwable camera eyes, with display hardware and software, can be scrapped togeather for a whole lot less then $4800.
... is to get stereo! (just kidding but wouldn't it be nice for distance measurements etc.).
...sharp gripping forks and a drill bit.
That's why you use cameras on wheels. They can move, they can jump the stairs, they can be thrown, and better yet, they can be fired from a special cannon. Totally sweet :-)
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
I am so behind the times.
For anyone who didn't RTFA and had the same first thought as me: yes it does have some kind of motorisation and weighting to keep it up-right and allow mobility.
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Garrett called and he said he can help you with this, including a bionic eye. All he wants is for you to stop calling him taffer and chasing him all the time. Even a thief needs to make a living you know.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I could have sworn that I read "Throwawayable" Wifi camera. I was about to head to Walgreens/Costco/wherever and purchase their entire stock.
On an unrelated note, would I be considered a "peeping tom" if I rolled one of these things into a cheerleader's locker room?
Don't forget to put it in a try catch block
You will find out how it orients itself. All you have to do is read. It's that simple, moron.
No, I'm not new here. But the parent obviously is, to common sense.
... would want just one. Pirates! Yarrr, 'tis for me missing eye, matey!
(Don't tell RIAA.)
the bad guys are going to start practicing their golf swings.
They probably put the camera on a gyroscope inside the ball so it always faces upright. If they combined that with a counter rotating flywheel and a stepper motor, they could get panning and tilting too. Sounds really cool to me.
Do these remind anyone else of the camera balls that the Tinkers used for their security systems in The Peace War?
The ones in the book used some fancy optics to capture a 360 degree picture, and then post-processed it to let the user virtually pan-and-scan without the need for moving parts, instead of mechanically rotating the ball like these. And, of course, they were a lot smaller, were tacky instead of bouncy, had better power arrangements, and were deployed ubiquitously.
But, still, this could be seen as a sort of primitive ancestor to the Tinkers' surveillance systems...
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
Well they worked in First Person Sneaker Thief! Oh yeah, reality and all that.. doh.
... sales for WiFi radio frequency jammers gone trough the roof.
Seriously, they rely that the cam lands somewhere still in range for a WiFi connection, sounds like roulette to me. Throw it in a bin by accident and you can write your $4800 off...
Hitler. He only needed one more to make a set.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Mad Eye Moody wants his eye back.
I have a $20 camera here by my computer. It's made out of plastic and I can throw it pretty damn hard and it won't experience anything more than a couple scratches.
Now granted, it's wired to my computer by a 20 foot cable, but making it wireless wouldn't take a lot of money. I'd say $50 ish tops.
I certainly wouldn't want to spend more than $70 for a camera that I would use to throw around corners that might not even end up pointing in the right direction.
And with these new suggested cameras, you still have to view the output from said camera. In order to use this camera you have to:
- Throw camera
- Look at screen displaying camera output
- Put away the screen displaying camera output
- Go around corner.
Between steps 2 and 4 there is a huge amount of time that people could use to change their position, thus negating effects of having a camera at all.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Anyone else think this is similar to the visibility gadgetry in some FPSs, like the camera darts in Splinter Cell?
:)
It'd be interesting to see grenade cameras exactly like these in FPSs, hopefully we'll get that soon. Then we can test out all the mad sp10itz so the government doesn't have to.
I'd vouch for the tactical usefulness short range visibility tech, but IRL I'd probably just run in to clear a room of terrorists, accidentally cycle to my cam-nade, bean a terrorist in the head with one, then die by a headshot while circle-strafing him and waiting for my damn handgun to autoload.
Also, any chance we can combine this invention with this one? It's just not the future until little copter cameras are buzzing around like mosquitos all over the place.
I see nothing in the article or the datasheet to indicate that this is a WiFi camera. 802.11* isn't the only way to send stuff through the air.
..imagine a swarm of those "boinking" robots with cameras in. would that be like a beow..oh nevermind
Because, it shouldn't be 'proceed'. It's 'precede'.
Now ask yourself what the ancestor thread was about.
Better still, ask yourself why you bothered to throw your $0.02 in.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Anyone with a cordless phone can wipe it out.
If you don't know what Parent means, you can invoke the Wikipedias.
...and I will build you one for much less.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I just do eyes. Just - just eyes. Just genetic design. Just eyes.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Blade_Runner
All cameras are throwable. Even that $10,000 Sinar you've got there. *Especially* that $10,000 Sinar.
Do not throw around corner into laser beam with remaining eye ball.
I thought they would look like translucent red super balls! Assholes!
This is what I don't understand: You won't be able to lob one of these toward someone without them noticing it. In a combat situation, they'll probably treat the object as if it were a grenade. They'd have evaded it, hidded from it or secured it before the camera has had the chance to "stablise".
At any price, this invention measures pretty high on my WTF-ometer.
As someone who works in the public service area (fire department), for appications like these, the county/city/feds aren't going to throw a lot of things together. Public service departments needs things that are guarenteed to work in mission critical enviroments, and are backed by warrenties because these things are going to break. A proven products is almost always better than a thrown together product, and I can attest to that with experiance in my field. Just because you can put something together with cheap parts and duct tape for less than the manufacturer can, doesn't mean it will be better. The manufacturer can order parts in bulk, and service the products if they go bad. This isn't always the case when you put something together, and the main part goes bad. In the long run, a thrown together project in a harsh mission critical enviroment is going to cost more than one backed by a manufacturer.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Replace the camera with a solar cell and another wifi transmitter -> instant mesh network.
This could be the ultimate game of dodgeball in the future? Imagine seeing the look on the fat kids face at the moment of impact?
Dammit, I'm the fat kid.
At least the didn't call it the iBall.
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
These look and act exactly like the G'oauld devices used in many episodes of Stargate SG1. I can't believe I'm the first to mention this, maybe it's my threshold setting? Theirs are silver with no obvious camera lens, but otherwise look and are used in the same way.
if you only had one that would make it an eyeBall and would clearly be infringing Apple's intellectual property.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
In the second and third Thief games Garrett has a "Scouting Orb" that's pretty much exactly what's being described here. He could throw it to an intersection, over a wall, or lean around and chuck it around a corner, and then see everything it does via the artificial eye he received at the end of the first game.
I wonder if that wasn't the inspiration here.
And the brethren went away edified.
Right on, brother. Pity I had to slum down at -1 to find anything in this vein.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Here's the scenario I envisioned.
SWAT guy 1 *lobs ball*
*crash*
SWAT guy 2: "Hmm, let's see, I see what looks like the barrel..."
*BAM*
"Nevermind."
Please help metamoderate.
They're baseball-sized, so: golf swings? Maybe not.
muthafscker
This reminds me a bit of something I came across while online holiday-shopping the other day. Basically, it looks like Estes came out with a $80 rocket kit which has a built-in digital video camera. The idea is that you launch it up into the air, recover the rocket, plug a USB cable into it to download the video, and then watch a rocket's-eye-view of the flight. The camera is in the rocket's nose, so you presumably only see the ground on descent. The camera is just 320x240 with 9fps, but it still seems pretty neat.
Protect yourselves from new government throwabale WiFi camera technology with our new throwable anti-WiFi-Cam Shield!
paintball
Now why dont they also add a small handgun in there with the eye as well? Let them throw the ball in their, and let the geek kid in the van do all the shooting. Come to think of it, why not use the camera and the gun on a 4x4 buggy? OK now I want to be police!
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
How long until these come with spidery legs... ?
Imagine the following police situation. Shots have been fired in a house and the neighbours call the cops. When they arrive all is silent. So they can just knock on the door but that has the risk of getting a bullet in your chest. Instead of just waiting outside with a full swat team you throw one of these suckers through the window and see what is inside.
If someone starts shooting then you no longer need to see, it is clear what it happening and you can do your stuff. It is basically an upgrade to the mirror that everyone not wanting to get killed in a combat situation has used. Just check WW1 trench equipent. They even had periscopes to avoid having to stick their head where it could be blown off.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
From the Article:
"What's behind a door can get you killed," said Sheriff Sam Page of Rockingham County, N.C.
Sweet!
A camera custom designed for Steve Ballmer!!!
;)
"Tell me it's not Kodak........"
If you can't say something nice, make sure you have something heavy to throw.
Add some offensive capability to this and you have a passable version 1.0 of "Rover".
Every living creature on earth dies alone.
The company could just make a nice shiney ball and when they throw it into a room...all the bad guys will stand around it staring. Just about the time they all think WTF the police/military has had the time to run in and do what they wanted to do in the first place. We could call it the WTFBall. Maybe have it play some crazy Christmas tune or something.
Why would an "extortionist" communicate with something other than a cell phone or land line? Using a camera phone tossed in by the cops for communication seems alarmingly stupid... and if the perp is that stupid there is probably a cheaper way to stop him....
"proceeding Tom".
But, imagine if the bad guys pick these back up and hurl them like the old stick grenades got tossed back? Coppers better not have "shoot on sight" orders slaved to their tracked/wheeled robot sentries... they might shoot the cops (who for some reason might have damaged or even no transponders) or even into a crowd of civilians.
Tennis/racquet ball anyone? Considering the recent scandal in SF (male cop's home video in make up and bras and such in the police station) the cops might have to show up in sporting outfits and badminton racquets...
The media would LOVE getting the scoop on that...
boards, you money-grubbing engineers' board of directors...
Sounds to me like some kind of boondoggling, pork-barrel, bullshit project meant to jumpstart the economy with "new booming technology" that won't pan out as planned...
What the HELL happened to the idea of using small fly/mosquito-like surveillance drones. They are supposedly light, nearly undetectable, and can send back snapshots or low-bandwidth frames.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Splinter Cell? You console whore. Thief 2 did this first--a tossable surveillance eyeball. Yes, a mechanical eyeball, not a "dart". Thief is a "computer" game, not a console game, in case you wonder what else you can do with your PC besides post to Slashdot and download porn.
Heaven forbid that the bad guys throw this little gadget back either. I mean that would never happen...
Didn't I see Gandalf throw a rag over this thing after Sam had grabbed it?
Oddly enough I read the FCC filing on this gadget for work earlier this week. It uses the 2.4 Ghz spectrum, but sends an analog signal -- not digital, which is what 2.4 is reserved for. Because it conflicts with the usage plan for 2.4 Ghz the only way the FCC would let them sell it was to specifically restrict it to law enforcement -- not merely government agencies. Personally, I wonder what will happen when these things are obsolete and sold at government surplus auctions, but at least for the next few years the only way you'll get one is if you have a badge.
Among other things, it'll stomp on your 2.4 Ghz WiFi lan. However, because it is designed for use in life and death situations, the FCC figures the police will have cleared the area, and you won't be hanging out surfing Slashdot.
Remember the (not true, but still proves the point) anecdote about space pen that NASA supposedly invested millions in its development? Guess what was the miracle cure to write in space that Russians used? A pencil.
History repeats itself once again... you throw rubber camera balls at us and they all turn their focus the wrong way. We use a mirror and see where to run.
The Eye Ball is a spherical, throwable WiFi camera
To be honest I think there is a bigger market for 'non throwable' cameras.
Of course 'non stealable' is the holy grail.
There have been other cameras like this one that recorded (photo or film) on regular film instead of digital. They looked sideways or downward with a prism. If you look closely on the pics at amazon, you can see part of the rocket body in the picture, so I guess this one looks down.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
I remember someone made a tiny wireless camera for a heck of a lot less.
Cheap electronics won't do. This needs to be a milspec device. It also needs some heft to it. Given it's (para)military application I'd expect that its size/weight matches a grenade. How many homebrew projects can be thrown *through a closed* second floor window and have 99.9% reliability?
"The Eye Ball is a spherical, throwable WiFi camera designed to proceed police into areas where there's no direct line of sight". don't you mean "precede"
Ah! It was just a typo after all.
How long until Fox has one in the World Series. The "home run cam."
I won't debate the utility of this gizmo, time will tell. However, expect a high loss rate. No matter how sturdy they are, they will be deployed in a very harsh and chaotic environment. Lots of ways for them to get trashed or stolen or just plain lost. If I were the bad guy and it gave away my position, I'd shoot it. I'd bet the cost to keep a single eyeball active for a year is at least 3-4X the product cost.
In my early days, studying to become Jedi, I would put on a blindfold and whack away at these things.