Wishlist/Camera

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Hardware wishes warning! This article or section documents a Hardware Wish List item, the features described here may or may not be implemented in future devices.

Contents

General Desired Uses/Functionality

See Alternate Cases:Camera for phone case suggestions.

Use cases that can be satisfied with a VGA fixed-focus or macro camera.

  • Take pictures of items in shops, along with their price labels. For easy comparison shopping without having to write.
  • Take pictures of accidents, to ease insurance claims. (accelerometer or GPS logs may be of use too)
  • Reading barcodes, or 2D barcodes. For example to enable automatic ordering as you use barcoded products.
  • Scanning Barcodes.
  • Scanning 2D barcodes.
  • Photograph positions of hardware when disassembling.
  • Seeing over tall fences.
  • Seeing into confined access spaces - in some cases an LED flash would be required.
  • Adding thumbnail pictures to contact lists.
  • Taking pictures with the GPS position logged, with OpenStreetMap to help with mapping or Upload to Google earth.
  • Gesture interfaces.
  • Sensing position using external lights, such as the Wii remote does with the sensor bar.
  • Capturing business card images for OCR.
  • General OCR (higher res is better).
  • Sending photos directly from camera to email/web without internet connection via MMS, etc.
  • Taking pictures of drunk people, a system that allows near-instantaneous grab phone, take picture interaction

Use cases that require more specialized lenses, sensors, or hardware.

  • Printable photos. (that would be one huge device!!!)
  • Optical Zoom to distant objects.
  • Low light photography.
  • Astrophotography (alternatively and even better is to use an external USB Astro Web Cam, see end of article).
  • Quality web-page photos.
  • HDR Photography
  • Principal 5MPixels camera and secondary camera for video-conference.


Camera interface

The current Neo1973 processor does not have a camera interface. A chip with the MIPI Camera Serial Interface (CSI-2) might be used as a future proof solution. The standard is available to companies who have joined the alliance.

A chip that complies to the open Standard Mobile Imaging Architecture (SMIA) Compact Camera Port (CCP2) serial interface may be (more) desirable. The Micron MT9D012 is a 2 Megapixel chip and one of many that complies to these standards.

There are 3.1, 5 and 8 Mega Pixel chips available as well but I don't know if they comply to the above standards. Either way a 2 Mega pixel chip would be basic by the time it was ever implemented into a newer model.

Liquid Lens camera

  • A Liquid Lens camera for small, low power, electronically controlled autofocus.
    Also available as part of an SMIA compatible camera module!


Telescope

Tripod

A tripod socket would make a camera more usable.

Interface to external camera

Even if Gen1 Neos have no camera, it would be nice to get interfaces with external cameras to allow applications like GPS tagging of photos, barcode reading, OCR, and sending photos directly to internet. Are there plans to write software to interface with cameras directly via USB? Bluetooth? WiFi?

And even if a future version of Neo gets a build in camera it would be nice to connect a external camera via USB. For example the Astrocam Philips ToUCam SPC 900NC. This webcamera has a CCD chip (not CMOS) and is available with a adapter for telescopes (german Website: http://www.teleskop-service.de/VideoCCD/philips/philips.htm). A Neo will be a practically way to collect photos from the telescope (no need for a laptop). The image processing can be done later on a PC or on the Neo itself (if the Neo have enough arithmetic performance for the needed processing).

Browser Implementation

A way to take a photo of a web addess (from a poster, etc), OCR it, and automatically open the web address in the browser

Swivel Camera

It would be nice if the integrated camera(with LED/flash) could swivel from front to back. That way the same camera could be used for taking pictures and video conferencing. Instead of using 2 cameras. Also this kind of camera might be tied to a switch or button, allowing to trigger events according to its position.

  • rest position for n seconds => shutdown camera
  • turned forward or backward ( looking at the user or on the other side ) => launch specific applications

USB-Stick camera

Maybe a small camera like this [1] Since we don't have powered usb, maybe we can include a AAA battery or something

Two Cameras for 3D Capabilities

We are going to start to see more and more 3D pictures and videos as we continue to move through the 21st century. Including two cameras (that are each video and still) about an inch apart on the back of the phone would allow the user to create 3D images and video. This would be a very future-proof feature.

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