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Wireless Networking Hardware Technology

Bluetooth Digital Cameras? 46

Posted by Cliff from the leaving-the-cables-at-home dept.
WebfishUK asks: "Pretty simple question really, does anyone know when we might expect some decent cameras with bluetooth built-in to arrive on the scene? I know there are a couple out there, like the Concord Eye-Q Go Wireless and the Sony DSC-FX77 as well as all those camera phones but wondered if there where any others people knew about in the pipeline? Alternatively what about bluetooth adaptors that could be plugged into any camera with a mini USB connection?"
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Bluetooth Digital Cameras? More

Bluetooth Digital Cameras?

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  • I work in a digital camera reatailer (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bethane ( 686358 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @09:20PM (#7886750) Homepage Journal
    Imagne downloding the contents of a 1 GB microdive over bluetooth, that would take forever. Bluetooth [bitconjurer.org] provides approxamatly 784k/bits a sec transfer speed. This is terrible... even slower than USB 1.1

    Lets compare this to USB2 which is widely used to connect digital cameras, we can get alteast 50mb/ps transfer rates from this. Which is reasonable.

    Before people start suggesting 802.11b remember that this only provides around 3-4mb/sec which is not all that fantastic. Nikon have an attachment for the D100 camera which allows transfer over 802.11b.

    I suggest using SCSI [furby.com] as a medium to connect digital cameras, after all most Digital cameras suppot the USB mass storage protocall. Gess what this is!! SCSI over USB! lets just forget the USB part and get pure 320mb/sec per channel speeds!!

    • This is an excellent reply. I wonder why this even made it on slashdot.....

      bethane, I don't think scsi is a viable alternative (cable size, identifying various devices /*too OS independant*/)
      I don't see current flash tech taking advantage of even usb 2.0. Why not use that?
    • I would actually go for SATA. Speed comparable to SCSI (150 MByte/s) with a puny little cable...
    • Your Bluetooth link is for Bittorrent, your SCSI link is for furby and SCSI has absolutely nothing to do with USB except for the fact that both are on computers, who the hell modded this as insightful.

      SCSI and Firewire however share many common elements.
      • While I don't claim to know everything that there ever was to know about USB and SCSI, it wouldn't surprise me if SCSI (or something similar) was implemented as USB storage. I do know that when I mount my USB keychain device in linux, I use /dev/sd1 to mount the drive.
        • Daemon-tools on windows is a virtual cd/dvd-rom drive and it lists itself as a SCSI drive.

          SCSI seems to be a convenient place to throw stuff since you can many SCSI devices in a machine, 255 LUNs on 15 SCSI IDs, maybe 16 if you can have multiple LUNs on a controller, not sure, haven't tried, and that's just per controller.

          Also in Linux generally you use IDE cd burners with SCSI emulation.
    • Bluetooth provides approxamatly 784k/bits a sec transfer speed. This is terrible... even slower than USB 1.1

      As a different approach, if Bluetooth had a universal storage protocol like USB-Storage or CF/PCMCIA or SD/MMC/whatever, a camera might directly store a new photo on an iPod-like fileserver in the backpack, connected via Bluetooth. Or imagine a "wireless USB stick" as a storage medium, remaining in your pocket while you access or store some files on it. Bandwidth would certainly be too weak for vide

    • I too work in a camera retail shop.

      The brand-new Nikon D2h [nikonusa.com], not the Nikon D100, can transmit over 802.11b when the optional WT-1A [nikonusa.com] adapter. Outside North America, it's known as the WT-1.

    • Lets compare this to USB2 which is widely used to connect digital cameras, we can get alteast 50mb/ps transfer rates from this. Which is reasonable.

      Wow, 50 megs per picosecond is reasonable?! I would have though that it is downright fantastic! What kind of transfer speeds are you used? 8^)

      Beny
  • 'haven't really looked too deeply into BlueTooth (since learning of its S-L-O-W transfer speeds), but I wonder how easy it is for others - within range - to capture a photo going from camera to computer (or where ever)?
    • Bruce Scheier seems to think so [schneier.com]. Scroll down to the authenticaion portion of the cryptogram.
      • Well he only complains that BT doesn't have per packet authentication and points out that this is a possible loophole for an attack.

        There are problems with the security and Bluetooth, naturally. Though there are problems with all popular wireless technologies that I know about. (Not that this makes it better, just to point out that wireless security is hard.)

        The weakest point in BT as in any protocol is the user. If the user doesn't take the proper protections then a transmission can be monitored. But it'

  • Red eye digital cameras (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 05, 2004 @09:32PM (#7886826)
    It will go well with the red eye that shows up in all my digital camera photos. Bring on the blue tooth!
  • How is bluetooth under Linux? I have been thinking about getting a bluetooth adapter to play with, but how well does it work?
  • WiFi & Flash Memory combo cards [dpreview.com] look more promising for wireless downloading of decent resolution digital images. Although intended for PDAs, these cards might be adopted for use in cameras (if the vendor will support them and if they will fit in the camera). Or, you might wait for Fuji's Wifi digicam [gizmodo.com]. Anyone know of others?

    Either way, I'd look for a Wifi solution, not Bluetooth.
  • There is some discussion about this on the Nokia N-Gage forum, since the N-Gage doesn't come with a camera. No one's really found anything much yet. BTW: Your Sony link appears to go to the wrong model. It should be the DSC-FX77.

  • Nikon D2H (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Andy Smith ( 55346 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:25PM (#7887203)
    While not exactly the solution you're looking for because it isn't bluetooth, the Nikon D2H [dpreview.com] is Nikon's new flagship digital SLR for sports and photojournalism. It can transmit files by 802.11b. The camera itself doesn't have the feature as standard, you need to buy an attachment.

    You're looking at $5,000 for the whole kit plus lenses, etc. Definitely not an amateur solution but it is an attractive feature, especially if you're into sports shooting, and even moreso if you get a kick out of the idea that your pictures are automatically being transmitted to your laptop while you're still taking the next ones!

    But then, geeky toys aside, your lovely new camera would say Nikon on it and that would be a shame [canon.co.uk].

    Couldn't resist! ;-)

    If you're on any sort of budget then personally I think a $25 firewire card reader is a better/cheaper idea. You can take around 400 high quality JPEGs on a 1Gb card/microdrive, copy them to your computer in a few minutes, then start shooting again. Still, if you're loaded then I guess wireless is the way to go.

    Note that the Canon 1D replacement is due within a few months and it would be surprising if that didn't have wireless capabilities, either as standard or with an attachment. Price should be around the same as the Nikon D2H, maybe a little higher, but the features should leave the D2H eating dust.
    • AFAIK, Pentax is the only way to go. Having Nikon or Canon on a camera is a true shame ;P
  • What you need is 802.11g thats the only wireless technology thats even remotely fast enough for downloading your homemade porn.

  • One problem with adapter ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Tuesday January 06, 2004 @12:50AM (#7888206) Homepage Journal
    Alternatively what about bluetooth adaptors that could be plugged into any camera with a mini USB connection?

    My wife and I have a pair of digital cameras. They both have USB plugs. But the USB cables for each are not interchangeable, with each other or with any other USB cables that we have. Only the computer end is standard; the camera end is unique to the camera. We once misplaced one of the USB cables, and it took us a month to get a replacement. We had to special-order it from the camera manufacturer, for $40.

    So a bluetooth-to-USB adapter would probably only work for one (or a very few) cameras. You'd find that you have to buy it from the camera maker, because nobody else would have one that fits your camera.

    Yeah, you could make the bluetooth-to-USB adapter connect to the "computer" end of the camera maker's USB cable. But that's not how they'd do it. And if you could find one that worked this way, you'd have to have the maker's USB cable anyway. Since bluetooth only works within a few meters, you might as well just connect the camera to the computer as to the adapter.

    • Not true, range depends on device class:
      Class A ~100m
      Class B ~10m
      Class C ~1m

      As far as I know, all Bluetooth-USB adapters on the market are for PCs. The Bluetooth stack runs on the PC, so this is why you don't get the "other end" (IE Bluetooth-USB at the camera side) as the stack would have to be integrated into the adapter. Or the camera manufacturer would have to run the stack on the camera (processor intensive!).

      With regard to security, Bluetooth allows for authenticated (IE with a PIN number to allow
    • My wife and I have a pair of digital cameras. They both have USB plugs. But the USB cables for each are not interchangeable, with each other or with any other USB cables that we have. Only the computer end is standard; the camera end is unique to the camera. [..] So a bluetooth-to-USB adapter would probably only work for one (or a very few) cameras. You'd find that you have to buy it from the camera maker, because nobody else would have one that fits your camera.

      While some camera manufacturers chose

      • - "Imagine a professional photographer with a Notebook in his backpack, transfering every image nearly instantaneous from the camera to the notebook, and the notebook uploading them via WLAN to the server"
        So this means that the laptop will have to be ON in your bag, draining batteries even when you're not shooting? By the time you've done your shoot, your laptop batteries will be dead. Hurray!

        IMHO, FireWire cardreader = is better.. not as sexy as wireless mind, but a hell of a lot more practical and che

        • So this means that the laptop will have to be ON in your bag, draining batteries even when you're not shooting? By the time you've done your shoot, your laptop batteries will be dead. Hurray!

          Wrong, with current mobile processors you get run-times of eight hours when working, if it's in your bag idle'ing away most of the time it can prbably be even more. So it should be able to last an average sports event.

    • you know, you could just get one of them card readers. You can get an All-in-one for 10 over here. And it's USB 2.0.
  • Everyone is saying how slow bluetooth is and you should be using USB or 802.11b or g and that is fine provided you have those available. Bluetooth would be most useful to me for transfering images to my PDA or mobile phone for e-mailing from the scene via GPRS. This I have done with a Sony DV Cam which has bluetooth (and a built in e-mail client!).

    As it happens I've been looking at good Digital Cameras and have decided on one partly because it has flash media compatable with my PDA so I can use that to s
  • The initial comments here are focusing on BlueTooth for transfering images, which (personally) I think would be God-awful slow. Though it might be nice to be able to send an automagically-reduced-resolution image over a phone via BlueTooth, on occasion.

    I'd be more interested in BT for other uses -- metadata on pictures, etc.

    For example: Snap a picture, your palm (in your shirt pocket) gets a complete record of date, time, exposure info, and a thumbnail. So you can easily review shots with someone else a
  • I've owned 3 digital cameras, and set up at least 10 for idiots...
    every one, except a logitech dual purpose (webcam/still cam) could not function to take pictures while the usb connection was in place.. they go into data transfer mode- and the shutter is not available.

  • how about this (Score:2, Interesting)

    by phildog ( 650210 )
    I'd love to have a bluetooth camera that was smart enough to

    - periodically look for a trusted computer (but only when it has images on the camera)
    - automatically move images across bluetooth to the computer and then delete from local flash memory

    This way I could come home from work, never actually take my camera out of my briefcase, and have an automatic sync take place. (My palm pilot should do the same thing.)

    All the curmudgeonly griping about bluetooth being too slow for this kind of application i
  • Thanks for the interesting points people have raised.

    I agree that the relatively low datarates can seem as though BT isn't appropriate for upload of images. However, as a couple of people mentioned the slow data transfer isn't necessarily a problem in all situations. For instance the camera might upload at night when quite frankly it can take as long as it likes (well, within reason).

    It was interesting to note how quite a few posters seemed to take an either or view - that is BT versus USB etc. I would
    • There is one feature that you did not talk about(otherwise a fine statement of the needs and differences). What if I am wearing my mass storage (i.e. iPod) that has a capacity greater than my camera? I could then spool the pics as I take them to my storage device. The camera would need the capacity to spool 10-20 pics due to the speed of BT, but they will all get to my storage device sooner or later. No need to carry multiple storage cards, and the media on the storage device may be more stable. By tra

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