Another android camera may be coming

Everything camera related. Includes triggers, batteries, power supplies, flatbeds and sheet-feeding scanners, too.

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TomHorsley
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Another android camera may be coming

Post by TomHorsley »

http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/8/322762 ... lay-access

This rumor claims an Aug 22 launch, so maybe it will really happen (unlike the Polaroid sc1630 which has pretty much vanished from the Polaroid web site).
TomHorsley
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Re: Another android camera may be coming

Post by TomHorsley »

It is Aug 22nd, and this web page is up now (but I don't see a "buy" button :-).

http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/coolpix/style/s800c/
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daniel_reetz
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Re: Another android camera may be coming

Post by daniel_reetz »

Thanks, Tom - a few more Androidy things were also mentioned here http://diybookscanner.org/forum/viewtop ... 696#p14696
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Re: Another android camera may be coming

Post by daniel_reetz »

Anyone here do any Android development at all? What does the appearance of Android camera technology (and Android cameras in the form of high-quality mobile phones) mean for us?
TomHorsley
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Re: Another android camera may be coming

Post by TomHorsley »

Depends on the amount of control Nikon allows android programmers to have, but I'm sure it will be much more convenient to get the photos off the phone and onto a laptop or desktop during the process of taking pictures of the pages, and if the phone allows enough control it should be possible to fix the focus and shutter speed so the motors aren't wearing out as the camera keeps autofocusing on your hand as you reach in to turn a page, etc. The main computer could also talk to a custom android app to update status on the camera display, etc.

I keep imagining a book scanner that uses the mathematical page flattening algorithms and is just an android camera on a mount over a book that tells you to turn pages (and maybe uses motion detection to figure out when the page is well and truly turned so it can take the next photo without you needing to press a button and vibrate the camera). It could send the images back to the computer over wi-fi as soon as they are taken.

When I was trying to automate my Canon cameras, I kept running into annoying problems trying to get the microcode to do what I wanted, and I couldn't transfer the images over USB while I was using USB as a trigger to take the photos (and doing the USB transfer required the lens to retract). It was all rather kludgy and annoying. I hope (but won't know for sure till Nikon provides more info) that the SDK for the camera will allow total control and solve most of the problems I had trying to make the Canon cameras do thing they were never designed to do.

I've been trying to learn android programming, and while it has weird aspects, I'm starting to get used to it. Here's my experiences so far on a completely different project:

http://home.comcast.net/~tomhorsley/book/index.html
TomHorsley
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Re: Another android camera may be coming

Post by TomHorsley »

And not to be outdone, Samsung jumps into the android camera market:

http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/ ... -and-shoot
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rob
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Re: Another android camera may be coming

Post by rob »

An Android camera could make things easier for the end-user, provided it's a real Android camera and not a locked-down camera with just camera functionality. As said above, some of the book scanning software could be loaded onto the camera so that some stages such as adjustment of aperture for bright images, clean-up, autorotation, deykeystone, could be done right on the camera. I could imagine, for example, taking a sample image, marking the extent of the pages right there on the camera screen, which would then allow the camera to automatically dekeystone, rotate, and crop every image taken from then on, which accounts for the vast majority of image issues for the standard scanner.

If the camera is Wi-Fi capable, it could upload the photos directly to the computer (thus obviating the need for EyeFi cards), and it could even be controlled from the computer (as in triggering).

The Samsung does look to be this magical camera. No surprise, given that Samsung also makes the awesome Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab.
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DrCheap
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Re: Another android camera may be coming

Post by DrCheap »

Rob, I think what you are talking about is already seen (at least some of it) in the camera-to-pdf kinds of apps such as these:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... camscanner

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... rial&hl=en
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Re: Another android camera may be coming

Post by rob »

DrCheap: Wowzers!
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TomHorsley
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Re: Another android camera may be coming

Post by TomHorsley »

I've been fooling around with an android program to experiment with the camera on my phone, and have a silly app that adds up all the luma values from a camera preview image and logs the result, which gives me stuff like this in the logcat output:

Code: Select all

I/Preview ( 4613): Luma=51722799
I/Preview ( 4613): Luma=51816212
I/Preview ( 4613): Luma=52322380
I/Preview ( 4613): Luma=12077860
I/Preview ( 4613): Luma=7736313
I/Preview ( 4613): Luma=16059685
I/Preview ( 4613): Luma=15945653
The big numbers are when I turn the desk lamp on, and the small numbers are with the lamp off, so it clearly seems possible to do something like automatically trigger taking the next picture when you turn your floods or LEDs on to illuminate the book.

Next up, I want to see if I can do motion detection by comparing last preview image with current one to provide another option for triggering the camera .
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