Thursday, October 20, 2011

An open-source hardware summit

One of my collaborators has an open-source embedded vision framework called "Embedded eye". He recently attended an open hardware conference. Not knowing much about open hardware, I looked through the conference and some wikipedia pages. I found some interesting projects, such as self-replicator that is basically a printer that can print itself and some work in the mobile space, to give users of smartphones the ability to customize and configure their personal tech gadgets. If you've ever clicked at the link at the top of this blog, you'll notice that personal manufacturing is an integral part of what I call micro computer vision. This is because hacking vision at small scales cannot just be limited to software: you need to be able to fabricate optical and electronic designs. The closer the fabrication experience gets to the convenience of printing paper, the more exciting the field becomes. But you can't fabricate something if its propriety: that is why open hardware is important. More power to them.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

More tiny commerical cameras

Nytimes has an article reviewing new competitors to the micro four-thirds cameras. The most interesting is the Pentax-Q, which David Pogue claims is basically as good as an SLR, but extremely tiny. We are talking approx 4x2x1 inches, which is tiny for a supposed SLR killer. Lots of pictures in the article, including those taken by the cameras.