Eye-Fi to Combine Wifi, Flash Memory

“I will buy this the second it becomes available.”

I’ll be right next to you buddy. That’s some awesome news. Its good if you need to dump stuff somewhere to make room, or for backup. One con is just not being able to PS those images first but thats not a big deal–its getting those images somewhere to be safely stored. Keep us informed.

Great! Now all I need is someone to add a GPS to my camera and I am sorted!

should this mean my treo600 gets finally wifi?

i wonder what the guys at PalmOne think about this “hole” in their product strategy

I will not only buy it, but also buy their stock!

Imagine reporters having this in a city with wireless all over..A reporter can upload photos to the news before anyone gets back in their car.

It’s a very cool product but I can see buying it if it becomes a really use thing to use. As it is now, I pull out the flash card, plug it into the PCMCIA card holder which I put in my laptop and I’m good to go. The whole process takes 30 seconds!

Now if this wifi card one costs a lot more, and two, requires a bunch of setup options and so on that make it take longer than 30 secs, I can’t see the real benefit, plus, it will be interesting to see what it does to your battery life, as it is now, most camera suffer serious battery issues.

Hi

Didn’t know about Eye-Fi: it is a genuine innovation.

Indeed, there are at least two cameras with built-in 802.11b/g WiFi: the Nikon Coolpix P1 and P2. Problem is, they are possibly marketed only in Japan and the WiFi module can only be used to communicate directly with their proprietary photo management software (PictureProject).

I’ve been waiting for product like this was affordable. I’ll buy this because it beats swapping my flash card out of my camera every time I need to transfer pictures. I just hope it doesn’t require much extra juice, and random people don’t hook onto the signal and steal my pictures.. I suppose they will offer some form of encryption..

This is awesome. Actually what’s really awesome about it is when you’re travelling in places where connections stink, the wifi connection can allow you to let your camera run wild without waiting by a computer. Great idea.

I’m in line to buy this.

But I’d worry about this company’s growth strategy over time - The day may come when all cameras on the market have wi-fi built in. Then what use is this product? It’s a capital intensive thing to bring to market, so they better be able to sustain growth.

but i’m sure they did the market research, i didn’t.

I think you can get an SD card to get WiFi for your Treo.

If it’s not vaporware. The photo industry loves vapor.

My favorite photo vapor product is still eFilm from Imagek (now SiliconFilm), which was supposed to turn your 35mm camera into a digital camera. Don’t know if they ever came out with the product, but the buzz started in 1999.

One thought, though, is that fastest growing segment in digital cameras is camera phones. What happens then?

What does it do to battery life?

I am sure battery life goes down the drain when you use WiFi with a Treo.

Here’s an old review:
http://www.palminfocenter.com/.....sp?ID=7053

This could also be a whole new vector for virus outbreaks. Maybe not so much with the SD card but definitely with memory sticks.

A nice idea , I hope this is taken up into more devices

Yes I think this would be really cool.

Thats good.

Does anyone know how it is planning to transfer pics via Wi-fi? Email? File transfer?

I could see the best situation of the camera being able to send the pics itself, instead of just tranfering to your PC (if you want that, why not use bluetooth? Its generally cheaper and better on the battery).

Imagine being able to set up folders on the card. One folder uploads via HTTP to flickr, one emails to a predefined email address.

Now that would be cool!

@bigpe: this will not give your treo internet wifi connectivity, but will allow SD Access over wifi, there is a WiFi sled available for the 600 but it is quite bulky.

wow, that’s what I am looking for since month! I really don’t understand why digital cameras do not have bluetooth installed - I mean, most mobile phones have bluetooth today - why not digital cameras. But wifi on a SD card is really great!

It’s a great idea, but there is a flaw. WiFi eats a lot of a scarce resource in the camera .. electric power. So once you upload pics, you will end up having no more power to make some nice shots …

Maybe they should also include a 25th century power supply to this?!?!?

Bummer. This gives less incentive to device makers to include wi-fi as a feature. No doubt they could include it as a feature for much cheaper than a memory manufacturer. Price would be compensatory to the small scale necessary to fit on a memory card. On the other hand it would be great for backward compatability on older devices.

Will be impressive to see wifi in such a small casing, will be very impressive. Add a processor and then you have a very useful tool.

I’m trying to figure out how this is new. I’ve owned one from Sandisk for over a year. This is smaller but the technology is not knew. It’s like coming out with the first 3.5″ hard drive when only 5.25″ existed and saying you invented hard drives.. Sure you reduced the form factor but you didn’t come up with the technology.

I would buy this in an instant… I assume that you would apply the settings by editing a file stored on the card? I just hope that it isn’t some stupid non-standard transfer mechanism. This system needs to be able to upload files to a FTP address… NOT to be forced to upload files to a specific service they they charge you to use or to upload to a computer on the local wifi network that is required to run special software.

I don’t think they can own any IP on it because its very close to just being an RFID with REALLY BIG MEMORY. Actually, a multi-RFID freq memory module that works at varying ranges/frequencies including infrared would be useful. High speed data xfer over IR if its close to, on or in your computer, slower speed if its resting (magnetically held) on say the keyboard (via 13.56mhz near-field coupling), or polling Volune ID only at a distance with say 2.56Ghz far-field communication. Anyway, its about time we had a memory module like those used by Spock and McCoy on the old Star Trek episodes.

What I’d like to know is, where is the ATA-interface-on-SDIO card we were promised by some japanese company a few years ago?

The basis of this product has existed for over 3 years: SanDisk have provided a 128MB compact flash and SD wireless card in one. Admittedly it needs drivers, but for most applications it’s a seamless solution.

http://www.sandisk.com/Corpora.....entID=1263

Nice to see it for cameras though, and in a bigger 1GB format. Be interesting if it worked on devices without drivers…. but how do you set up security etc?

Andrew
Scotland

I remember reading about Kodak & Nikon introducing those WiFi cams a year ago & like Ugo said unfortunately only to their proprietary sites. Flickr as Alastair pointed out would be a Fun destination!

My poor old Epson PhotoPC500 only has fixed 5Mb of Memory & attachable LCD screen. Looks like i’m gonna have to get a NEW digital camera!! ;))

& the Hi Res mode is 640×480!! ;))

oh vell it still takes a great photo!

I’ve been waiting for this exact combo to complete my M5 PDA/GPS unit from Garmin.

I am wondering why WIFI, Bluetooth makes more sense to me, low power. Like used in the nokia 6630i phone/camera that I use a lot for quick snapshots (1.2 Mpixel) and get downloaded inmediately to my notebook when the phone comes in range.

They don’t have the IP around it. SanDisk does. You are going to see a lot of this type of “integrated memory” products coming out in the next 18 to 24 months.

online resource of SD memory cards and Memory Stick Pro Duo

It looks like they might suppport PDAs and Smartphones.

http://www.eye.fi/FAQ.htm

Will there be memory stick micro version, it would be very useful if it was just wi-fi for SonyEricsson M600i.

I very much doubt there will be a memory stick micro version. Sony would rather build wi-fi into the phone/ whatever device

@Jaap Krosschell: Yes, I agree Bluetooth would be more usefull in many instances, however wifi allows more interoperability with other devices and is more versatile.

Bluetooth currently has no native support for IP, so it does not support TCP/IP and wireless LAN applications well.

They’re not using bluetooth because I think they plan to allow you to upload your photos from the card directly to online photo services like shutterfly, snapfish, yahoo photo… or their own photo service company(most likely) … In addition to your computer. Plus, wifi has much better range than Bluetooth. Who uses bluetooth anymore these days anyway? It’s just used for hands-free cell phone use and that’s pretty much it… right?

My main concern is speed. How long will it take to upload 1gb of memory to your computer with this thing? An hour? Seems pretty impractical if it takes any more than 5 minutes. And like everyone said, it’ll be draining your camera as it’s uploading. Plus 1gb of memory seems pretty skimpy for professional photographers with high resolution DSLRs.