Eye-Film: Combines storage and Wi-Fi connectivity into a single card

[eos 10 fan]

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

 

"Thank you to all who have spread the word about Eye-Fi and provided feedback.

We are working hard to deliver the next generation digital photo experience and

will strive to keep you informed with product updates.

 

Now to the two most frequently asked questions:

 

Q: Is the Eye-Fi Card (aka Eye-Film) available now?

A: Not yet - Eye-Film is still in development. We will announce details of our

beta trial in Q3 2006.

 

Q: Will Eye-Film work in my PDA or SmartPhone (e.g. Treo, Palm, or Windows

Mobile device)?

A: PDA users: we hear your feedback. Our primary focus is on the digital camera,

but we are taking the PDA opportunity very seriously.

 

More Q&A, while we're on the subject:

 

Q: Which card formats will Eye-Fi support?

A: Our first product is in the SD form factor. Unlike some existing SD wireless

cards which stick out of SD slots, the Eye-Fi product will be no larger than a

standard SD memory card. A Compact Flash version will follow after our SD

product. Support for other formats is TBA.

 

Q: What type of wireless connectivity will Eye-Fi provide?

A: 802.11g Wi-Fi which is backward compatible with 802.11b.

 

Q: Will I need to upgrade my camera for the Eye-Fi card to function correctly?

A: No camera upgrade is required. If your camera has been qualified by Eye-Fi,

the card will ﾓjust workﾔ.

 

Q: [From Media/Press]: When can I review and/or tell my readers more about Eye-Fi?

A: We will have a press kit available around the time of beta, in anticipation

of product launch."

 

--

[ci_p]

I suppose my questions are who is going to use it in what context and how much is it going to cost? If it were a CF device, I could understand a bunch of people would pay several hundred dollars for one, but most SD cameras are consumer devices and there is a limit to how much someone would pay for an accessory. Then there are issues of battery life, compatibility, shielding by the camera body, the need for a second device to transmit to, security, configuration.

 

I'll believe it when I see it, I don't really need one, and I would not be surprised if it never sees the light of day.

[keith_van_hulle1]

Dan, are you associated with this? If so, a declaration of such is usually customary. It's not much more than SPAM.

[eos 10 fan]

ci p wrote: "If it were a CF device..." CF versions are being developed - see FAQ above.

 

Keith Van Hulle asked: "Dan, are you associated with this?" Nope! Saw an article and thought some of y'all might be interested. I know what y'all now know - just passing on an interesting concept.

 

It may end up being vapourware (remember SiliconFilm?), but in the meantime we have a chance to figure out if the Eye-Fi card (aka Eye-Film) will be 'a good thing' for our own individual needs/wants. ie: Studio & sports shooters would seem a natural market... The Canon WFT-E1/WFT-E1A Wireless LAN File Transmitter (for EOS 1Ds MkII, 1D MkII(N), 20D & 30D,) is USD$1000.oo - I would think that the Eye-Fi card would create its own market if it retails for a 'reasonable' price.

 

--

[john schroeder]

I don't think I would call it spam. I find it and interesting product. There are times I would like to have a wi-fi CF card for my D70. With more and more DSLR's going to SD there could be a demand for this. I think the real demand will be with the Palm Pilot/hand held computer crowd.

[wigwam jones]

Whether one finds it interesting or not, spam is spam. If the O/P is employed for the purpose of posting marketing drivel as if it were commentary/news, then that is spam, even if you think it's nifty keen.

 

However, the O/P did reply and state he is not associated with the company quoted, so I guess it not spam.

 

Usually one offers a tiny bit more by way of introduction before doing a cut-n-paste of the advertising copy, though - that's how people get confused over what is spam and what is discussion. Just an FYI to the O/P for future use.

[joseph_wisniewski]

I'm pleased that they're calling it "eye film" now. Now we can call it "i film", which draws a nice parallel between Silicon Film (aka Imagek), who called their product "e film".

 

They've also changed their tune in one other area, with their claim that "If your camera has been qualified by Eye-Fi, the card will 'just work'".

 

A couple of months ago, they were telling something closer to the truth, that getting it to work depends on "partnerships that still need to be finalized".

 

Eye-fi can't just "qualify" a camera: support for their product needs to be built into the camera's operating system. I'll detail exactly what this means as I go along, but it's a big effort for a camera manufacturer. I'm going to draw heavily on a couple of other posts I've made about this over the last few months...

 

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=18665127

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1000&message=19175656

 

But also add some new observations, so bear with me ;)

 

The interview with Eye-Fi says "it works easily (or it could, depending on partnerships that still need to be finalized � keep in mind this technology is still in alpha stage, so some of what I talk about here won't work when the final product ships, and other things that we haven't thought about might be enabled)"

 

http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/04/26/more-on-eye-fi/

 

So, it "works easily", if they can get camera manufacturers to design support for it into their next generation of cameras, or firmware updates to current cameras.

 

The first thing to consider is transfer speed, because when and how you can use this card depends on that. Eye-Fi throws the claim 56 megabits/sec around an awful lot. For a full 1 gig card, that's 4 minutes of uploading. For a 16 meg raw file on one of the new 10mp cameras, that's 3 seconds.

 

It's a pity that this will never happen. First, at a public hot spot, 56 megabits is the transfer speed from the portable device to the WiFi router. They don't lease data liens out of an internet cafe like Starbucks with that kind of speed, and you won't find it at a public library, either. 1.5 megabits is more typical. Now we're up to an hour or two for a gig, or a minute and a half just to see a single raw image.

 

But it gets worse. Unless you're haunting StarBucks at 2 in the morning, you're not the only person there sharing the 56 megabits of WiFi bandwidth, or the 1.5 megabits external link. And every single other WiFi user there has got more power and a better antenna than you do. The laptops are engaged in peer-to-peer networking. The little Eye-Fi card isn't a peer, it's more like a lost child, unable to see past all the adults in the crowd.

 

Now, let's look at what we can realistically expect from this "lost child", shall we?

 

Without these "partnerships that still need to be finalized", there's no user interface. If there's no user interface, you can't get the device to access WiFi hot spots (that requires codes and usually $$$) so this scenario "As soon as you're within a WiFi hotspot the camera could spit the photos to your favorite photo sharing site" is not going to happen. If you have a favorite Internet cafe and you've bought a monthly contract, you could bring a laptop to the cafe to "sign up" your camera, or sign it up from home. But in the real world, when you're on the road, you don't know if you're going to be doing your internet access at Borders today, your room at the Holiday Inn tomorrow, Panerra Bread or Starbucks the next day, and the Birmingham Public Library the day after that.

 

When someone who doesn't have an account already "touches" a new WiFi hotspot, they're routed to an unsecured site that has advertising, some free content, and the screen where you can feed in your credit card info and sign up for a "day pass" or longer term access contracts. You can't get into the internet unless you have a user interface that can navigate this.

 

The only way to bring up a WiFi device with no user interface is for you to be in control of the user interface at the other end of the link: in short, this thing will talk only to your PC or your laptop. Well, maybe it's useful in the studio, then. Think about it for a moment...

 

What are you going to do with this device in your studio? Something like the "big boys" do with the Nikon and Canon WiFi "grips", doing an "Instant review" on a screen as you shoot? Well, if you're shooting raw, and all you've got is a small "patch antenna" operating from inside the camera, you're not getting 54 megabits/second from the card to your laptop or studio PC. You'd be lucky if you were getting 1/10 that. So, 30 seconds before the first image comes up for review. Shoot a couple of alternatives, and it goes to minutes.

 

Does it give you "unlimited" shooting capacity? Even if you're inside your studio (or in that "miracle" no user interface, high speed for little cards public hotspot) there's no interface. You can't pick which files you want uploaded, it's all or nothing. Cameras use a basic FAT file system, and their operating systems expect that the camera is the only thing that will be updating the file system. So if the WiFi card successfully transfers a particular picture, there's no way for the camera to know that that particular picture has been transfered. Do you want to delete pictures from your card with no confirmation that they have actually been transfered anywhere? The Nikon or Canon grips (or their own cameras with built in WiFi) have this type of operation built into their operating systems: they don't delete files unless the transfer has been confirmed.

 

There's two other little issues. First, there's the size of the batteries in some of the smaller SD using cameras. Second, the camera doesn't know that the Eye-Fi card exists, let alone that it's doing something that requires the card slot to be powered up. So, if you don't touch the camera's controls, it's going to power off in something like 30 seconds. At "lost child" data transfer speeds, you need to keep that card powered up for an hour or so to transfer a gig.