Wizard’s Blog

I've posted a couple times before about my desire for a wearable camera - something you just wear all day that records everything that happens to you.  You can then publish the resulting video/pictures, keep them for later, use them to remember things or just delete them if nothing interesting happened.  Photo albums used to be the way to loo back at your life, and then home videos - I can see this as eventually being the next thing.

In any case I never found a gadget that fit my requirements - some were still theoretical, some not for sale, some not adequate.

Backpacker's Diary

Yanko design is an excellent website with lots of interesting design ideas.  A couple months ago they did a mockup of a very interesting gadget called the Backpacker's Diary for tourist/trekker types.  It's not exactly what I was looking for - it's not just a camera, it's also a laptop, solar panel and light.

It's purely a concept and will probably never get made, but it's very cool.

VIEVU PVR-PRO

Another gadget I found is a lot more like the wearable camera that I want - the VIEVU PVR.  In a lot of ways it's perfect - a small, wearable video camera with a built-in battery.

But this is where we run into the limitations of current technology - it only has space for one hour of video, so my dream of capturing a whole day is right out.  The other way it's limited by current technology is that it costs $299.95.

Those figures are for the VIEVU PVR-PRO - they also sell a VIEVU PVR-PRO 2, which has space for four hours of video but costs $399.95.

I suppose if this sort of thing ever hit the mainstream the cost would come down and the performance would go up, but I can't see that happening for a long time.  At least someone out there is actually making and selling the things, which is more than I've seen up till now.

I thought it was interesting that wearable cameras got a mention in Cory Doctorow's excellent short story The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away as a "lifelogger", although the ones in the story do a lot more than just record video.

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