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Brinno Gardenwatchcam: Time-Lapse Digital Garden Camera Shoots Video Slightly More Interesting Than Watching Paint Dry

Technabob — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:50:58 +0000

Want to know if your green thumb is really green? This nifty garden gadget lets you keep watch over your budding plants 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from across the globe if you want.

The Brinno GardenWatchCam observes your flowers as they grow, taking time lapse digital photos at intervals ranging from 1 minute to 24 hours apart. Just set the camera in front of your plants, set the desired interval, and start capturing your garden as it takes shape. You can also include time and date stamps on your images if you want. Here’s an example video taken from the GardenWatchCam’s time lapse images.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The camera is designed to take 1.2 megapixel macro images from as little as 20-inches away from your subject, or can be set to a distance focus mode for plants more than 20 inches away. Images are captured in JPEG format and can be saved into an AVI video file, and you can store up to 2GB of pictures on any USB flash drive. The camera runs on 4-AA batteries and should be able to shoot images for 4 to 6 months depending on the interval you set.

Of course, you don’t have to use it to shoot time lapse videos of flowers. Pretty much anything that takes a long time to happen is a potential subject…

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

You can find the GardenWatchCam over at Amazon for $139.99 (USD). More example videos can be seen here.

Qtv Digital Photo Frame Looks Like a Tiny Television

Technabob — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:20:01 +0000

Here’s the perfect digital picture frame for serious couch potatoes. The QTV frame lets you view your photos on its tiny little TV screen.

Designed to look like a curvy retro television, complete with rabbit ear antennae, the QTV frame shows your digital images on its doll-house-sized 3.5″ LCD screen.

Just plug in your USB thumb drive or your SD/SDHC memory card, and you can view your media in a snap. Of course, with an underwhelming 320×234 pixel screen resolution, image quality should be just about as good as that old 1960s Zenith you have sitting in the basement.

What the QTV lacks in image resolution, it certainly tries to make up for it in features. Not only does it let you view your JPEG images, it offers MP3 playback, an alarm clock, a calendar, and an FM radio. It even includes AVI/MP4/DIVX video playback, so you can watch all your favorite (pre-recorded) TV programs on the teensy weensy screen. About the only thing the QTV doesn’t do is tune actual TV broadcasts. Go figure.

You can find the QTV digital photo frame in pink and yellow versions over at Brando for $89 USD. The only thing missing is a tiny little remote control.

Leica D-Lux 3: Old Fashioned Style, Modern Technology

Technabob — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 14:16:47 +0000

It’s nice to see the occasional digital camera that’s firmly grounded in it’s traditional photographic roots. The Leica D-Lux 3 features styling that harkens back to the clean lines and simplicity of their earlier film-based cameras, but is updated with all the bells and whistles you’d expect from a modern shooter.

The D-Lux 3 is a compact 10-megapixel digital camera with 4x optical zoom. It offers support for both compressed JPEG and uncompressed RAW format images for the ultimate in picture quality (if you can afford a big enough SD card). The Leica can shoot 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9 ratio images, and the widescreen 2.8″ diagonal display lets you view full 16:9 images at their maximum size. It’s loaded with both automatic scene settings for ease of use as well as pletiful manual settings including aperture, shutter speed, color balance among others. The D-Lux also features an optical image stabilizer to keep your images sharp in challenging situations. Keep in mind that Leica cameras aren’t for cheapskates – expect this camera to retail for about $1000 (street prices will likely be a bit less.)

[via Chip Chick]