One-eyed woman wants techno-vision

A one-eyed woman has appealed for some gadget guidance to help her turn her artificial eye into a camcorder. Tanya Vlach already wears a prosthetic eyeball, but she wants to know how best to turn it into a hi-tech peeper able to store video files, transmit wirelessly and snap still photos. Eyeball How can this gain …

[AndyC]

Dear lord...l

Please warn when you have pictures of gooey eyes... Ug...

Thank you el Reg, many years of supressed memories come flooding back - luckily not my eyes but even so, ug...

[Mike]

Easier to pirate movies....

No need to get caught camming the latest release. You just have to sit REALLY STILL for 2 hours, and don't blink.

[Paul Murphy]

hmm - mobile phone camera?

mobile phone camera, bluetooth chip and a battery (and wireless charger loop).

sort the rest out externally?

charging would be a pain, but less so than removing SD cards etc. and may even be possible by placing the eye-cam on a charger like my toothbrush has.

surely can't be impossible.

I for one welcome our erm, recorder-eye overlords.

[Robin Kinge]

Go for it.

If you need another tester, I'm ready and willing.

[N1AK]

Dumbass specs

I actually think the idea of a Camera in a artificial eye is a very good one, but what she is asking for is completely pointless.

If it has an optical zoom etc then it is implausible to believe she intends for it to be controlled by anything other than a seperate device, and if she wants to be able to see what she is focusing on and where she is zooming then she will need view a screen showing the image with her good eye.

If the system was kept simple and basically just a mobile phone quality camera, possibly using the autofocus tech to 'try' and get the right things in focus then it might be of some practical use in situations where a proper digital camera would be more use.

Finally, I'm not normally one for caring about the radiation from electric devices, but does putting a wireless device inside your head (closer to brain and without the dense bone of the skull) seem that wise?

[Nick]

We are the Borg. Resistance is futile.

Does she look like Seven of Nine?

Pictures please!

[yeah, right.]

New job?

Are we to assume that once she gets the tech goodies she's planning to apply for a job with her local spy organization?

[zedee]

Heh

Surely Captain Cyborg can help here?

[Mad Hacker]

Recording? Now when they can connect the video to the occular nerve call me

Hey so she's shooting a bit low IMHO. I would think she would want them to wire it up to her brain so she could have depth perception.

[bruceld]

Umm...

Let's just hope she doesn't get a faulty Lithium battery and have it explode in her eye socket.

This story is obviously a hoax, or the woman is completely stupid and loves publicity. I doubt that anyone would want to willingly and consensually insert an object inside their head that could explode.

Well, unless they had been brainwashed by someone of a certain religious background.

[Pete James]

Please leave a message

She could go the whole hog and install a mobile phone inside. I'd draw the line at keeping the meetings setting though.

[Neurotic Nomad]

Ignorance Abounds.

"Exactly why she wants this is a mystery, as she can still see perfectly well with her other, organic eye."

Spoken like someone with two functional eyes.

"it is implausible to believe she intends for it to be controlled by anything other than a seperate device"

Spoken like someone who has zero experience with modern motorized prosthetics.

[Haku]

Why stop at cameras?

If I were in her position I'd get a range of fake eyeballs made, each with a different function, but so far I can only think of a laser pointer (halloween, parties etc.), a torch to see in the dark, or even a flash drive - can you imagine the reactions of others when you take out your eye and plug it into a USB port?

[Mark York]

Prior Art

Just as long as she doesn't look like Herbert Lom (Doppelganger aka Journey to the far side of the sun) or G'Kar

Paris because she doesn't look like G'Kar or Herbert Lom.

[Anonymice]

Re: Umm...

"I doubt that anyone would want to willingly and consensually insert an object inside their head that could explode.

Well, unless they had been brainwashed by someone of a certain religious background."

Did you hear the one about the Priest & the Choir boy?

In flames shall I burn.

[Anonymous Coward]

Other functions

Don't forget covert recordings. A body search might find a hidden tape recorder but are they going to check your eyeball?

I would think some kind of proximity sensor to compensate for seeing things out of the corner of your eye might be good.

[Anton Ivanov]

Re: We are the Borg. Resistance is futile.

Wrong reference. Does the lady in question look like ambassador G'kar by any chance?

[jon]

Some old fashioned espionage ?

It's a modern spin on an old idea, there is an old Sci-fi movie.. "Journey to the far side of the sun" aka "Doppleganger" that has a great opening sequence of a eye spy technology.

Sat here looking at my own digital camera ,small enough to fit in a box of matches or hang from a keyring one has to admit is possible. Going that extra bit and interfacing the electronics to the optic nerve could also be done, as for image quality that's open for debate. Microsurgery has come a long way in repairing severed nerve bundles but this would be a highly experimental procedure, though there are some previous examples for it.

Paris .. because she knows how good a digital camcorder can be

[Pierre]

Ignorance, huh?

""Exactly why she wants this is a mystery, as she can still see perfectly well with her other, organic eye."

Spoken like someone with two functional eyes." and following

Well, excuse my ignorance, and yes, before you ask I have 2 (almost) functional eyes, but I don't see what it has to do with the problem at hand. She will not be able to *see* with the spy-eye, only record and watch later with her functional eye. So unless I'm really mistaken, it won't be anything else than a gadget to take advantage of her prosthetic eye for fun, not a handicap-mitigation measure. Number of functional eyes irrelevant (though the number of available empty eye sockets plays a role).

Idem for you second remark about motorization: no motorization would be necessary (and that's a good thing, given the space requirements of a cam, a storage system, a few servos and a battery). But the zoom would be meaningless if she cannot see what she is zooming on. So she'll need an external control screen. With some practice, she could probably do without the separate screen though. But knowledge of motorized prosthetics is irrelevant.

Anyway, I wish her luck with her gadget. But how long until the US custom officer pokes me in the eyes to check if I am a nasty photorrorist?

[mrdalliard]

Hmmm...

...did she get the idea after watching Doomsday? If so, good on 'er, as it was about the only good thing to come out of such a pants film.

[Bill Gould]

The number of times...

...I've wished I could replay back exactly what I had recently, or even long ago, seen but didn't have the forethought to record or snap at the time. Oi. I hope this works for her. I'd love a fibre/wireless/storage/etc wetware suite installed in my noggin.

[Ben]

Why she wants it?

Go into changing room, get pictures, sell to web. No outward sign that anything dodgy has been going on at all.

I'm slightly disgusted with myself that this was my first thought...

Paris, 'cause, well...

[lIsRT]

Just a camera?

I'm wondering if an eyeball is large enough to contain a .22LR in a very short barrel.

Reminds me of one of the characters in an Iain Banks book I can't remember the name of.

[tony72]

This reminds me of the old joke...

This reminds me of the old joke about the whore who can give a blow-job and sing a song at the same time. I guess in this case, the customer would find the glass eye in a USB dock instead of a jar of water, I'm not sure if that would be more or less creepy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why she wants it

She wants it because it turns her disability into a superhuman ability. The ability to hide a camera in your eye. The science fiction writer's wet dream, the ability to smuggle a camera anywhere at all, even through a strip search.

If you read her blog she does specify a preference for controlling it with eyelid movements.

For comparison, I have a chest deformity. It isn't hugely noticeable, doesn't cause me any real problems (so long as I keep my weight under control) and is a nasty surprise for anyone who sees fit to punch me in a certain quite common way. I could get it fixed or I could consider myself gifted.

[Anonymous Coward]

erm

It's the first step towards developing a functional, artificial eye.

obviously interfacing it with the brain/optic nerve is another big step, but it's part of it, and this step is something that can be achieved, probably quite easily, with off the shelf technology.

[Paul Murphy]

If it was a bluetooth enabled eye/ camera...

I wonder if she could get hold of some video glasses and mod them to play the footage through the missing eye screen.

That way she could have binocular vision if she wanted, or whatever she wanted to see with whatever eye she wanted (I'd better stop this thinking I'm getting a headache.)

Also thinking of Jordi (?) from STNG and the idea of having a device that also detects IR etc, not just visible light.

Of course if the eye was fitted with wi-fi then the whiole family/ neighbourhood could watch :-)

ttfn

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, I see

I thought this would be about Sarah Palin!

[Pierre]

First step, heh? @AC

"It's the first step towards developing a functional, artificial eye."

I think not (If it's the aim, this is a very stupid attempt)

"obviously interfacing it with the brain/optic nerve is another big step"

Actually the real big step would be to know wtf kind of signal should be sent to the optic nerve (provided said nerve did not degenerate after being severed, which I doubt). By the time we figure that out, I suspect there will be an "off the shelf" solution that could fit in a PFY's large blackhead. And by the time we figure out how to regrow a degenerate optic nerve from scratch (or how to interface a cam directly with the visual cortex), there will probably be an "off the shelf" solution to grow an organic eye from stem cells or something. Not to mention grafts. So if it's supposed to be "a step towards [an] artificial eye", it's stupid. If, as I suspect, it's supposed to be a way to take advantage of one's disability, it's quite clever and amusing.

[Neoc]

Oh, great

When cameras became ubiquitous in mobile phones , the phones were barred from some public showers and change areas (at least here in OZ, *especially* in kid-oriented areas).

I can just see a security guard now checking people's eyes for showercams.

[Steve Roper]

Actually...

She probably wants it so she can take tourist snaps in London without being hassled by the pigs or paranoid members of the public. She could use it to take photos in places like shopping centres without some plastic-card rent-a-pig stealing her camera and escorting her off the property.

Problem is, if too many people start going this route the freedom-haters will soon come up with some technology to detect people with cameras in their eyeballs and mikes in their ears. But it'll be good while it lasts...