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Technology

Digital Camera Wristwatch 198

Posted by CmdrTaco from the gettin-all-james-bond-and-crap dept.
MikeyMars writes "Casio has released a new watch that, aside from telling time, can take 80 full color pictures. " The watch itself only displays in grey, but the camera takes color pictures. Its not like its doing 2 mega pixels or anything, but its still pretty nifty.
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Digital Camera Wristwatch More

Digital Camera Wristwatch

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  • THis will be banned in the work-place. Talk about industrial espionage! "No watches allowed!"
    • Just wait until they come out with the Furby Improved, with cool new watch.

    • Re:Some day soon... (Score:5, Funny)

      by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2001 @03:14PM (#2442614) Homepage
      This will be banned in the work-place. Talk about industrial espionage! "No watches allowed!"

      How about banned in the locker room. Your mind obviously doesn't work like mine. :-) Oh yes, I will like to wear my watch in the shower.

      Yum.

      • Re:Some day soon... (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Umm, considering most places segregate locker rooms based on sex (if yours is different, please let me know where it is and how much), your suggestion is pretty sick and twisted.
        • The only locker rooms I plan on visiting do segregate by gender.

          Sick and twisted, depends on what you're referring to. If you refer to the fact that I prefer same gender locker rooms, you're wrong.

          If you refer to the concept of taking pictures while there, you're right. And I would not actually do such a thing. But its a fun thought.
        • Boy, you have a closed mind. Any statistician will tell you that 1 out of 10 of us here are gay (not there is anything wrong with that).

    • Re:Some day soon... (Score:5, Funny)

      by jeffy124 ( 453342 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2001 @03:38PM (#2442759) Homepage Journal
      schools too.....

      During an exam, stretch your arm up into the air and back. Manipulate your hands and wrists such that you can seruptitiously snap a photo of the paper behind you. Then look at your watch and quickly clear the photo before the proctor sees it. If the proctor asks why you're looking at your watch, you were curious to how much time was remaining.

      Then hope & pray the teacher isnt using multiple exams, and that the guy behind you knows what he's doing.

      • Hope and pray the teacher isnt using multiple exams, and that the guy behind you knows what he's doing.

        Hm, with 174x144 grayscale display, you better pray that the guy behind you writes really big. 174x144.cheating.gif [halley.cc] Can you read it? Even if it was 2048x1024 full color display, it's a screen that you're wearing on your wrist. Gonna scroll around on a zoom-in function while the teacher's not looking?

  • Now just add wireless, and the ability to do H.323 and you can call me Dick T.

    Seriously, this is cool. Just bought my 2 year old a $20 dollar digital camera to let her play with, not a mega pixel camera either, but good enough for her to play with and it is cheaper than film.

    Isn't technology fun
    • Could you give me a link for that? My little girls always want to play with my camera and they would love their own!
      • I also bought my kid a cheap $30 ish usb sub-megapixel camera for Christmas.

        Check out Computer Geeks [computergeeks.com]. They often have various cheapo digital cameras. It varies depending on when you look. Click Digital Cameras on the left side of the page.
      • Was running through the hardware section at ToysR'Us and saw a Nickalodeon (sp?) branded camera. The box has stuff from Mattel.
        This was an impulse purchase, I mean why bother to research a $20 dollar purchase
        Not the greatest camera 120x160 pixel resolution, and you need a lot (and I mean A LOT) of light to get a good image. But the software is fun for a 2 year old, all though I am guessing I have a couple of years before she can do it on her own.
    • Just the other day, it occured to me to wonder why we couldn't have wireless memory modules built into watches or something similar.

      The internet has gotten rid of the need to physically move data around much of the time, but everyone still does it sometimes. PDAs work well for portability, but they have a lot of bells and whistles unneccesary to merely moving data. I think it would be fun to store 10M on my wristwatch and then have any computer within 10ft be able to read it and use that info. New means of personal authentication perhaps.

      Of course the amount of wireless saturation will probably have to go up before that day. Not to mention there might be a few not so nice uses for computers interacting with wristwatches.
  • the article says mid-October...so where is the thing? I want my spy pictures damn-it!!!
    • Actually, it's a number of different places, for those that are interested.

      I found it online at www.neimanmarcus.com (metal band only), and at www.globalproducts.com (resin band only). Also, I just saw it in person at a sunglass hut/watch store in the local mall in DC/NoVa.

      Not bad, but it is pretty thick... quite light, however.

  • OLD NEWS! (Score:4, Funny)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2001 @02:47PM (#2442466) Homepage Journal
    Sheesh, this is old!

    Sean Connery was using it in the old 60s James Bond movies!

    ;-)

    And to beat the trolls to is "Suck it Trebek! Suck it long, and suck it hard!"
    • In an attempt to "scoop" Casio, This device [tvland.com] was just released by a competitor!

    • I pose a conundrum to ya, Trebek, a riddle if ya will. What's the difference between you, and a mallard with a cold? One's a sick duck, I can't remember the rest, but your mother's a whore.
    • I know your comment was meant to be funny (and truly, it was!), but there is a grain of truth in it. Well, the subject line anyway. This thing has been on the market for weeks, if not months. A coworker of mine has had his for at least two weeks. And, yes, it's the color version, not the grey scale one that came out a year ago.
  • A wristwatch camera is small, unobtrusive and lightweight. Now only if we can work on the resolution, we'd have an interesting surveillance tool.

  • McCartney (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sandidge ( 150265 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2001 @02:48PM (#2442475)
    I heard on the news the other day that Paul McCartney took the pic for the cover of his newest album using a watch camera? Maybe he got a preview of this thing? Article here [dotmusic.com].

    Oh BTW... the pic he took was of him standing at a urinal taking a leak. Pic in the article.
    • I have to marvel at the ingenuity . . . er . . . wacko-ness of artists. I wonder what went through his mind when he was taking a leak there . . . and why those thoughts resulted in him taking that picture . . . and why that picture ended up on his album.

      robi
    • It looks like he used the original black and white version. I have one. Currently an image of the watch itself is wrapped 'round my gameboy camera webcam pic on my journal [optusnet.com.au]. I had some images up at CamBorg [camborg.com] as "Krisjohn", but they're mostly expired. My cat is in the best of 2000 [camborg.com] -- in fact, the two on the right, top row are both mine.

  • Battery Life (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 3ryon ( 415000 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2001 @02:48PM (#2442476)
    The article says that it can store up to 80 images. It doesn't mention that you'll have to recharge the battery four times to take 80 pictures.

    Just my assumption, but as the LCD is also a viewfinder, I'll bet it you can't frame and shoot 80 pics on a watch battery.

    • Re:Battery Life (Score:5, Informative)

      by dragons_flight ( 515217 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2001 @03:30PM (#2442696) Homepage
      I managed to overcome the massive slashdotting of Casio.com and find a technical specs page [casio.com].

      Highlights:
      174x144 pixels
      1M of builtin memory
      ~80 images with JPEG compression
      IR image transfer to comp
      Basic Watch Functions
      6-month battery if used only as a watch
      "Batter life is shortened by using imaging functions and data communication functions"
      Auto-Power Save when not being worn.
    • How is this insightful? He's making up the 'fact' that you have to recharge 4 times....

      If you clicked the link [casio.com] to the press release, you'd see that the battery life is estimated at 6 months! I assume it doesn't take as much power as you'd think if they've made it all solid state.

    • Re:Battery Life (Score:4, Informative)

      by AragornSonOfArathorn ( 454526 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2001 @03:35PM (#2442737)
      On the contrary, the battery life is very good. I have the previous version of this watch that only takes B&W pics (and at a lower resolution, but it holds 100 pics, not 80... ha!). However, the new watch has the same B&W LCD screen (16 level grayscale, no backlight) as the old one. You only get color pics when you download them off the watch. Anyway, I have had my watch for months and have probably taken well over 2000 pics and the original battery is still going strong. The watch is pretty cool, too. The pics are really too small to be real useful, but it sure is fun to have. :-)
      • Perhaps you could comment on the ease of taking pictures without people realising that that is what you are doing.

        Is there a mode where you can take pictures and have the camera still show the time?

        I don't want the girl seeing a picture of herself on the watch as she is bending over to pick up the tip.

  • How much memory is on those things? --25K pixels isn't that much, but it's still decent, and 80 pictures!

    It's not going to replace cameras people take while on vacation, but I could see uses for engineers or architects who don't necessarily need the best image, but good enough to spot any obvious errors.

    And of course, as the picture on Casio's page shows, parents of young kids who want to capture every moment of their kid's life will love this.

    • 25K pixels is nowhere near decend. We're talking about 184x138 pixels or so. In other words, were you to print this out, it would be about the size of a postage stamp.

  • First use :) (Score:2, Funny)

    by JHromadka ( 88188 )
    You know that people will be wearing this to the strip club. 80 pictures should be enough to get a pic of every girl there. :)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • hehe (Score:1, Interesting)

    by justletmeinnow ( 315504 )
    I can see the teenagers now... Schools had to ban pagers, now they're going to have to ban watches too, either that or ban the girls wearing skirts (which is bad for everybody). I'm gonna get one and rig it with a remote control, so I can drop it on the floor at the mall so I can fund my website!!

  • ...and can become a Visual Databank that stores not only the images but you can names and numbers.

    This is what me, and others like me, have needed FOREVER!!! I am constantly thinking "Ok, I know this person... but who is it? From where..???" This is a godsend, I'm placing my order now!

  • Not only will the authorities will be able to observe me easily, that asshole who follows my girl friend around will have a watch tied to his shoe instead of a mirror .
  • The article looks a little like this [slashdot.org] [slashdot.org] one.

    Don't editors read /. and all that blah blah blah blah blah [add rant]....
  • There have been quite a few articles about watches that are mp3 players, can take pictures, run linux, etc... But they always had the traditional shape of a watch, which limits the size of the battery you can use. Perhaps if you changed the general shape (wider and longer, and using a wide wrist strap that would be able to contain more batteries or something like it), maybe you can get something more interesting, that can last a lot longer. Of course, materials that would not cause too much sweating would have to be chosen.

  • More Info (Score:3, Informative)

    by exceed ( 518714 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2001 @02:59PM (#2442536)
    EdgeReview did an article on this watch, (it has a nice picture on it, too), here: http://www.edgereview.com/ataglance.cfm?category=i maging&ID=246 [edgereview.com]

    The metal-banded WQV3D-8 costs $269, while its companion costs $249.

    Is this thing waterproof? Can it take pictures underwater? (I doubt that one).

  • Linux wrist watch (Score:1, Informative)

    by N3P1u5U17r4 ( 457760 )
    Another fun watch is the linux watch:

    http://www.research.ibm.com/people/c/chandras/lo op watch1cropped.jpg

  • 80 postage stamp sized pictures... whoopee.

    I'd rather have a cellphone with built-in 640x480 or better resolution camera, so I can take pictures, view them on the display, and save or send them immediately to my personal computer or virtual drive via a packet-switched phone network and the internet. Voila - essentially infinite image storage. Throw in a GPS system that automatically tags the images with coordinates and direction and you have an amazing tool for instantaneous documentation.
  • Now we'll have CmdrTaco running around going ...

    I'm Taco ... CmdrTaco ...

    Swell ...

  • So what?!?!?! Apple's got a trick up its sleeve... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Read This! [cnet.com] Far much more important than a watch that takes crappy low resolution pictures.
  • How big are those pictures??? The square root of 25,344 is about 159... That means that the pictures will be 159x159 in size... pretty small don't you think??? This also means that the thing has about 2 megabyes of memory on board... which also isn't too impressive...
  • Casio has had thing thing for awhile from what I've heard... and I've personally seen a watch that could take pictures in a store in NYC (sometime in April or March). As for "color" whats the point if you can still only see the pictures in black&white. Seems like a waste of space to me, especially with the fact that this thing cost more than a digital camera. Although I'll admit that its cool technology.
    • ... and I've personally seen a watch that could take pictures in a store in NYC

      Yeah, but what if you wanted to take pictures after leaving the store.....

      "Let's see that fancy watch of yours take my picture."

      "Sure, but we'll have to go back to Macy's...."

  • This is what I want (Score:3, Funny)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2001 @03:03PM (#2442568) Homepage Journal
    I want a cellphone, Pager, PalmPilot PDA, mp3 playing, linux running, wristwatch. I wont buy any of them until they are all incorporated into one device. It will happen soon.
    • I want the computer watch that Inspector Gadget's niece (the animated series, not the crappy movie) had. Not only could it control every mechanical device on earth, it must of sad some kinda whacky chording system to let her to do all that stuff with three buttons :)

  • Flash? (Score:1)

    by bool ( 144199 )
    Now all we need is a flash, 802.11 capabilities, and a self destruct feature (that wouldn't blow your arm off).

  • Hey baby (Score:4, Funny)

    by bool ( 144199 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2001 @03:10PM (#2442592) Homepage
    can I have your phone number? one second, let me boot up my watch...
  • Does it show the time ?

    I posted aomething similar to this in the IBM linux watch arcticle a few days ago, and I'm repeating this here for one single reason:

    A WRIST WATCH IS NOT THE PLACE TO PUT ALL THIS CRAP!!!.

    a wrist watch is suposed to tell you USEFULL information (like time) in a quick, convenient and direct way.

    It's not supposed to take pictures or to double as a Linux PDA.

    Let me tell you the origins of wrist watch. I late 1890's a young brasilian from a rich familly moved to Paris. He was a briliant inventor and liked to experiment new things.

    One day he rented a hot air baloon and went for a ride. He found that a marvelous thing, except for the fact that the ballon was too big and clumsy.

    Then he started to work on hot air ballons which were small, light anc convenient enough to be carried in a car's trunk.

    he succeeded at this, but that was not enough. after he almost died in one of his ballons becouse the wind sent him to the ocean, he decided it was time to have control of the thing.

    the result was the very first drovable baloon, or blimp.

    What all this have to do with wrist watches ??? try to take a big clumsy watch from your pocket to see time while strugling with a primitive blimp...

    to solve this problem he designed the wrist watch and asked Cartier to build it for him.

    The device was small, light and wrist mounted. This means you can simply turn quickly your wrist to see the time, which is extremely convenient. no hands on pockets, no anoying covers, no buttons to press. flip the wrist and see the time. done.

    The name of this guy was Alberto Santos Dumont. He never patented his inventions. he left everything in public domain for the benefit of mankind.

    Now IBM and Cassio comes with these montrosities ??? give me a break.
  • It's a wrist camera that permits the wearer to take thumbnail sized blurry jpegs on surveillance camera type microlens. Other than ten minutes of 'Hey cute' play factor, what possible use could this have? Even in casual social situations where photo quality is of no concern, the apparent image resolution precludes the recorded pictures from being used for much more than instant messenger icons. It seems that the imager has less pixels than a damn palmpilot display, and that's almost certainly before the color filter. So the actual color detail resolution is probably closer to 80x80 pixels, which is roughly equivalent to my Vic 20 from 1980. Amazing new technology eh?

  • JPEG (176 x 144 pixels)
    80 pictures
    1MB flash memory


    So I can take 80 pictures that are 12.8KB each at 176x144 pixels... That's not even enough to be able to read the text off a picture that I took of a page from a book.

    Doesn't seem very useful to me, I'd much rather drop the $200 on a ultrathin camera of some sort that gives me megapixel images.

  • Better info (Score:4, Informative)

    by scott1853 ( 194884 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2001 @03:13PM (#2442611)
    Once individual estimated you couldn't take 80 pictures before the battery died. Casio estimates 6 months before it'll die. Here the full press release with a spec sheet.

    http://www.casio.com/corporate/pressroom.cfm?act=2 &pr=4974 [casio.com]

  • Hey guys, (Score:5, Funny)

    by trilucid ( 515316 ) <pparadis@havensystems.net> on Wednesday October 17, 2001 @03:16PM (#2442626) Homepage Journal

    Now here's something useful for a change... just imagine the potential this thing has to change your dating life.

    Let's set the scene: You're at the park with your new girl, watching the moon rise over the horizon, and things start gettin' a bit steamy. You're past first base, rounding second, and sure you're gonna get to slide into home.

    Only trouble is, you misread the situation, and your girl decides you've had enough for the time being. What's a guy to do?

    No worries, mate... you've got that watch! Unbeknowst to her, you were snapping photos faster than a Microsoft web server being compromised. Later that night, you kick back at the PC, and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

    Yep, it's useful all right... ;)

    • Yeah, she probably caught ya snapping pictures. The worst part is that the pics are probably going to be worse quality than most pr0n thumbnails.
  • CALIFORNIA (AP) - Casio announced its release of their new campaign to advertise their digital watch technology.

    "We will have pop-up ads on every major website, with supporting banner ad's built into applications supporting this" says Jack Jacobson, a spokesperson for Casio, Inc.

    With the new advent of using pop-up internet advertisements on major websites, Casio has chosen not to miss out on what they consider a 'breakthrough oppurtunity'. The public should expect to see our new campaign hitting major websites the beggining of November.

  • not such a bad thing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Brigadier ( 12956 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2001 @03:22PM (#2442659)


    at first I thought this was just another stupid abuse of technology another device that has no real purpose. but after thinking about it this is like havign a hidden camera, the guy who bangs yoru car, the cop who pushes you around, your boss and the secretary getting busy. click click, perfectly handy evidence. throw in a voice recorder and we are good to go.
  • Every now and than we see such a "cool" tech. offering from numerous companies. While they keep us amused and at the cutting edge, to me they are nothing but a short term PR to keep the companies' name visible.

    Once we see REAL application coming out of those development, I won't get much excited. But don't get me wrong, I applause such effort as they promote further expansion. However, for the short term, they are noting but PR. So keep that in mind.

  • Bah! NOBODY wears wrist watches anymore! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Fantastic Lad ( 198284 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2001 @03:41PM (#2442788)
    Is it just me, or. . .

    I stopped wearing a watch when I was still in high school. None of my friends wear watches. I stop people on the street to ask them the time, and about 7 times out of 10, they waggle naked wrists at me and shrug apologetically.

    I find jewelry and such against my skin endlessly irritating, plus I find if I am constantly aware of the time, my stress level goes up and I lose all kinds of 'slack points' (Cheap-ass Games rule!).

    It seems many people have come to the same conclusion. Watches suck. --Problem is, most of the public-access time keeping devices set up around my city have been allowed to rot into useless 'Back to the Future' clocks that don't work anymore. --Public clocks seem to have all been replaced by those annoying solid state banner ads which hang over subway platforms and make people stare at them while they wait for the fucking time to be flashed between LED-based commercials. (When the heck did time become 'content'?) Bah. I'd rather be late

    The weird thing I find, though, is that I am actually very rarely late for stuff. And the occasions I am late are always predicated by a conscious choice on my part to dick around and not show up when expected. --I'm never late because I don't know what time of day it is.

    A lot of the people I talk to also report this phenomenon. Knowing what time it is seems to fall into that category of stuff which the Human Autopilot seems more than capable of taking care of.

    Of course, if I want to play Dick Tracy or whatever Casio is selling, I'd have to buy their stupid watch.

    Like that's going to happen.


    -Fantastic Lad

  • transfer method? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Nate Fox ( 1271 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2001 @03:47PM (#2442827)
    Did anyone else get a really odd mental picture of pluggin in a 25pin serial cable to the side of the watch, and then remember we have infrared these days?

    Must've been the coffee this mornin.
  • Assuming through Moore's law, any desktop size computer of today can be shrunk to thumbnail size in few years, then the question becomes what is the most convenient human interface to use it? The answer might be in jewelry-like accessories. These would include wristwatches, rings, eyeglasses, medallians, necklaces, belts, headbands, etc. The MIT Media lab has addressed this in their "wearable computing" devices. But those bulking device are like the Osborne portable computer, compared to palmtops.

    How about a ring camera?
  • How much longer until we start getting annoying Casio pop-ads for:

    "The Amazing Casio-10 WristCam!"
  • I'd wear a 'watch' if it was a simple lcd display connected to all my devices via bluetooth to achieve the following:
    • Display current time from my ntp sync'd celphone/pda
    • Beep and display the reminders set off by my PDA. The buttons on the watch could be used for snooze/dismiss, etc
    • Beep and display the caller id of an incoming call on the celphone in my pocket. Pressing a button would stop the ringing or answer and put on hold until I opened the phone.
    • Beep and display IM's


    • Anyway, the point is that watches should evolve to become interfaces, not applications and service provider technologies.
  • Yeah, saw that watch at a store. Casio also has a limited PDA watch and a 32Meg storage MP3 player watch.
  • use kinetic energy to recharge the battery, like that Seiko watch? Seems to me like a $20 camera in a $200 watch. No thanks.
  • First the linux watch, now this. This watch doesn't have nearly enough resolution for you to even be able to see what you photographed. How is that useful?

    I can handle only being able to snap, say, 36 pictures, but they need to be closer to 640x480. When they come up with a version of this watch that's waterproof and has some real resolution, post another story. :P

  • This device has a whole lot of potential. Now, they just have to scrap the half-assed camera functionality, and they'll have a nice watch computer with a useful hi-res greyscale display.

    Seriously, who cares about the lame camera. The CPU and display are what's cool here.

  • From the product info page at Casio:
    The WQV3D-8BNDL can store up to 80 images and can become a Visual Databank that stores not only the images but you can names and numbers.
    This is the greatest product in history! You have no idea how long I've been waiting for a prouct that will let me names and numbers. I've always wanted to, but no one ever made a product that made it possible.

    *wipes a tear from his eye*

  • Tiny 640x480 (Score:2, Informative)

    by horsie ( 91009 )
    The casio wristwatch camera sure has a nice profile, but does not do well for taking pictures to view on a monitor.

    Here's [dpreview.com] a tiny Sony prototype that has 640x480 resolution...
  • Yeah, cool... But that's not the watch I want. I want the watch I lost a few years ago, which had a scientific calculator in it, complete with trig and log functions, exponents, and a "binary" mode with base conversions and logical operations.

    Casio quit making it, and nobody else makes one either. (Yeah, I've tried Ebay. Whoever has one isn't selling it.)
  • Someone just pointed out to me that I can't wear a Casio watch after signing with Rolex to endorse their product (no not even in strip clubs).

    So that begs the question, how long before those swiss folk come up with a mechanical version of this dohickey?

    Don't laugh! They already have a watch with a mechanical adding machine in the works. All they need to do is to get some of that Logie Baird mechano-analogue TV system implemented.

  • Here's a pic I took with it (Score:3, Informative)

    by Therlin ( 126989 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2001 @07:21PM (#2444073)
    I own this watch. It's a little bulky, but a great fun toy. The pictures are not the best, but they are decent considering that they are taken by a watch, and it can store 80 pictures! Picture of me taken by the watch [renteria.net]

    I take pics with the watch, I then beam them to my Palm and they are downloaded to my computer when I hotsync.

  • I don't need another watch. I used to be a consultant so I have one of those watches designed for the express purpose of indicating to the potential customer that they should not expect your fees to be inexpensive. This watch would tell the client 'hey you can buy him off with some cheap geek toys'.

    I could use a pen however, something pen shaped would be much easier to use unobtrusively.

    It also really needs to have a much better resolution. 180x160 really does not cut it. 480x360 is a heck of a lot better.

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