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Two-way video conferencing for Apple iPhone

Monday, August 13, 2007 · 8:21 am · 46 Comments

“Our demo won first place for Iron Coder Live this afternoon! Thanks for your votes everyone! This weekend’s C-4 developer conference features ‘Iron Coder Live,’ a contest in the same vein as MacHack. The event encourages conference attendees to develop creative ‘hacks,’ written in within a short timeframe. This year’s theme, of course, is iPhone,” Glen Aspeslagh blogs for Mac Daddy World.

“This was a great excuse to buy another iPhone, install the iPhone toolchain and waste some time! Before we knew it, the iCal told us it was Thursday and we were putting the finishing touches on iPhone video conferencing,” Aspeslagh reports.

“Our contest entry captures video from the iPhone’s camera, compresses it, and sends it to a web server, where it’s relayed to another iPhone, and vice-versa, resulting in a nice two-way video conference. Need audio too? That’s not our department but simply make a phone call to the other person’s iPhone and put them on speaker phone. Then fire up our program and you’re in business,” Aspeslagh reports.

Find out more about how they did it in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "RadDoc" for the heads up.]

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Comment Feed

46 Comments

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Fatty Arbuckle

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 8:35 am · Reply

Absolutely brilliant if this isn’t a hoax. MDN lept like a trout, incidentally, at the nose-stretcher about the guy getting his thumbs whittled down to better operate the iPhone.
Roberto

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 8:56 am · Reply

How is it 2-way when the camera is on the back and the screen on the front? Surely you’d have to take turns to flip the iPhone round!?!
John

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 8:57 am · Reply

Woah, that’s pretty impressive work. Nice hack
Tony C

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 9:04 am · Reply

No offense, but the acronym RTFA comes to mind… The linked website details the mirror rig they used, with photos to back it up. Grain of salt still, as far as I’m concerned, whether this is all real…
mike k.

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 9:12 am · Reply

Roberto — RTFA.

MDN – this is the sort of article where adding a picture from the original article would help.
en

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 9:13 am · Reply

The mirrors are just what I was thinking when they first said that the camera faces the wrong way. All you need is some venture capital to make it into a small optical “clip-on” and there you go, another great iPhone accessory. (sp)

en
kenh

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 9:41 am · Reply

video conferencing: why bother?
No Squirt For You

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 9:47 am · Reply

“How is it 2-way when the camera is on the back and the screen on the front?”

You mount it to a battery operated, portable turntable and spin the iPhone at several hundred RPM. There’s a slight strobe effect.
Less is More

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 9:53 am · Reply

A conundrum, isn’t it? Put the camera in the back and you can use the screen to adjust your aim when shooting other objects. Put the camera in front and you can video-conference, but how do you shoot something else?

Solutions:
a) A camera that swivels to face front or back. It’s expensive to engineer, manufacture, and fix when you’ve swivelled it once too often;

b) A camera on the front AND back;

c) A screen that opens like a door to face backwards (highly unlikely);

d) A dedicated screen in the back just for taking photos or video (just as unlikely);

e) Screw video-conferencing (the short-term solution chosen by Apple);

f) Mirrors (the third-party short-term solution: ugh!);

g) A fix camera pointing up to an angled mirror that can shoot in either direction (makes the unit bigger but more reliable);

h) Did I mention a camera that can swivel? It’s at the top of the phone and swivels from +180-degrees to zero to -180-degrees. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me. It should click to those three positions and have a robust connection joint that won’t weaken over time.
Executive Privilege

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 9:56 am · Reply

Apple needs to allow the camera to “flip over” to the front to allow this without the mirror configuration.

While this set up is very clever – totally impractical.
@Nosquirt4U

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 10:01 am · Reply

“Lucy in the sky with diamonds…”
my $ goes to

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 10:04 am · Reply

a dock attachment.
No Squirt For You

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 10:08 am · Reply

Less Is More:

You left one out.

Apple patent embeds thousands of cameras among LCD pixels
Posted Apr 26th 2006 12:00PM by Evan Blass
“Oh Barry Fox, does a week ever go by when you don’t find a great patent or two? Today the intrepid Mr. Fox manages to dig up an application by consumer-darling Apple for an LCD display embedded with thousands of microscopic image sensors that would allow users to video-conference while looking straight into the “camera.” Data accumulated by the individual sensors would be stitched into actual images using special software, which will probably be bundled into future versions of iLife. Since the patent specifies almost as many sensors per screen as there are pixels, some of those sensors could have different focal lengths, with a defacto zoom lens created by switching between them. Apple goes on to suggest portable uses for the technology, such as employing the displays in cellphones and PDAs, so you can add another item to the list of features we’ll be expecting from the iPhone and Newton 2.0 when they finally hit stores.”

(http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/26/apple-patent-embeds-thousands-of-cameras-among-lcd-pixels/)
ChrissyOne

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 10:13 am · Reply

@ Roberto

You didn’t even click on the link did you? I mean THERE ARE PICTURES OF IT.

sheesh!
ChrissyOne

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 10:15 am · Reply

I think a much cleaner solution to this would be an add-on pod for the docking bay, like the FM transmitters they make for the nano, that had a camera built-in that faced the user. You could put an extra battery in there, too, I suppose. Where is Belkin when we need them?

-c
ChrissyOne

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 10:19 am · Reply

…AND…
There have been rumors (and patents filed, I believe) regarding cameras that are placed behind the display, allowing the user to look directly at the camera and the image – this is clearly the way to go, if Apple can make it work. That would be ideal.

MW: ‘view’
CWeb

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 10:23 am · Reply

As usual, they’re way ahead of you…

From NewScientist.com (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9059)
RE: US Patent App. #20060007222

Apple’s All-Seeing Screen

We could soon see a new kind of display screen from computer maker Apple – one that simultaneously takes pictures while showing images.

The clever idea is to insert thousands of microscopic image sensors in-between the liquid crystal display cells in the screen. Each sensor captures its own small image, but software stitches these together to create a single, larger picture.

A large LCD screen filled with image sensors would be ideal for videoconferencing, Apple suggests, as participants would always appear to look straight into the “camera”. The technique could also add a camera function to a cellphone or PDA without wasting space, and light from the screen should help illuminate a subject.

The more sensors there are, the wider and clearer the image. Sketches accompanying the company’s patent show as many sensors as liquid crystal cells in a screen. If some of the sensors have different focal lengths, switching between them would make the screen behave like a zoom lens.
NSFY

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 10:26 am · Reply

C1: Look directly above your first post. Tada!
Less is More

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 10:34 am · Reply

Interesting patent, but sounds expensive, low-resolution and a bit out there in time. A swivel could be implemented in the next generation: 2008 (or the day before yesterday). Or when at&t is ready for iChat.
ChrissyOne

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 10:40 am · Reply

@ NSFY

Yeah, I noticed that just after I posted, and then when I tired to post again saying as much, MDN would not let me. I guess 4-post rums are verboten (which is prolly for the bast the way some if us carry on)
NSFY

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 10:45 am · Reply

C1: Is that a stressed & traumatic post disorder?
ChrissyOne

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 10:55 am · Reply

@ NSFY

Something like that. I need breakfast.
now that I think about it...

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 11:16 am · Reply

Could be useful without mirrors or front camera. Could video object I’m looking at, while talking to contact. Mobile video chat would be more useful this way. The person on the other end doesn’t need to see me. They need to see what I’m showing them.
In front of a stationary computer, you hold something up in front of you. Ya can’t do that with a mobile.
Twisted Mac Freak

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 11:26 am · Reply

“Could video object I’m looking at, while talking to contact.”

Put it in your lap and charge by the minute.
Rudge

Monday, August 13, 2007 - 12:11 pm · Reply

Ouch! All of that gear would feel terrible in my pocket!

Plus, I hate these people’s idea of video conferencing, unless you know American Sign Language, you aren’t really conferencing without sound. Sorry, but still an interesting effort.