Remote Control (Bluetooth)

[Kyle Mallory]

Red Guys,

I'm just curious if any thought was given to the means for external remote control of the camera. And what your conclusions where and why?

I know there is a USB 2.0 port on the camera, but this seems like a heavy approach to remote control of camera functions, since, A) USB is relatively limited in terms of cable length. and B) as a USB client device, there is a large amount of overhead on the host device in order to support communication with the camera (PC-grade electronics w/ specialized drivers).

Ideally, my hope was to see some kind of serial protocol, such as LANC, RS442, or some other industry standard. In MY perfect world, the camera would have built-in bluetooth for uploading/download profiles to the SD card, as well as other camera control (timecode information, start/stop, frame-rate/size, audio control, etc.).

I'm a coder by day, and have always thought the ability to generate EDLs, track shot lists, etc using a bluetooth PDA would be awesome... and relatively inexpensive from a manufacturing standpoint, but it seems there is little interest or support from the industry.

(on top of it all, you could even do Bluetooth audio monitoring using a BT headset!).

Anyway, just curious on your thoughts (if you care to share them)...


Kyle

[Brook Willard]

The camera has two SD slots. It will be possible to install a BT or 802.11 card into these slots. Essentially everything you are interested is possible.

[Jarred Land]

Brook is kinda right.. the camera had 2 slots previously.. but as you can see in the new renderings there is now only 1 slot. which should be fine because there are dual operation sd cards in the market, so there isnt really that big of a need for 2.

and just like this changed.. it always can change back :)

[Kyle Mallory]

Cool, thanks for the info guys... but a few more questions, hopefully you can answer.

With these being SDIO slots, what is the expected processor/firmware/software requirements for the camera. In other words, will the camera electronics be running Windows CE? Embedded Linux? on a standard X-ARM platform, etc? It's one thing to say that you can plug-in a SD/WiFi card into the IO slot, its another to then know how to communicate with the in-camera electronics to do the remove control I am hoping to.

I realize things can change (and probably will), I'm just trying to get a clearer picture for some of the OTHER capabilities of the camera [firmware], as well as its ability to be accessorized.

Thanks

Kyle

[Kyle Mallory]

I suppose I could clarify a bit... As a software engineer by day, I'm curious how this will work from the camera side. It doesn't really matter if the camera is Windows CE, or Embedded Linux, etc... but what does matter is that the camera has some kind of support for these devices. Particularly when you start bringing into the equation different devices (is it bluetooth or is it 802.11?) as well as different vendors interfaces into the electronics behind those devices. Linksys 802.11 APIs are different than Cisco's or Netgear. My point being, knowing the platform for the camera processor gives an indication toward the available support for these devices. If it's a Windows CE platform, most manufactures will provide drivers, if it doesn't already exist. If its Embedded Linux, someone will probably write one. If its proprietary, well..... see where I'm going with this?

Part of the notion behind a protocol based interface is that the underlying API/driver/vendor isn't really relevant, simply knowing the nature of the protocol is sufficient to communicate. By making this SDIO, while its true, there is still an underlying protocol to that interface, that interface becomes more abstract. Sure, the camera can talk to the card, but once it has determined what kind of card it is, will it then understand how to talk to the capabilities of that card? What if its an SDIO->Serial port? or ->Bluetooth? or ->GPS? or ->802.11? or a ->Camera? What about those same devices from different vendors?

By providing flexibility of SDIO, as cool as the idea is, if proper support for interfacing those different devices isn't provided, the extended capability of the SDIO slot(s) become useless, and utterly frustrating.

It's like buying a Cell Phone with GPS integrated, but not having any software support to actually use it-- and no means to upgrade/enable that support in the future.

Anyway, sorry for the long, redundant post. ;-)

[Brook Willard]

Bah! I try... ;)

And with regards to support, I truly doubt that the RED ONE has any form of Windows onboard. With that in mind, we don't know what sort of "OS" the camera is running.

It will likely be up to 3rd parties [read: not the makers of the SD cards but other RED-related 3rd parties] to create remote solutions for the camera. That's just guessing - maybe the guys over at RED have a trick or seven up their sleeves.

[Kyle Mallory]

Thanks for trying, Brook! Yeah, I honestly hope it doesn't have ANY form of windows either... This is something that most camera *should/can* do, but very few have chosen to do. The Canon HD-XL1-ish-thing is supposed to support this kind of control, but again, over USB, which rules out PDA-based control. I guess you can do some remote control/configure amount using LANC on Sony and Canon cameras... but not really at the level I'd like to see.