Wireless D70 success!

[gstark]

Not quite what I have in mind as the final solution, but I've at least proven one point.

This morning I managed to successfully transfer an image from the D70 to my laptop, wirelessly.

My concept has always been that a Pocket PC (Windows CE) device with USB hosting enabled should (in theory) be able to read the storage on a D70. If that scenario were true, then it should be a relative no-brainer to execute a file transfer from the camera's storage to any other storage that the PPC can see.

Yesterday I borrowed an Acer n30 from Birddog (thanx muchly, Birddog) and this morning I set up my laptop to talk to the Acer through th Acer's built in Bluetooth wireless.

With that connection established, I could see my laptop's files from the Acer, and move files between the Acer and the laptop.

With the camera's USB connection set to Mass Storage mode, I was able to connect the camera to the PPC using a standard USB cable, and the camera appeared on the PPC as a hard drive. I was able to browse the directory structure on the camera, and view jpg images on the camera, directly from the PPC! As there's no RAW converter (that I'm aware of) I wasn't able to view .nef images, but the files were still able to be browsed.

With the camera connected to the PPC via USB, and the PPC wirelessly connected to my network (and thus my laptop) I was then able to copy files directly from the camera, via the PPC, to the laptop.

My first observation is that, for all practical purporses, Bluetooth is not the way to go: it's way too slow.

My second observation is that, with the camea in Mass Storage Mode and connected to the PPC, it's not able to be used for making exposures, so, for the moment, direct wireless transfer of images in real time looks like it will need some heavy-ish software development.

But ...

With a SD WiFi card (preferably 802.11g) and a simple FTP application, wireless transfer of images to a locally and wirelessly networked LAN looks to me like a real possibility.

More to come as I play more with the hardware.

[birddog114]

Great to hear! please keep us posted.
If this way works then we don't need the expensive wireless stuff from Nikon D2h and future D2x.

[gstark]

Still a long way to go ....

[Greg B]

Gary, I see you have said that you don't know what you have in mind as the final solution....

I am wondering what the objective would be with a wireless link, other than having no wire.

I have a wireless keyboard and mouse, and they are great.

What would be the practical advantage of the wireless d70 to pc link?

cheers

[Onyx]

The coolness factor, plus the satisfaction of knowing you've succeeded in the academic challenge of getting wireless data transfer off the D70.

Congrates Gary, perhaps a pic of your setup?! (just to see how "clumsy" the peripherals are).

[gstark]

Greg,

Gary, I see you have said that you don't know what you have in mind as the final solution....

No, that's not quite what I said.

What I said was that I achieved something, but what I acheived was not what I have in mind as the final goal.

I am wondering what the objective would be with a wireless link, other than having no wire.

I have a wireless keyboard and mouse, and they are great.

What would be the practical advantage of the wireless d70 to pc link?

cheers

Good question. This is nothing to do with removing the clutter wires from the desktop, which is a primary goal for wireless keyboards and the like.

Instead, this is to do with workflow processing.

Consider that you're working some sort of event, taking lots (and lots and lots) of photos. Consider that you have a PC of some sort sitting somewhere at the event, with a wireless connection of some sort.

Now, consider the effect of real-time downloads of your images, immediately after shooting, to that pc. No need to remove the CF card to transfer the images; with the right interface, perhaps no need even for a CF card in the camera.

Everything happens in real time, virtually while you're shooting. How much time would that save?

Now ... imagine that scenario in a production environment where there are lots of images, and time to print is of the essence, and there might be a photo editor sitting between the download and the publication. The difference between waiting for a CF card to be filled and downloaded, Vs realtime downloads, could be quite significant.

Does this help?

[Greg B]

Thanks Gary, that makes good sense.

And yes, I misread your first sentence - sorry, please disregard.

I certainly agree with Onyx re coolness factor etc, I love doing stuff just for the challenge of doing it etc etc.

However, I was interested in the practical application, and I can see it now. I guess I don't think like a pro, so it didn't occur to me in that context.

All very interesting.

cheers

[birddog114]

Gary,
I'm just thinking of the HP Ipaq PDA has built in 54b or g wireless, perhaps this solution may help instead of using Bluetooth.
Secondly I'm also thinking how can we programming and use the D70/ Dxxx from the PDA and it acts as a controller, same as when you connect the Dslr to a PC/ notebook and fire shots from it and you can do it with NC from a PC.

Perhaps we will need to have some expert's hands in our forum with CODEC from Nikon.

It will be fun if we can achieved it!

[gstark]

Greg,

Thanks Gary, that makes good sense.

And yes, I misread your first sentence - sorry, please disregard.

No worries.

I certainly agree with Onyx re coolness factor etc, I love doing stuff just for the challenge of doing it etc etc.

However, I was interested in the practical application, and I can see it now. I guess I don't think like a pro, so it didn't occur to me in that context.

Thinking like a pro is just a side benefit of this. The coolness factor is my primary motivation here.

And for me, thinking at all is a novelty event!

In 1999 I was speaking at a conference in New Orleans, and one of my topics was on handheld PCs and migrating apps from the desktop to handhelds. At this time, we were still dealing with Palm PCs, which is what Pocket PCs were called in those early days, as well as Palm OS devices, which of course are entirely different. Most devices were still monochrome too ...

While doing my final research I came across an i86 emulator for the HPC, of which I had one in my arsenal. I grabbed that, but also needed a bootable ROM image from a version of DOS, say 6.x.

Understand that I was a speaker at a conference - one of 25000 people there - and nobody, it seemed, had a bootable DOS floppy!

I had to resort to ICQ and getting in touch with Leigh, having him find one specific floppy in our piles of disks at home, send him an application that would pull the binary image off the floopy, and then have him send me the resultant output file. This was at around 3:30am in N'Awlins ...

For my presentation I loaded the DOS bootable image onto the handheld, and copied a DOS compiler (Clipper), a linker (Blinker), and an editor onto the handheld.

I was able to use the editor to write a small DOS application, compile, link, and run it, all on the handheld. The application created a small nativ xBase database, added some records, and then displayed those records.

I then copied just the application to my laptop and ran it there, with no problems.

Obviously I got it all set up prior to the presentation to make sure that I would only show stuff that worked as I wanted it to, and what I demonstrated had virtually no practical value whatsoever, although it kind of looked as if it might.

But from a coolness POV it scored about 10/10!

[gstark]

Birddog,

Gary,
I'm just thinking of the HP Ipaq PDA has built in 54b or g wireless, perhaps this solution may help instead of using Bluetooth.

The issue with the iPaq is that they don't (to my knowledge) provide the USB host interface. That's the primary requirement that we need to ensure is addressed; without it, the device cannot talk to the cameras.

There's a Toshiba that has 802.11b, and Toshiba sell a host cable, but we're talking about a $1200 unit - plus the cost of the cable - as against the Acer that costs around $500.

What's the cost of a SD Wifi card ?

Secondly I'm also thinking how can we programming and use the D70/ Dxxx from the PDA and it acts as a controller, same as when you connect the Dslr to a PC/ notebook and fire shots from it and you can do it with NC from a PC.

I want to get a small file transfer application up and running first, so that we can semi-automate that part of the process.

The NCC functionality is an obvious fit, but yes, we'll need to get the Nikon SDK and then see what API calls it makes, and which of those are not present in, say, the Compact Framework. Hopefully, it will be compatible with the Compact Framework, and that part of the task will be relatively easy to do too.

[MHD]

what would be cool is a device that plugs into a CF card slot, has some flash ram on it (so same as a CF card) but has a wireless network interface and a ftp or ntfs daemon running to allow wireless access to the files on the CF card..

you dont/shouldnt need another CPU to act as a go between two systems...

[Dargan]

Coolness is an end in itself. Great thinking Gary. I have an XDAII with a WiFi card and they now have wireless at work. I am going to experiment. Also have a HP450 BT enabled printer but as you say blutooth is slow, but could print draft to it from D70 as an exercise.

[gstark]

what would be cool is a device that plugs into a CF card slot, has some flash ram on it (so same as a CF card) but has a wireless network interface and a ftp or ntfs daemon running to allow wireless access to the files on the CF card..

you dont/shouldnt need another CPU to act as a go between two systems...

There's already a combo CF card that contains RAM plus a WLAN adaptor.

The problem is that there are no WLAN drivers for the camera, and the current crop of cameras don't permit us to talk to the OS and set entry points for the drivers.

Well, that's no quite true ... theoretcally, that may be possible on the 10D/20D/300D, because of the underlying OS in use there.

But while Nikon doesn't support this yet, they did show a CP at Photokina that used exactly such a card, so I suspect that WLAN is in the offing in a much bigger way than we currently migh be thinking.

[gstark]

Dargan,

Coolness is an end in itself. Great thinking Gary. I have an XDAII with a WiFi card and they now have wireless at work. I am going to experiment. Also have a HP450 BT enabled printer but as you say blutooth is slow, but could print draft to it from D70 as an exercise.

See my post to Birddog; does the XDA have USB host capabilities? That's the first part of the key to talking to the D70.

If it doesn't (my expectation) has someone written host USB drivers for it?