Monocular San Francisco artist wants webcam installed in her prosthetic eye
By Laura June 
posted November 17th 2008 1:57PM
posted November 17th 2008 1:57PM
Tanya Vlach, a San Francisco-based artist, lost her eye in a 2005 car accident, and now keeps a blog chronicling the "monocular life." She's got a real-enough looking prosthetic peeper, but Tanya's a self-described "sci-fi geek," and, with the approval of her doctor, she's put out a call for engineers to build her a camera... for her fake eye. Likening her possible future self (the one with the eye-cam installed) to a cyborg, Tanya reasons that her aesthetic-only eye could become a source of "augmented reality," and she's got a list of possible specs up on her blog for would-be engineers to begin with. Just some of the things mentioned for inclusion are: DVR capabilities, MPEG-4 compression, a microSD slot, A/V out, and Bluetooth. In other words, Tanya Vlach is insanely cool. Emphasis on the insanely part.
[Via Digg]
[Via Digg]
We can see what she is seeing at her web site....now don't take this in the kinky direction.
Can we get one of the pro athletes to do the same thing. I'd rather watch practice, and locker room pep talks.
Pro athletes !?!?!?!
How about every police department in the U.S. ?
@ R40Railfan:
http://www.hulu.com/cops
What I think is so funny about Jeri Ryan is how alot of people don't realize she was in a sex scandal with her husband Jack Ryan who was beaten later on by Barack Obama for the Senate seat.
It was alleged she performed sex acts in the back of a kinky club.
I just wish it was me screaming "Assimilate this..."
Seven of Nine! I will comply!
Coming to a porn site near you,
CyberHooker
Hmm, I suppose there is some hope for mankind. Think we should put her in a cryogenic sleep state too and wake her up in 500 years to help water plants with water.
Her eye can store videos for the idiocracy humans in the future to see and take as gods words.
Is Idiocracy your gimmick now?
It would appear so.
Wasn't a great movie, but it had its moments and did make a good point.
"I'm not guilty!"
"That's not what the other lawyer said."
i feel like his comments are on some kind of auto-comment program that fills in some of the story into his pre-typed idiocracy based template
It's like those spammers that just say things like "Excellent post! Thanks for sharing this information! my comments at: www.imlame.com/douche."
I suppose 2 posts are enough.. any more and I will be in the leagues of iEye
Running a USB cable from the eyeball-cam will require additional surgery.
I wonder where the cable would go out from.
That implies a male USB connection. She would obviously be fitted for a female connection. I'm sure she has a few accessible ports already.
she already said bluetooth as a requested feature.
I wonder if she'll have to plug in her eye to charge the battery every night while sleeping!
Would be kewl if she could pop it out at night and drop it in a bowl that charges it via induction.
Seems feasible to get an induction medium that would double as a cleaning soultion, but in order to charge it would be pretty harsh on her tissues. You gotta go with a two-step combo that uses a separate rinsing/moisturizing solution.
Will she be able to pull it out, roll it across the floor and spy on people in different rooms?
Well, I suppose not really, because it wouldn't be transmitting to her brain. So close!
Power or charging via induction doesn't need to be hard on her tissues. There are several biomedical devices out there already that do both. Well, at least charging by induction is already done. Pretty sure there are some devices (or at least some in development) that are powered by induction.
oh you mean she wants to pull of a "doomsday"
Essentially there are only 3 hurdles to overcome: powering the camera, storage, and connection to the storage. Now assuming they use something small like an 8GB MicroSD for storage, that should be plenty of space for a few hours and comes with the added feature of storage upgrades, so that's not too big of a problem. If she doesn't mind removing the eye whenever she's reading the storage, there's another step overcome. But powering it...that might prove a little difficult, especially for multiple hours at a time. I'm definitely calling this plausible. DO IT!
Plausible? Ha - Only Adam or Jamie can determine that.
For the data connection, use the Eye-Fi SD card - built-in wifi downloads from the camera
About the energy, they could use little photovoltaic cells on the iris (the only problem is that I don't know if that would be efficient), and there's also the possibility of converting mechanical energy into electricity by the use of dynamos. The transfer of files could be made by Bluetooth or maybe WiFi, though I don't know if there could be an antenna small enough to fit with all the other devices. There's also the problem of the equipment being too close to the brain (remember some cases in UK of people reporting headaches after being exposed for a long time to WiFi signals?). Storage could be external, considering there would be a wireless connection to such device (which could be a portable hard drive of about 1TB, maybe).
It's risky, expensive and it's going to be tough, but it sure would be a great example of connectivity of man and gadgets. ;)
On another note, it would also be cool if she could wear some type of sunglasses looking apparatus that had would let her zoom in with the camera and display the picture on a screen in front of her good eye. Oakley should be all over this, maybe they can throw in an mp3 player as well.
Thanks for the high rankings.
Dude, poor form. You don't thank someone for thinking you're cool or funny - you quietly accept the compliment and continue doing what made you momentarily socially acceptable. It's refined peer pressure. Thanking them simply lets them know that you actually aren't cool enough to be so ice cold in the midst of a compliment. We'll give you a break this time.
On my wifi dongle it says "operate at least 30cm away from the body", my point being that having effective wifi in your eyesocket might not be healthy really, at least BT is designed for low power and might cause less such concerns.
I have an off topic question: Why does engadget gray out some comments? Anyone know? Sorry for posting it in random thread.
It greys out low/lowest ranked and highlights highly/highest ranked...
Just look at the rankings to find out >.< It's not hard.
Greyed out: Low rankings. Bright blue: High rankings. The plus and negative above each post.
professor... it must be your eyes... you should consider removing them and installing webcams instead
Now you know...
Now you know...
My bad for not refreshing the thread...
Now watch me greying out slowly, ProfessorKaos, and take notes.
Wow!
Wow! To your avatar, man!
forget his avatar I'm fapping to that gorgeous model in the photo right now... those lips :X
I second the wow to your avatar!
Cutey Honey
Don't let Sony make the battery, would be horrible if the battery exploded in her eye socket >_
that would be a spectacle.
iEye?????????
Eye see what you did there.
oddly hes no-where to be seen....
sssshhhhh, you'll wake him. I was hoping to go douche free today.
A douche a day keeps the away.
Don't do it...as you'll most likely be banned for life from movie theaters, concerts, public bathrooms, the locker rooms at my gym, and a whole host of other places. But seriously though, it gave me an idea. Does anyone know how I can reach John Bobbitt?
Only if they know about the camera.