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Digital Blue Digital Movie Creator disassembly

The following is a well-documented disassembly of the Digital Blue Digital Movie Creator 2.0.

Fully assembled camera

After unscrewing a couple of screws, the case is easily pried apart with a screwdriver.

Case opened

Now we can get a good look at the actual camera unit. It turns out to be quite small. The smaller circle on top is the microphone.

Camera unit

Further disassembly reveals the CCD sensor.

Lens and CCD

Close-up CCD

Further disassembly:

Tiny microphone

Primitive speaker

Top button unit

Close-up of button

Logic board

Interestingly, the LCD is not in fact round, as demonstrated by removal of the black faceplate:

Square LCD

Disassembling some soldered aluminum casing (fun!) reveals the other side of the logic board.

Other side of logic board

Finally, a view of the fully disassembled camera.

All of the parts

10 things for Silicon Valley to work on

This doesn’t really pertain to much at all. Deal with it.

1. Nationwide public WiFi.

Down with ISPs!!! Please?

2. Eyeglass-mounted projection.

Credit for this idea goes to my high school math teacher, who was a really smart guy. The idea is that an ultra-miniture projector mounted on your glasses projects images directly onto the retina. For instance, suppose you’re driving somewhere, and you need directions. You simply say, “Google maps!” and instantly (utilizing the nationwide WiFi mentioned before) a map of where you’re going is beamed right onto your visual field. Sweet!

3. LCD floors in malls.

You walk into a mall, and every inch of floorspace is a touch-sensitive LCD streen. The floor tracks individual people by their footprints, keeps track of which stores they enter and what they buy, and then displays advertisements that “float around” on the screen in front of the target individual. The screen also provides directions to stores and products it thinks you might like.

4. Wireless, surgery-free brain/computer interfaces.

You sit down at a computer, think a sentence, and it appears on the screen. Signals are encrypted for security. No more typing, clicking, searching…

5. Total-immersion media.

Similar to #4… a computer overrides electrical signals from your eyes and ears, and fills your entire brain with uninterrupted video, sound, a web browser, whatever. No more need for screens or speakers, and sound and video quality can reach levels even better than our eyes and ears are capable of processing.

6. Laptops that fold up to fit in your pocket.

No idea how that would work.

7. CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, etc all become obselete.

Instead, all media is transmitted via the internet. Storage is accomplished on massive centralized servers.

8. Dirt-cheap flash memory.

As in reeeeeeeallly dirt cheap. So much so that hard drives disappear entirely.

9. Advertisements that come on flash drives.

Consumer recieves free flash drive, flash drive displays advertisement on consumer’s computer. Consumer sits through advertisement, and then as a reward gets a functional data storage device.

10. Free cell service.

Some kind of new technology in which consumers can simply buy a phone… and it works. Text, media, internet, anyplace, always free, all the time. No contracts or phone cards or minutes. Just a pure, secure, open network.

A cynical film

I came across a mildly bad but gloriously cynical film the other day. Watch it here: