A Sony Camera Running Linux

jonr writes "At the recently concluded Consumer Electronics Show, Sony presented the new camera from its Cyber-shot product line. The DSC-G3 comes with a Zeiss lens with 4x zoom, a large 3.5" touch display, and 4GB of internal memory. Most interesting is the camera's software that includes, among other things, face and scene recognition, based on Busybox and Kernel 2.6.11 for the Access Linux Platform. The camera also has built-in Wi-Fi."

Re:My 5 year old Sony TV came with a GPL notice

[Hairy Heron]

Well of course it's not new, they are a well-known supporter and user of Linux.

Re:Wi-Fi

[nwssa]

Yes very convenient (especially for Professional shops where assistant can be doing photoshop or touchup work immediately and ship them off to the magazines/newspapers). Nikon innovated and got the patents for these a few years back.

Re:Wi-Fi

[msuarezalvarez]

What does 'innovate' mean in this case?

I was going to buy a Canon

[davidwr]

There are several Canon cameras that allow 3rd-party open-source firmware.

If this can be flashed then it's worth a look-see.

Re:Wi-Fi cameras

[Constantine XVI]

It gets better. I ran across a service for my Blackberry called Qik that lets you stream video live from the phone, and saves the video to the site straight away.

So, for example, if someone who had a phone with Qik was taping the BART shooting or something equally embarrassing to $powerful_group, even if security forced you to delete the video and took the phone, the video's already out there.

Sony and Linux

[Rob Y.]

Interesting that there was an article here just the other day about how Sony has no interest in making or selling Linux laptops or netbooks.

I wonder why not. It's easy to forget that they use Linux in other products and even offer it on the PS3. So why not netbooks? Is it a matter of just avoiding the low-end, low margin segments of the market? It couldn't be any love for Microsoft, could it?

I have no idea how this works

[Anonymous Coward]

The specs on the camera from the Sony website say that this camera only captures JPEG. Does anyone think that it would it be possible to change the source code so that it supported RAW capture?

Re:Year of the Linux camera?

[sdpuppy]

I can just see what the little kids say now:

"Daddy's camera's got a penguin on the screen when he starts it up!"

Something like that happened a while ago when I got on on of those airplanes with a LCD on the back of each chair - they had to reboot the computer and the screen showed the boot sequence, including penguin. No, no no - this was the entertainment computer.

Re:Yeah but,

[MikeDirnt69]

Being from Sony, it does run a rootkit

Proof needed. You can't go generalizing it for every single piece of hardware Sony releases.

Is there any site/blog/whatever dedicated to make a list of these "rootkitted" products/models?

Re:My 5 year old Sony TV came with a GPL notice

[PuercoPop]

I think that they are quite aware of it...

You know that is the whole reason for the GPL3...

for companies like TiVo that use GPL software but place DRM restrictions.

Re:Will it support Linux client access?

[cusco]

Their security cameras are technically fairly decent, but physically crap. We've sent some of them back as many as four times for repair, and out of every dozen cameras at least one will come out of the box dead. Their quality control might be adequate for the consumer market, but for professionals who may have to be on top of a 40 foot lift to install a camera getting one with a bad NIC or power adapter or corrupt OS or PTZ motor (we saw all of those on one single job) they're not good enough. Additionally, they only can be viewed with IE.

They're twice the price of an Axis camera, which doesn't have the quality control issues, who will do an advance replacement if there's a problem, who has intelligent tech support immediately available, whose cameras work with any browser on any OS. We only install Sony equipment under duress.

One step closer...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one step closer to a concept product I have: the instant-submit camera.

We've all heard stories of overzealous law enforcement officers, and security guards confiscating cameras because they think public photography is illegal because of 9/11, the USA PATRIOT act, or because they said so. Or maybe they just don't want the next Rodney King video on YouTube.

My idea has been a camera with integral wi-fi that, upon a picture being taken, would instantly submit the picture over wi-fi to a sftp location on the Internet. If no public wi-fi is available, a nearby accomplice could be carrying a portable wi-fi/NAS device (laptop) that ad-hocs to the camera and serves as its storage device. Video would, of course, stream.

Yes, I know camera phones could theoretically do it too, but some of us don't want all of our pictures to look like they were taken with a Connectix QuickCam. And [at least here in the USA] with cell phone carriers telling YOU what phones you get to use, don't expect to see it. Heck, I'm surprised American cell phone carriers offering phones with color displays.

Yes, I also know that LEOs and security guards need to improve their behavior and not confiscate cameras or demand that photos be deleted, but that's not about to change. Plus, they're the ones with guns, tasers, batons, and no way to complain about them. And if they grab your camera from you when you're making the next Rodney King video, they win. Unless the camera wi-fi'd the evidence out of the pig's reach.

Re:Price

[xtracto]

Does it read SD cards? or are you still limited to the propietary overpriced sony stick pro duo?

I refuse to buy any Sony for several reasons, and one of them is their use of closed propietary shit.

Right now all my devices are "standardized" to use SD... heck, even Nintendo got it right!