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« Atlanta First Big Move for New Clearwire | Main | Comcast Starts Offering Clearwire WiMax Service »

June 25, 2009

Not All Camera Makers Are Clueless about Wi-Fi and Eye-Fi

I complained the other day that camera manufacturers weren't integrating support for Eye-Fi's Wi-Fi SD cards: But that's not quite right: a few camera makers have the religion. Eye-Fi is the only generic solution to moving images (and now video) from a camera to a computer or photo-sharing service via Wi-Fi. The market seems to me huge, and Eye-Fi continues to expand models, features, and distribution channels, as well as upload partners. This makes me think the market is robust, too.

However, no competing product has entered the field. Eye-Fi is a startup, and you might expect another firm--a memory-card maker, certainly--would add up the potential and try to compete. It has not happened after nearly 2 years of product in the market.

Camera makers should thus wake up: if they can't properly integrate Wi-Fi into the firmware and hardware of their cameras--and I'd argue no Wi-Fi equipped camera below the expensive professional level has yet done so--then the only reasonable partner is Eye-Fi.

Eye-Fi has two limitations in operating as a separately functioning computer-on-a-card independent of the camera's gear. First, a camera's standard power-down operation will remove the power to the card before all uploads have completed in many cases. I upgraded my Wi-Fi network by moving to 802.11n, and that reduced congestion and seems to make the Eye-Fi cards I use--which have 802.11g built in--more efficient at uploading.

Second, the camera can't alert the user that the uploads have completed. Eye-Fi gets around this with notification services via email or SMS that you can set up for each card. But a ding or dialog would go a lot further.

Eye-Fi has a page at its site that I was unaware of that lists all the camera models that have Eye-Fi integration. This includes 5 recent Casio models that signal whether an Eye-Fi is inserted, allow Wi-Fi to be turned on or off, that stay powered up until uploads are completed, and which indicate transfers in process.

I expect it's a multi-year process for Eye-Fi to convince cameramakers that the company will be around in the long term, that it is sui generis for Wi-Fi digital cards, and that firmware integration enhances the value of a new camera (i.e., more sales from people who thus need the new cameras) instead of pushing money over to Eye-Fi that the makers would rather keep themselves.

1 Comment

Glenn,

Thank you for the great article :-) Today, several models from Casio, Sanyo, Nikon and 1 from Canon (the new T1i) are Eye-Fi Connected, and even more models in Japan are Eye-Fi Connected. We'll keep updating the Eye-Fi Connected page, although, as you correctly noted, the Eye-Fi Card works in nearly any SD camera, and all the user needs to do, is to change the power settings to not turn the power off.

For screen shots of Eye-Fi Connected cameras, and how cool their GUI looks, please check out this forum link:

http://forums.eye.fi/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1015&sid=fbc3cd93815b19324f958fe44bbc2c06

Thanks --

Ziv.

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