An important constraint for this project will be the shape of the camera and how it will house all the internal and external components.
The idea is simple: make a camera small enough that you could even put it on a keychain.
Jawn has already outlined the internal components on his first blog post, so here’s my pass at the external components we’ll need the camera body to account for:
- Lens
- USB-C port
- Physical button
- LED indicator
- Flash / Infrared sensor (?)
Just in case you are wondering, for this first prototype, this device will only take pictures (aka no microphone) and transfer the files via wifi (aka no microSD slot).
Now that I have a general idea for the “moving parts” on the external side, I want to look at a few examples of “small cameras”.
Looking through amazon, temu, and aliexpress, it showed me mostly toy cameras, until I found this.
The reason why this design caught my attention is because it doesn’t conflate "small body" with "unibody".
It kind of reminded me of those USB business cards where the male connection port would extend when in use.
I’m now thinking about the original idea of “a camera small enough to put it on a keychain” from a slightly different perspective.
What if the “constraint” was that: when not in use, the shape is small enough that you could put it in your pocket and when in use the lens “detaches” from the main body?
Though this is probably complicated for its own set of reasons, i think there could be something really simple by having the internal components live as its own “blackbox” than as a unibody that has to prioritize the “lens”.
The obvious “complicated” part of this more “modular” design is thinking about the hinging / retracting elements, but I wonder if that feels more “daunting” only because I’m not versed in it. But let me stew on this for now and leave you with the Budweiser beer can camera.
