A Special Wireless-Free Nikon Camera Is Publicly Available for the First Time
petapixel.com
petapixel.com
But that would still possibly present a problem for serious government use where it can't have an antenna of any form in it.
All wires are antennas...
You’re right that traces can emit and receive RF, hence why things like FCC limits and testing exist even for unintentional emitters, but even failing devices which greatly exceed the limits have traces which are many orders of magnitude worse at being antennas than a typical trace antenna.
Anyone who's had to get newly developed hardware through EMI certification in recent times can tell you that it's quite easy to accidentally make PCB trace work as an antenna. Not necessarily a great antenna but enough to emit some random signal and fail certification. 3 GHz is 100mm in wavelength, and a quarter wavelength makes one of the simplest antennas… that's only 25mm. The whole story is much more complicated but the thing is that the scales are in range.
Bluetooth antennas that are just traces on a PCB board are very common. Think about how small a bluetooth earbud can be and still get pretty incredible range.
This is pretty common in modern cameras, presumably because most photographers expect to be able to turn their cameras on and off very rapidly, and it would be difficult to maintain a GPS fix with that usage pattern.
I'm not to sure about that. I rarely keep my camera (close to) fully horizontal.
The GPS almanac is valid for 180 days, so if you can save it (it's 15000 bits, ~1.8 kB), and keep time within ±20s and assuming a position of ±100km of your last fix, you can do a "warm" start with-in a minute:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_to_first_fix
A completely cold start takes less than 15 minutes.
And yes, cameras are usually turned off, but they do still trickle some power to keep the on-board clock going: so as long as you use your camera once every six months, and in the same city, there's a good chance you'll get a quick fix.
Even in the worst case the almanac (the data that is streamed at 50 bits/second) repeats every 12.5 minutes not hours.
It takes less than 15 minutes (in the worst case):
> The receiver is missing or has inaccurate estimates of its position, velocity, the time, or the visibility of any of the GPS satellites. As such, the receiver must systematically search for all possible satellites. After acquiring a satellite signal, the receiver can begin to obtain approximate information on all the other satellites, called the almanac. This almanac is transmitted repeatedly over 12.5 minutes. Almanac data can be received from any of the GPS satellites and is considered valid for up to 180 days.
So I delved into the fascinating and still-extant world of standalone MP3 players. I selected a SanDisk Clip Jam, and it had like 8GiB onboard, an sdcard slot of course, an FM radio receiver, and really cool firmware. It was very simple, robust, extremely light, compact and portable. It was the size of a matchbox and it could clip onto your sleeve or belt, or whatever.
And it met all the requirements. It had no BT, no WiFi, no sensors of any kind, and it did that job very well of music playback, however I found it. And it could indeed store arbitrary files, so being the kind of hacker I am, I stashed a copy of my password manager encrypted database, plus a full install MSI of the application. And I included some README.txt that would indicate who owned this thing and how to return it, if lost.
I really miss that thing for its elegant simplicity. With the Swiss Army Knife nature of smartphones, I still long for the specialization and compartmented functionality of separate devices.
Really pure product design.
https://hiendportable.com/xduoo-x2s-english-review/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DigitalAudioPlayer/comments/1rm7fj8...
Unless they significantly improved that app, in the last eight years or so, it may not be a great loss.
people should know that a USB-C to USB-C cable can easily import to the photos app on an iphone with a decent UI
This is amazing intel. Thank you.
The newer Nikon cameras dont require snapbridge for using wifi.
Sorry to disappoint :(
This is for high security, or high RF sensitive environments. Governments and institutions are the target market.
In other products: less weight, smaller size.
I guess modern integration has put Bluetooth and other devices together with GPS in one module.
All of my Nikons are wireless-free. Some of them are even battery-free.
I wonder if that hardware on the normal Z6 III is on a daughterboard, and if removing it makes the OS complain (like having no color ink mean some printer-scanner-combos won't scan).
"The camera does still have a series of ports for physical, wired connections for data transfer and power supply"
Yes, evaluate market demand by making it more expensive and doing 0 marketing. /s
Am I crazy in thinking that doing it this way is close to meaningless?
You don't really have to market something like this. There is a VERY small subset of users that NEED this feature, and they will seek it out. The kind of user that wants this is not as price sensitive as a consumer. A few hundred extra dollars doesn't matter to an organization that needs this for an RF sensitive scientific environment, or a secure facility.
See also: iPhones with cameras removed. You've likely never heard of them and they are not marketed at all, but if you are one of the few that need one, you know they exist, and the price premium doesn't matter. $1400 for a used 2020 iPhone SE, if you're curious. That's a 10x premium on what you would pay for that phone anywhere else.
This never gets old: https://biggaybunny.tumblr.com/post/166787080920/tech-enthus...
Will someone really pay me $1000 to remove the camera module from an 2020 iPhone SE? Are there some huge obstacles to that? I've disassembled the 2016 model (for battery replacement) and it was a pain, but not a $1000 pain.
For that matter, what about just attacking the camera from the front, with a drill?
Drilling has some obvious issues, most notable if you go too deep you’re going to hit the screen.
(You also need to remove the front facing camera, which is also a more involved operation.)
These devices are sold to large institutions. If I need to give 30 employees at, say, a nuclear plant phones without cameras that they can take near classified/confidential equipment, I don't want a guy with a drill, I need a company that can provide 30 phones, a regular supply of replacements and a trustable piece of paper for the security auditors saying these devices are compliant. I need a phone that our security can glance at and know that it is ok. A phone with a drilled out camera is not the same as a phone with no camera for these purposes.
If I need to take photos inside that plant, and make sure that the photos will not be exfiltrated without going through a security audit, I need that camera.
At the scale that these institutions operate paying an extra $1k for a phone or camera that has security compliance outsourced is a no-brainer. Your sourcing team will spend more money investigating if the DIY route is possible than they will just buying from a trustable vendor.
I don't know how you can say with confidence that a few hundred dollars and not marketing this wouldn't have an effect on sales.