Somebody brought this up before about the FW12 and I think it would greatly increase its tablet utility - a card that has a camera on the underside so that when the laptop is folded into tablet mode, you can snap pictures. This could be very useful for lectures and other situations where you’re going to be jotting down notes but the camera could come in handy. Any idea if it would be possible to do this?
In the tablet mode the expansion cards are all covered up:
So the card would have to stick out like the RJ45 card or have some kind of mechanism.
I think it would be easier to just get a good webcam with a usb-c connector and you just need to position the camera and not move the FW12 at all.
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Oof. Wow. Yeah, you’re right, that wouldn’t be workable at all. Would have been cool to have a card you could push on and maybe the camera “pops up”, but that’d probably add more mechanical complexity than would be justifiable.
Bit of a bummer but an external camera seems like the only way in theory.
People do much more complicated things with 3d prints. Hell, some people love creating complicated designs fun! Like puzzle boxes with a secret compartment.
The trouble is really just that the need for both some PCB skills and some 3d printing skill reduces the chances that a person interested in doing this will also happen to already be experienced in both of those. But with it getting easier and easier, plus cheaper to get started in 3d printing. Maybeeee. I mean, a lot of people don’t even need to own one. Every town I look at has a 3d printer available to use at their local library! Anyone who has interest, google your local library.
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3d printing and pcb design are kind of a slippery slope towards each other but the “interrested in doing this” bit is probably the bottleneck here.
It would not take a huge amount of pcb work if you can find an off the shelve (probably a replacement part) laptop webcam that is narrow enough to fit an expansion card as they are almost exclusively just straight usb (sometimes running at 3.3v but experimentally at least the x260 webcam I run in my 3d printer takes 5v just fine).
Putting the camera at a 45 degree angle may still do the job and remove the requirement for fragile mechanisms.
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