Novice needs help with crazy project

jerry · 2007-03-17T17:04:28+00:00

Gurus,I need your help...I am an amateur triathlete and I'm getting ready for the start of thetriathlon season and I had this problem last year that I'm trying tosolve.The problem is that during an open-water triathlon swim I need to skipa stroke every so often to lift my head out of the water and site thenext turn buoy. I usually find myself off course by a few yards andneed to make corrections. This costs me time from being off courseand from skipping a stroke. So, I had this idea to take apart an olddigital camera or picture phone and mount the camera part to the backof my head and attach the LCD part in front of my goggles.Sound crazy? I did a Google search and found that someone haspatented the same idea...The thing is, as far as I can tell it's never been built, and I needyour help to build it.I took apart a digital camera and was able to power it up and get animage on the LCD, but the LCD is connected to the camera by what lookslike a proprietary 24 wire ribbon cable and connector that I wouldneed to build an extension to. Any ideas if that is possible? Itwould need to be about 15"-20" long to go from the back of my head tothe front of my goggles. The ribbon is about 1" now. Do you thinkthe picture quality would get much worse at 15"?Another issue is that the camera has a lot of extra stuff on it that Idon't need. Do you think there is a way to trim it down to just theccd, lcd, a battery and a switch? Do you think a phone would be abetter starting point? I took apart a broken camera phone and I wasable to separate the pieces - but it has the same issue - a very thinproprietary ribbon cable.Any other ideas? Am I crazy?Any help would be greatly appreciated!Thanks!jerry p.s. please respond to my e-mail and the group.

Mar 17, 2007 25 Replies

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Roger Dewhurst 19 years ago

What about a small periscope?

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CJT 19 years ago

You _both_ need to check your facts (or specify in what country your opinion applies, if other than the US).

The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to minimize spam. Our true address is of the form che...@prodigy.net.

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Robert Baer 19 years ago

Sorry; it is you that needs to do the checking.

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Martin 19 years ago

I just looked at the patent he refrenced, and I'm not so sure it applies. It talks about using a fiberoptic cable, and seems more of a "flexible periscope" than a camera based system.

Which would make the whole patent subthread a moot point.

But I am not a lawyer, and only cursorily glanced at the patent ...

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jasen 19 years ago

how close can you focus your eyes? will the extra drag caused by this aparatus slow you down. maybe an optical solution, like an L-shaperd periscope would be a better solution?

Bye. Jasen

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Marc Britten 19 years ago

It's illegal to build one to the patent specs, however patents are very specific. Using something besides fiber optics, and mounting the screen in a different manner pretty much gets him around this patent.

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