Late at night, by candle light, "jerry" penned this immortal opus:
Gurus,
>
>I need your help...
>
>I am an amateur triathlete and I'm getting ready for the start of the
>triathlon season and I had this problem last year that I'm trying to
>solve.
>
>The problem is that during an open-water triathlon swim I need to skip
>a stroke every so often to lift my head out of the water and site the
>next turn buoy. I usually find myself off course by a few yards and
>need to make corrections. This costs me time from being off course
>and from skipping a stroke. So, I had this idea to take apart an old
>digital camera or picture phone and mount the camera part to the back
>of my head and attach the LCD part in front of my goggles.
>
>Sound crazy? I did a Google search and found that someone has
>patented the same idea...
>
>
formatting link
>
>The thing is, as far as I can tell it's never been built, and I need
>your help to build it.
>
>I took apart a digital camera and was able to power it up and get an
>image on the LCD, but the LCD is connected to the camera by what looks
>like a proprietary 24 wire ribbon cable and connector that I would
>need to build an extension to. Any ideas if that is possible? It
>would need to be about 15"-20" long to go from the back of my head to
>the front of my goggles. The ribbon is about 1" now. Do you think
>the picture quality would get much worse at 15"?
>
>Another issue is that the camera has a lot of extra stuff on it that I
>don't need. Do you think there is a way to trim it down to just the
>ccd, lcd, a battery and a switch? Do you think a phone would be a
>better starting point? I took apart a broken camera phone and I was
>able to separate the pieces - but it has the same issue - a very thin
>proprietary 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.
Optical periscope. A tube with some lenses and mirrors.
- YD.