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 122 Replies

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MassiveProng 19 years ago

On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:05:47 GMT, Rich Grise Gave us:

Can't handle my jabs... that's all you're about, BOY!

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YD 19 years ago

Late at night, by candle light, MassiveProng penned this immortal opus:

Oh f*ck off a bit more. If I find the design for something that interests me I'll build it no matter what. Now stick that in your prong and light it up.

- YD.

Remove HAT if replying by mail.

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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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