In LA

Green Sea Turtle in Kona, Hawaii. 6/2010 from ZachFine on Vimeo. If you’d like to watch the video in HD, start playback of the video, make sure the “HD” toggle is set to “on”, and click the video’s full-screen button () during playback.

I was a first-time visitor to Hawaii recently, and shot a lot of photos and video. I’ll be dribbling it to my blog in bits and pieces as I go through the footage. Here’s a taste: a green sea turtle at Ho’okena Beach in Kona, Hawaii. This turtle popped up as I was snorkeling in deeper waters and swam alongside me all the way back in to shore. A beauty. Perhaps she was amazed to see a film/video editor out in direct sunlight?

Meandering tech notes:
Shot with a Creative Vado HD solid state 720p camcorder (1st generation)¹, in a Creative-branded Aquapac underwater housing.

The Vado HD is very similar to the Flip Mino HD and the Kodak zi8; I like it because it features a much wider-angle lens than its competitors. The Aquapac is basically a $30 very clear plastic bag with a watertight seal. Though this one’s branded for the Creative Vado HD, it’s probably large enough to fit two of them side-by-side². One one of my snorkeling adventures I brought along my Canon HV20 in a dive housing, and its remote control (to start and stop the camera’s recording) in the Aquapac alongside the Vado. I probably could have put my cell phone in there as well but didn’t trust the bag yet and honestly didn’t really want it along.

This turtle clip is from the 2nd day of my trip, before I’d figured out that if I squeezed out all the air in the Aquapac before sealing it, the plastic would remain taut over the lens, resulting in a sharper image. Less air in the bag also would have resulted in a tighter fit against the screen of the Vado HD, which would have given me a fighting chance of seeing the image on the Vado’s screen underwater –most of the footage I shot on the trip, including this turtle clip, was shot by blindly pointing the camera and hoping.

I snorkeled with the Vado in the Aquapac bag all week and had no problem with leaks. I was a little worried about this, but wasn’t risking much as the 1st and 2nd generation Vado HD go for $49 these days (B-stock of the 4Gb versions on Creative’s website as of 7/2010).

I think the iPhone 4G’s video quality may best that of the Vado HD and competitors, and the iPhone definitely has the edge in terms of viewfinder (screen) quality and recording capacity. I’ve placed one in the Vado’s Aquapac case, and the iPhone’s capacitive screen was usable even while it was in the case. I suppose salt water might interfere with that use due to its conductivity. It’d be interesting to try using an iPhone for underwater video recording on my next trip, and I may be fool enough to risk it.

1. I’ve written up the Creative Vado HD previously here and here. [↩]
2. 3D anyone? [↩]

The stereo in my friend’s 2010 Prius¹ has a very useful feature: bluetooth audio input. As soon as he steps inside his car, his iPhone connects to the stereo wirelessly, and he can then play music from its library or using Pandora without connecting any cables.

I noticed that DealExtreme sells a bluetooth stereo music receiver for $12.99². This tiny, battery-operated device looks like an ugly cousin of an old iPod shuffle, sporting a big bluetooth symbol in the middle of its control pad. It’s designed to accept wireless transmissions from your iPhone, computer, or other device that supports bluetooth audio streaming, and then play that received audio out headphones connected to its jack. $12.99 falls well within my speculative hacking budget.

So I bought the device and have tested it out. When I plugged a cable between its headphone jack and my car’s audio input jack and streamed audio to it from my iPhone, it worked a treat. It shows up in the iPhone’s bluetooth menu as a device named,”BCK-08″.

There are a few problems. The device’s built-in battery is pathetic, and within an hour or two of use it begins to beep every few minutes to indicate that the battery needs a charge. I also think the audio quality decreases in direct proportion to the battery’s charge, but am not positive about that.

My goal is to take apart this device, wire it to be powered directly from my car, and leave it permanently connected to the car stereo’s auxiliary input jack.

I’ve found a few resources on the net that may be of help:

• The data sheet for the chip used in this device, the ISSC IS1621N. I wish this PDF file were available to simply download. To have to view it in a flash-based viewer feels archaic, and overprotective for information the manufacturer should want to widely disseminate. I do see a button labeled “download” (in Chinese), but to download requires an account on the website and I don’t feel like jumping through account creation hoops in Chinese right now³.
• A page about the chip at its manufacturer’s website.
• The page of someone who has already taken apart the BCK-08 and is planning to do a similar project. He mentions a desire to get line-level output from the device. I think that’d be nice, though I notice no mention of a line out in the chip’s pinout, only an amplified headphone out.
• Wikipedia’s writeup of the LM317 adjustable voltage regulator, which is probably the part I’ll need to use to take my car’s 12V as input and supply 3.7V DC to the BCK-08.
• Or perhaps I could use this constant current-regulated LED driver⁴ to bring my car’s 12V down to 3.7V. It’s designed for high-power Cree LEDs, which take 3.7V input, so I’d guess it might be about right. Would save me some time designing my own circuit with the LM317, and it only costs $2.39.

1. I’m sure many other cars also have this feature. [↩]
2. The device’s full name on DealExtreme’s site is “Bluetooth 2.0 A2DP AVRCP Stereo Music Receiver and Handsfree (Black)” [↩]
3. I’ve been out of China for 3 years now and don’t feel like spending an hour fighting my way through the website with a dictionary in hand [↩]
4. Also from DealExtreme –how about that? [↩]

I stumbled upon a great website of old letterhead images yesterday. You should check it out if you like such things. At the moment, it features historic artifacts such as Marie Curie’s letterhead, that of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and “Python (Monty) Pictures Ltd.”, among others. Well worth a look. Go.

From a recent trip to Kona. I’ll post a link to the rest of the photos on Flickr as soon as I finish editing them.