It's a shame that, being based on a full-blown Linux SBPC, it has an absolutely unacceptable boot time for a camera. 22 seconds. I can have my iPhone camera out and ready to capture an ephemeral moment of child's play in under 3 seconds, most commercial cameras boot in seconds as well. A film camera can be ready to go the second the lens cap is off. 22 seconds is an eternity in the world of photography. It's a shame that the SoC the Raspberry Pi line is based on has no kernel support (or IIRC hardware support) for S3 or anything similar.
There have been attempts to make the Pi boot faster (by disabling the initialization of various subsystems), e.g.:<p><a href="https://github.com/IronOxidizer/instant-pi" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/IronOxidizer/instant-pi</a><p><a href="https://himeshp.blogspot.com/2018/08/fast-boot-with-raspberry-pi.html" rel="nofollow">https://himeshp.blogspot.com/2018/08/fast-boot-with-raspberr...</a><p><a href="https://kittenlabs.de/blog/2024/09/01/extreme-pi-boot-optimization/" rel="nofollow">https://kittenlabs.de/blog/2024/09/01/extreme-pi-boot-optimi...</a> (previously featured here too <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41420597">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41420597</a>)
It's unfair to compare an idling deep sleep device with a cold boot.<p>However, there is a shortcut: Just don't boot a full OS (thinking of custom firmware which boots in fractions of seconds, standard in the Microcontroller world). Or boot an optimized Linux user space. I am confident with a bit fiddling one can bring down a standard SBC Linux to a few seconds from cold to ready.
Functional comparisons among devices within a category are always fair. Pointing out a device’s perceived shortcomings is not an attack on the people that made it. One crucial role designers play (ideally) in product development is seeking out honest feedback, filtering it, and figuring out if that feedback can help make the product better for end users. The FOSS landscape needs a lot more of that.
> Functional comparisons among devices within a category are always fair<p>When they have the same prerequisites, yes.
But then you need to count in the time the iPhone needs to boot as well, which will probably mean you are at a similar range.
>It's unfair to compare an idling deep sleep device with a cold boot.<p>Sure. My Fuji X100 is ready to shoot in about a <i>second</i> after a battery swap.
Things lost to time: The Minolta Dimage A1 had contacts for detecting when gripped, so it could ready itself without any button pressed: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minolta_Dimage_A1" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minolta_Dimage_A1</a> (You see it in the pic, but its not described in the article).
i built my own camera out of a Zero 2W [0] and by disabling Picam2 and letting the OS (Debian Bullseye) idle, i can get 2 days of shots and some videos while i walk around the city/hiking out of 3 18650 batteries... bringing 3 spare batteries in my backpack never put me needing battery in any situation! starting Picam2 takes a fraction of a second<p>[0] <a href="https://happort.org/camera" rel="nofollow">https://happort.org/camera</a>
The early Sony Alpha A7 cameras run Android (really: you could jailbreak and write your own PlayMemories apps)<p><a href="https://github.com/ma1co/sony-pmca-re" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ma1co/sony-pmca-re</a><p><a href="https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/59226/does-the-sony-a7-run-android-or-if-not-is-there-another-way-to-write-applicati" rel="nofollow">https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/59226/does-the-son...</a><p>So there must have been a way to do this at that time. (I suspect a simpler subsystem does initial boot response).<p>I did contemplate building something around one of the Arducam modules and an RP2350.
Comparing that to a real camera: I can "quick draw" pick up a Nikon DSLR that's off, flick the power switch and hit the shutter button one handed in one motion as fast as I can move and there's a good picture on the screen as soon as I let go of the trigger. Double click trash can and it's gone. Either will take less than half a second. Battery life is so long I usually forget to charge it. I suspect the power switch is just a "key lock" that prevents triggering anything because there's no delay. Either that or it's a wakeup in the microcontroller range of timing.<p>(You can easily get jank by filling up the buffer or slow memory card or autofocusing on something impossible, possibly in the dark etc, of course.)
My kid has a Fisher-Price Kid Tough camera. It's excellent for us but the pictures are so bad even the kid is disappointed.<p>It would be fun to repace the guts with something like this project but a long boot time is a deal breaker.<p>Perhaps the software can be optimised or a DIY friendly pi pico project is the way.
I bet this could be changed to seconds if a unikernel type approach were used. There’s no need to boot a full OS. I understand the developer starting with Linux, though, as I’m sure it’s easier for debugging.
It’s possible to boot Linux in seconds, it’d just be a terrible developer experience.
you can get a zero booting under 10 seconds fairly reliably.<p>still slower than a hot phone with an app, but it's faster than 22s.
Cameras shouldn't need to boot at all.
Not from off state, though? Granted I still expect the iphone to boot quicker than 20 seconds.
yeah it's pretty fair if you compare them apples to apples.<p>an iphone boots in 15-20s depending on how stale things are, you'll presumably need to unlock it, and then navigate to the camera app however you do so.<p>it's just presumed you wont have to boot your phone.