Chinese company makes a SD wifi card with on/off switch. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Spawn
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2013, 04:31:12 am
content: A company called LZeal made SD card with on/off switch, which is really handy. The other existing cards didn’t have that option yet and it was consuming too much battery of your camera.This is nice if you have a older camera without any wifi option, you can upload your content without hassle and there is even application for iOS and android to download or push from the SD card.More information:http://www.lzeal.com/en/products.aspA video in Chinese, there can be a ad before so wait till it starts:ez ShareiPhone???—?—???

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2013, 09:31:27 am
content: The level of integration in these devices is amazing; I'd imagine it contains NAND flash, controller, RF front-end and modem, and an embedded processor in the space that a regular SD card would only accommodate the flash and its controller.I wouldn't be surprised if it uses something like an 8051 or 6502, those seem to be the go-to for small embedded uCs for the Chinese.

author: ptricks
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2013, 03:16:37 pm
content: These cards have been around for a long time. The company making them is eyefi.http://www.eye.fi/http://www.amazon.com/Eye-Fi-Connect-Wireless-Memory-EYE-FI-4CN/dp/B003DV4234/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359472560&sr=8-1&keywords=eye+fi+cardThe eyefi cards can be turned off as well.

author: Spawn
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2013, 05:21:52 pm
content: Ptricks, Eye-Fi didn’t have that option that switch you see is to lock the memory card for protection, yes wifi SD cards are around for a while not only Eye-Fi makes them, Toshiba and who knows what companies make them too, but this is the only one with on/off witch for wifi at the moment.Ez Share is on ebay already but I think in couple weeks the fakes will be there too:http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?LH_PrefLoc=2&_nkw=ez+share+wifiEDIT: Here a quote from a reviewer at Amazon:QuoteIf you had the switch you just turn it off when you don't need to upload. This was a drawback on these cards.

author: jnd
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2013, 05:57:33 pm
content: Quote from: Spawn on January 29, 2013, 05:21:52 pmI would expect that any such card has config option in the host device to turn it on and off by the SW.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2013, 07:30:24 pm
content: Does it create a virtual FAT32 filesystem so the camera knows no difference? Obviously it must report back a drive with very few files in it... or perhaps it dynamically builds in on the fly when you load the file. And saving presumably works similar... Shame my camera uses microSD... seems to be a new trend nowadays... and I would be REALLY impressed if they fit a wifi enabled SD card in a microSD formfactor. Right now I'm still amazed that something smaller than my thumbnail holds 16GB and costs less than £9.

author: FenderBender
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2013, 01:11:18 am
content: Really quite fascinating that humans are capable of making these things. Like damn we were chillin in our sailing ships only a century or two ago, now we have this. Quite remarkable not to be too proud of my species. I'm sure we will destroy ourselves one day. Just hopefully not tomorrow.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2013, 09:34:46 am
content: Quote from: tom66 on January 29, 2013, 07:30:24 pmIt's a regular SD card, which also allows (read-only?) access via wireless by effectively hosting a webserver for its contents.I did a bit of digging on that Eye-Fi card using its FCC ID and found an image of the internals in the FCC report (schematics and block diagram confidential). There's a standard Samsung moviNAND flash, a Marvell 88W878B (couldn't find info on this specific chip) wireless SoC, and an EyeFi branded ASIC. The Marvell likely has a rather powerful ARM core, that combined with the 3 separate chip design may be responsible for the high power consumption.Being able to hack the firmware on these would make them many times more useful... lots of fun things you can do with a tiny wireless fileserver.

author: ptricks
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2013, 12:35:56 pm
content: Quote from: Spawn on January 29, 2013, 05:21:52 pmThe eyefi cards can be turned off in the camera settings of the camera, you don't need to remove the card or access the card slot to turn them off.The poor battery life happens when you are using the eyefi in wireless mode. The card can be used to send the pictures the second they are taken over wifi. If you use the card as a normal card then enable the wifi just to transfer the contents there is no difference in battery consumption because it powers off after the transfer.