CECam - Third Party Camera Software, Now For Pocket PCs

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.wincesoft.de/html/cecam.html' target='_blank'>http://www.wincesoft.de/html/cecam.html</a><br /><br /></div>CECam, which originated as a solution for getting CF cameras on HPCs, is now available on Pocket PCs as well. It's designed to work with the LifeView FlyCAM and the Pretec CompactCamera CF solutions.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/parekh-20031021-CECam.jpg" /><br /><br />Interestingly, it seems to improve the resolution of both of these cameras... so if you have one, you might want to check this out as an "upgrade" for your CF camera.

[Gerard]

As anyone who has been around PocketPCThoughts for a while knows, Jason had an early Pretec CF camera for a while. He declined to write a proper review of the unit out of a sense of fairness to Pretec, assuming that the hideously bad results must indicate a defective individual unit. Wrong. The software is a complete joke. Every version of the 'Mitac' driver set has delivered variations on crap.

I bought one for real money in February of this year, a year after Jason's experience. I thought, hoped, and trusted that Pretec had got their act together. Well, my review for pocketnow shows well enough that I was disappointed.

Now along comes this promise that since Pretec won't acknowledge my existence for a replacement or refund (do they actually have a working email address, at all???), I might yet make actual use of this camera - my heart was fairly pounding with hope as I opened that link and read about it! Fast as my iPAQ and Socket CF modem would allow I had the CAB file (CEDownloader beta 0.9b is great for grabbing CAB files, where PIE makes a mash of them) and was installing it. Popped in the camera, set up the software, and tried a few shots within less than 5 minutes of seeing this on the front page.

Well, here's my impressions:

~ The trial doesn't allow file saving, only a semi-lame preview in fullscreen, not at actual size. That's okay though. My 1.3Mp Pretec never delivered images that good looking before, as I can tell even from the bad preview.

~ There's lots of typos. It's Danish, it seems, and so this is understandable. Nothing serious anyway, just stuff like 'image' being written 'imgage' in a couple of places...

~ Assignment of any hardware key to a shutter! YAHOO! Finally. Pretec/Mitac still haven't figured that one out, instead forcing one to use the almost-broken shutter on the camera or a tiny onscreen dot with a stylus. My 3835's iTask button worked flawlessly to trigger shots here.

~ Tapping the Auto button onscreen causes an error, and escape is not possible without closing the program and re-opening. As it seems this and many other features of the camera software are either deliberately broken or greyed out in the crippled trial version, this causes only a little worry.

~ There's no video capture. Apparently they figured this is unimportant. Really? I use video capture with my little HP CF camera all the time, for family/kid stuff mostly, but also for documenting my work for clients. When a musician wonders why my repairs cost what they do, it's an easy sell to show them a couple of snapshots and a couple of short videos of the nastiest parts of the work, stuff that is normally hidden from them. In general, why shouldn't a CF camera offer video? Since the video functions of the Pretec stink on ice with the native software, I was really hoping for something better in this version, especially at a whopping USD$33. Nope, snapshots only. No thanks. I'll stay with the HP and mmVision version 3.0 until the next great solution comes along. Or if this company develops something better, with video, for the Pretec, I'll certainly try it again. I'll write them a letter, explain my position, and with a bit of luck maybe they'll be more responsive than Pretec has been. That wouldn't take much, really. In the field of customer service, Pretec is among the most lame I have yet experienced. They lie, when they say anything at all. I was promised a new version 6 months ago. Never heard a single word after that.

The clarity of the snaps with this software make me think that if I had money falling out of my pockets I'd probably buy it, just to have options. But as I tend to earn only enough to get by, that's unlikely. So if you are saddled with a Pretec 1.3Mp model, and have both the cash and no other camera options, I'd say this may just be worth it.

[Pete Teoh]

I wonder if it works with the old Jornada CF Camera. I still have one of those lying around somewhere...

[Gerard]

nope. Or at least, if the 'old Jornada camera' means the HP-made CF camera. I have one, about 2 years old. Bought it as a demo from an Office Depot store this spring or early summer. Great little unit. I made a lens shade for it, glued on, which does double duty of keeping down glare in outdoor shots and making focus a lot easier, with fewer fingers in the pictures. ;) I use mmVision 3.0 to run it, as the HP software doesn't work on the iPAQ 3835, apparently. I have read in several locations that the CF card actually has the drivers built in, but I've no proof of that... wish I could try the old interface, just for comparison. But from screenshots, it looks like HP subbed it out to Mitac, the same dweebs who developed the Pretec software. {shudder}

Anyway, I just tried the FlyCam and both Pretec settings in the CECam software, and only got 'please insert the camera and try again' messages.

[DerekTheGeek]

I appreciate the heads up on the Pretec camera Gerard. I was also hoping that the CECam would allow video capture but oh well..

- Derek

[Gerard]

mmVision offers a pretty darn good replacement for the HP software to run the HP camera, or so it would seem. CECam is not like that. Rather, it seems to offer a partial replacement, covering the still photography but ignoring audio and video. Marauderz developed something like it for the Casio JK710-DC camera, calling it 'M2SimpleCam - a freeware of extraordinary quality. His offered stills only, though one could set it for a broad range of qualities and sizes, and set it to shoot automatically every second or any number of seconds. At one of the lower qualities and a small size, it was possible to use it for several hours worth of captured images, making an effective stop-frame security camera. The quality of his M2SimpleCam was outstanding, better by far then Casio's offering, while taking only about 6% of the space in the device. (Casio's program took up over 4.2MB in the Pocket PC version, over 1.2MB in the Palm-size PC version.) Sadly, Marauderz only has Casio devices, and has never developed anything like it for the ARM processor or any other camera. And even for the Casio, he could not get the information he needed to make a video component. Casio is most protective of their source code.

With a bit of luck someone, someday, may come out with a proper all-in-one software for the 1.3Mp Pretec. Or not. More likely there will be better cameras and software released, and I'll end up spending even more money chasing after PPC photography. The HP is nice, if only 1/4VGA, but the video framerate is very jerky and the mmVision software seems stalled, and not able to run on X-scale devices. I tried it on a store 2210, and it wouldn't load at all.