HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE
DIED LAST YEAR
BY TRYING THIS AT THE
U.S. \ MEXICO BORDER

Posted at 1:19 pm on Jun 29th, 2008 by MrHappy

Loved this one, great hack and dangerous looking too :)
Also put to a good use, I’d probably chosen some silly joke to project…

Posted at 2:15 pm on Jun 29th, 2008 by hannes

Too bad they didn’t use one of these in Shutter, the movie would’ve ended in 5 minutes and I wouldn’t have wasted my money.

Also, very nice set up. A lot of potential fun with something like that, especially in a city.

Posted at 2:33 pm on Jun 29th, 2008 by winphreak

this is an amazing idea… set it up outside some landmark or something lots of people take pictures and just let it run…
Wonder if theres a way that each time it fired you could progress the film and project a different image

Posted at 3:37 pm on Jun 29th, 2008 by datapirate42

My god, this is the coolest hack I’ve seen all year.

Simple, elegant and extremely effective.

Posted at 3:37 pm on Jun 29th, 2008 by Wolf

Just wait for someone to use one of these to project Jesus’ face onto the white house, or religious monuments.

Posted at 6:06 pm on Jun 29th, 2008 by psychiccheese

And here all this time I had just been sneaking into the background and pulling a funny face when I wanted to ruin a picture. :D

Posted at 6:24 pm on Jun 29th, 2008 by sackofcatfood

There’s probably some commercial applications for this cool invention, like having a permanent one installed in an art gallery so if you take flash photography of a statue you get an ‘embedded’ message saying ‘no flash photography’, or worse; advertisers utilising this technology at tourist traps…

but on the fun side of things, imagine going round a supposed haunted house with a camera and taking a few snaps, seeing the top-half of a ghostly person or a face in the corner of the room in your photos would be quite something

Posted at 8:02 pm on Jun 29th, 2008 by Haku

This remind anyone of the camera in MGS1?

Posted at 9:54 pm on Jun 29th, 2008 by Wolf

I love #8’s idea of preventing photos of art works. I know I’ve done that to cheat me paying a chunk of money for a copy.

Posted at 12:56 am on Jun 30th, 2008 by winphreak

This made me think of William Gibson’s book pattern recognition. The stuff about the gps living memorials thing. Be a cool thing for geocaching. find the spot. take a picture and one of these goes off in a waterproff box, giving you your own personalized token.

Pretty friggin cool.

Posted at 12:59 am on Jun 30th, 2008 by Rubicon

lol, the guy said he patented it, like it is something revolutionary

Posted at 1:49 am on Jun 30th, 2008 by rasz

Why would he not patent it? Have you seen this before? This is exactly what the patent system is for. It’s not like it’s a software patent. It’s an awesome idea and the possibilities are endless.

Posted at 3:29 am on Jun 30th, 2008 by jakob eriksson

Great, he’s ruined people’s holiday photos. That’s something that’s useful and productive towards society.

Does it make him feel big and clever to ruin people’s holiday photos? That’s so rude. It’s not even artistic, as the inventor claims it is. I’m saddened to see so many people thinking this is a good thing. You would not say that if he’d just ruined one of your photos.

Posted at 5:51 am on Jun 30th, 2008 by Mark

The admins removed my last post in which I described, quite reasonably and without being abusive, why I do not believe this to be a good thing.

Please, just spare a thought for the people with ruined holiday photos.

Posted at 6:07 am on Jun 30th, 2008 by Mark

The first thing I thought when I saw this was,”English, do you speak it?” That hands down makes this good, but really it just makes it better.

Posted at 7:35 am on Jun 30th, 2008 by samual

>Why would he not patent it? Have you seen this
>before?

yes, its a hand held projector
http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&client=opera&rls=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=handheld+projector&spell=1

with flash detector release mechanism
http://www.glacialwanderer.com/hobbyrobotics/?cat=9

its like those “shopping .. ON THE INTERNET” patents where you add two obvious things and pretend you invented something original

Posted at 11:36 am on Jun 30th, 2008 by rasz

neat. it’d be really good for making a statement. i like the references to history he used, especially the reichstag burning. i want one. he has all the parts listed and a diagram so i don’t get why he patented it but whatever. i still want one.

Posted at 7:20 pm on Jul 2nd, 2008 by Alek

Other then basically destroying others photos, what can this thing possibly do to help any one?

Posted at 2:05 pm on Sep 30th, 2008 by Megus

rasz, tell me what isn’t a combination of previously invented things?

Posted at 9:14 am on Jul 9th, 2009 by anon

@megus

Consider it a way to hide political speech in plain sight. Better than anonymous publication.

Posted at 9:39 am on Jul 9th, 2009 by snide

I was thinking of using something similar to this to evade traffic cameras. Use a high speed flash sensor to trigger an array of infrared LEDs mounted just above your license plate. When the speed or redlight camera triggers the infrared would wash out the license plate but the infrared would make it invisible to anything other than the camera assuming it doesn’t have a very good IR filter. There is probably some way to do this with a polarized film license plate cover and polarized light that would get around that.

Posted at 12:14 pm on Jul 9th, 2009 by FateOne

Good job replying to year old comments guys.

Posted at 12:28 pm on Jul 9th, 2009 by cynic

cynic, blame google/ig. One of the articles today links here.

Posted at 2:00 pm on Jul 9th, 2009 by rizean

This technology has a very serious application- something I like to call “photographic denial”. A flash synchronized projector like this could be set up in front of an object and be used to purposefully hide a specific detail of an object as well as imprint an identifier which could be used in a future investigation.

Posted at 10:38 pm on Jul 9th, 2009 by j s

Funny and simple idea, really like it.

The fulgurator only works if you take a picture with the camera flash on, if dont use flash, this wont activate.

I personally avoid using the camera flash and discretely stabilize the camera most of the time, dont like the hard light of a flash, and if your trying to be discrete photo flash isnt.

Posted at 7:48 am on Jul 10th, 2009 by T-man