crowd funding

Hands on with Alice – AI & smartphone-powered Micro Four Thirds camera

May 18, 2023 by John Aldred 3 Comments

For those who haven’t followed Alice’s story over the last couple of years, Alice is an AI-powered Micro Four Thirds camera that works with your smartphone. The smartphone is used both as the display for the camera as well as powering its AI features. It was announced in September 2020 and later came to Indiegogo. While shipping was expected to begin in the Summer of 2021, backers are still waiting to receive their cameras to this day.

Photographer and YouTuber Jimmy Cheng, also known as RED35, travelled to visit the Alice HQ to take a hands-on look at the camera and see what it could do. It’s long overdue, and past examples shown off in campaigns are believed to have been non-functional concept prototypes. Now, though, it looks like it can finally do all (or at least much) of what it promised.

PSA: Leap SSD is the world’s fastest wireless SSD but I wouldn’t buy it

May 10, 2023 by John Aldred Add Comment

There appears to be a new name in SSD storage. It’s called Leap, and I’d probably take this one with a big pinch of salt. This is partially due to how the device is presented, partially due to the dodgy AI voiceover on their promo video, and partially due to the crowdfunding platform on which it resides. It looks pretty dodgy to me, but we’ll get back to those in a bit. First, let’s look at what they claim to offer.

Leap is a wireless and Thunderbolt 3 compatible (but not USB 3.2 Gen 2 compatible) SSD with capacities of 1TB, 2TB and 4TB. It boasts 802.11ax WiFi 6 connectivity with speeds of up to 900MB/sec and wired transfer speeds of up to 2400MB/sec. As it’s a wireless device, it contains its own battery with up to 10 hours of use and supports up to 10 simultaneous device connections.

The AI-powered Alice Camera is now available to pre-order from £550 (~$750)

Feb 9, 2021 by John Aldred 9 Comments

Alice Camera, the AI-powered computational photography camera that hooks up to your smartphone has just launched for pre-order through Indiegogo. Alice’s goal is to make it easy for creators to create, by essentially bolting a Micro Four Thirds lens mount and sensor to your smartphone.

You can shoot photos or 4K video footage, taking advantage of the display and computational photography power of your smartphone. From there you can quickly and easily share to your social media following.

“Alice” is an odd Micro Four Thirds camera that (literally) hooks up to your phone

Sep 23, 2020 by John Aldred 11 Comments

Hooking a sensor up to your phone isn’t an entirely new concept. Sony tried something similar a while ago and then gave up. Chinese manufacturer Yongnuo has also had a go at this idea although that one never seems to have actually been released. Now, it’s the turn of British company photogram.ai with the Alice Camera – a Micro Four Thirds sensor and mount that you slot your phone into.

It’s billed as an “AI-acceleraated computational camera” built from scratch specifically for content creators. It has a Micro Four Thirds lens mount with a quad-bayer sensor capable of producing 11-megapixel AI-enhanced images, and your smartphone essentially becomes the user interface. At least, that’s the theory. Right now it’s still in the concept/prototype stage.