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I remember years ago watching a show on potential future technologies and one of the people being interviewed mentioned the following: "One day, your child wil

I remember years ago watching a show on potential future technologies and one of the people being interviewed mentioned the following: "One day, your child will be able to go to a dollar store and buy sheet of sticker cameras. These cameras will be paper thin, can be stuck anywhere and will have their own internet address that can be accessed over the public internet from a browser. Everything I just described is technically possible now, it's just not been put together and some of the components aren't cheap enough. As a society, we should be prepared for the ramifications of this." Research and advancements like this make the above feel like it's getting closer and closer to the above.

curryst 5y ago
An ESP32-CAM isn't far off. It's got a sticker sized footprint already. If you cut off the pins, the PCB is thicker than a sticker and the camera is a centimeter or two long, but they're like $10 a piece for ones with a camera and an SD slot.
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
There are so many microcontrollers which could be packed behind this, in a sandwiched way, behind the CCD which captures the light. Think of the stuff that's on your Smart-/Chipcards, like Credit/Debit/Banking/ID/Drivers License/... The thing under the golden metal contact plate has a diameter of about 5 millimeters, yet it is able to perform a subset of something like Java. The same goes for the SIM in your phone, or a Micro-SD Card. There the Microcontroller serves the interface on one end, and acts as a RAID-controller for the arrays of NAND-storage on the other end. This can all be hidden behind that, layered underneath each other. The biggest thing would be battery to power it, or the coils to harvest energy from WIFI, or whatever. Combine that with circuitry which only wakes up the system when the image is changing, and your're good to go, ...err spy ;->

curryst 5y ago

An ESP32-CAM isn't far off. It's got a sticker sized footprint already. If you cut off the pins, the PCB is thicker than a sticker and the camera is a centimeter or two long, but they're like $10 a piece for ones with a camera and an SD slot.

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago

There are so many microcontrollers which could be packed behind this, in a sandwiched way, behind the CCD which captures the light. Think of the stuff that's on your Smart-/Chipcards, like Credit/Debit/Banking/ID/Drivers License/... The thing under the golden metal contact plate has a diameter of about 5 millimeters, yet it is able to perform a subset of something like Java. The same goes for the SIM in your phone, or a Micro-SD Card. There the Microcontroller serves the interface on one end, and acts as a RAID-controller for the arrays of NAND-storage on the other end. This can all be hidden behind that, layered underneath each other. The biggest thing would be battery to power it, or the coils to harvest energy from WIFI, or whatever. Combine that with circuitry which only wakes up the system when the image is changing, and your're good to go, ...err spy ;->