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Ask HN: What can be done about the Light L16 camera fiasco?
This company Light existed. They were going to focus on computational photography. Eventually they released a camera, the L16, which was publicized in TechCrunch and some other places. Has 16 "smartphone grade" lenses, and has onboard software to create a 16MP image based on a composite of the images taken by a selection of the image captures. Every image has a .LRI format (some Light bullshit) that is around 120MB in size.
The only way (other than hacky bullshit) to extract images from the camera is via the Lumen software, or if you sideload an app like Flickr that enables uploads.
The Lumen software is an example of abandonware - the company had zero plans to assist consumers that bought these pretty amazing cameras, and now all the firmware updates have disappeared into the ether.
I am able to sideload apps, and pull the 16MP images out of the camera, so at least there is that.
I was able to briefly get root access to the device but this was an accident and the root exploit no longer works, for mysterious reasons.
I was able to get this camera that was priced at $2000 when it launched for like $300 bucks and if I process the images on the device I can extract them.
I tried to launch Lumen (which crashes on Monterey) in Ghidra to attempt to see how it works but I couldn't figure out what's going on.
I think if you look at this camera as an Android 6.1 device that has a ton of cameras on it, its a cool device and I think it would be cool if a community could find some kind of footing in rooting and breathing some life into what could have been a really amazing suite of devices.
Does anyone have any thoughts on how to do something like this?
The firmware updates are gone, used to be hosted on some random site, so not sure how to like dump the device block and shit like that.
There is a thread on xda developers that I am commenting on as well with any information I manage to obtain on the subject.
- GianFabien 4y agoWhen the L16 was conceived 16MP was a lot. These days that is the low end resolution for a smartphone. Most new phones have 3 sensors and lenses, so indirectly the L16 concept is still implemented. Albeit the lenses have different focal lengths and the sensors might have different resolutions and spectral responses.
- arthurcolle 4y agoThe L16 camera is capable of taking photos of 52MP, and some have said they have taken up to 80MP photos with it (not sure if legitimate), so sure 16MP as the easily extractable photo resolution is not exactly world class, but just wanted to clarify its not "just" 16MP as a limit. These are very high quality cameras, but its hilarious to me that what could have been a "big player" in computational photography immediately did the evergreen VC-funded playbook of winding down via "incredible journey / shut off servers, fuck over all the people that supported your product in its infancy" The CEO was actually an alumnus at my school, huge building named after him IIRC. Or at least, he has photos of himself all over the engineering building. I think this is just really terrible, and I would, as a mortal, never use another product made from these people after not even getting updated posted on some archive website.
- ffhhj 4y ago52 megapixels according to this article, and Lumen moved into autonomous driving vision in 2020: https://photopxl.com/the-worst-camera-ever-light-16/ https://photopxl.com/the-worst-camera-ever-light-16/ Maybe someone could ask them to open source their software. There's people looking for challenges that could fix/improve it.
- dtagames 4y agoThe assets are now owned by John Deere, per Wikipedia. Good luck convincing them to open anything!
- arthurcolle 4y agoThis is the sad truth
- arthurcolle 4y ago52 megapixels is if you can process the images either via Lumen. By default the shareable images that are auto-uploaded are 16MP.