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Tablet instead of Laptop?

andrewfkay

By andrewfkay
in Discussions - Software

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andrewfkay

andrewfkay

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Hi All,

I was wondering if it would be possible to use a tablet instead of a laptop when out taking images and leaving the stacking and processing for my pc when I'm done. I'm thinking portability and battery life.

Anyone know if this is feasible or something that is likely to become possible?

Thanks

Andrew K

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CGolder

CGolder

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Considering apple dont embrace any third party hardware it could only be windows or android but i think external webcam and camera support is probaly not even on the agenda for tablets they want to promote the onboard camera

Sent from my A101IT using Tapatalk

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Cjg

Cjg

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Not quite - there's already this for the iPad / iPod

Southern Stars • Products • SkySafari ans looks very tasty when combined with Southern Stars • Products • SkyWire think the Widescreen Centre sells the cable for £60?

Think that with the bigger storage space available will not be long before there will be better than basic image editing. 6 Months + of heavy use and my ipad battery lasts way more than my laptop / netbook - is easier to carry. That said struggled to get Stellarium to work well though.

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Stephen

Stephen

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Hi All,

I was wondering if it would be possible to use a tablet instead of a laptop when out taking images and leaving the stacking and processing for my pc when I'm done. I'm thinking portability and battery life.

Anyone know if this is feasible or something that is likely to become possible?

Thanks

Andrew K

I'm thinking more for capturing the webcam images. I know android tablets can have USB connectivity and as android is open source I suppose it just requires someone with the necessary skills to code the software.

True - given time a developer could write this.

The problem is the format though. A tablet is not designed to be a processing powerhouse. It's designed to be a quick use, simple task based utility. They have poor processors and limited memory.

A tablet is never going to crunch / stack images as fast as a laptop / desktop :icon_salut: It's never going to have the memory required to open a full size raw image file and start applying transformations to it.

Not for a good few generations anyway :D Leave the tablets where they belong, surfing!

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Stephen

Stephen

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I take your point but maybe a tablet for just the capture and the processing on the pc when you're done?

Sounds feasible. The biggest problem is the device driver issue - someone can't write a "recording" program that will work just because the camera is plugged in.

You need a special driver creating/writing for each individual type of camera to work with Android too. (Existing Linux ones where they may already exist could possibly be ported/converted.)

Do many Android tablets have open (as in fully usable) USB ports?

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Stephen

Stephen

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Depends on your tablet.

The Lenovo X220t should work just fine, for example.

LOL - yes I concede "those" things (which let's be honest are just netbooks running a full Windows installation with a touchscreen) will work perfectly fine!

I don't think that's what the OP had in mind though :icon_salut:

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ncjunk

ncjunk

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True - given time a developer could write this.

The problem is the format though. A tablet is not designed to be a processing powerhouse. It's designed to be a quick use, simple task based utility. They have poor processors and limited memory.

A tablet is never going to crunch / stack images as fast as a laptop / desktop :icon_salut: It's never going to have the memory required to open a full size raw image file and start applying transformations to it.

Not for a good few generations anyway :D Leave the tablets where they belong, surfing!

I'd remove those "never" statements. Current tablets are useless for the reasons you stated but future tablets will be more than capable if the OS allows it. After all i started with a zx81 and could have stated, with just that as evidence, that computers would never be any good for anything except being painted yellow and used as a door stop...or simple calculations.

But at present they are only for simple tasks, cant do any C# programming on one for example.

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Stephen

Stephen

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I'd remove those "never" statements. Current tablets are useless for the reasons you stated but future tablets will be more than capable if the OS allows it. After all i started with a zx81 and could have stated, with just that as evidence, that computers would never be any good for anything except being painted yellow and used as a door stop...or simple calculations.

But at present they are only for simple tasks, cant do any C# programming on one for example.

Please see bottom line of my statement :D I did retract slightly on the never comments - it's going to take a lot of generations though.

(Edit) LOL I also found a group that compile Mono for the Android platform - so you can code C Sharp on an Android tablet :icon_salut:

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singlespeedman

singlespeedman

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You can do whatever you want on a tablet if the os allows it and the is an app for it.It will just take longer to process. your mobile phone is more powerful than the computers used to render the first toy story film. Nothing is locked down forever and you an connect some webcams to an iPad and record the streamed content just as you can now get a serial adapter to control your scope on an iPad. If that is possible on what is a pretty locked down platform then I would imagine there will be a droid version too.

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singlespeedman

singlespeedman

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As an extra note, if all you want to is use the tablet for storage then you will need an iPad and an eyefi sd card for you camera. The card automatically send the snaps straight to the iPad. Any camera with an sd card will do this as the magic takes place in the card itself. You could then use the trimed down version of photoshop on the iPad to have a fiddle with the pictures too

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