Fun With The iPad Camera Kit
Today on a somewhat lighter note... I have been having some fun with the iPad Camera Kit. As you probably know, the kit comes as a set of two adapters. The first one is a SD-card adapter, the second one is a USB adapter. Both connect to the only one port iPads have -the dock connector port.
Both adapters are aimed at performing just one function - copying digital photos from either an SD card or directly from a camera (over a USB cable) to the iPad. The Photos system application is responsible for handling this task. And there is nothing more. It simply scans a camera - specific subfolder of the \DCIM folder on the attached storage and lets you select and copy photos to the iPad. Disappointing, I have not even found a way to copy the photos to the host computer. I was hoping to see the copied photo files somewhere within the iTunes, but it seems like I was hoping for too much...
But I decided to play a little bit with the kit. There is nothing you can do with the SD adapter, apart from plugging an SD card into it, but with the USB... :)
First I checked the USB adapter works not only directly with a camera over a cable. It perfectly fine accepts USB card readers, in my case I plugged in a USB-to-CF adapter and the CompactFlash card from my FujiFilm S5 Pro was recognized. Still only the \DCIM\100_FUJI subfolder was accessible (photos outside this folder were not visible from the iPad). But at least the camera kit proved to be useful to interface the iPad to a CompactFlash card (via USB reader).
The second test was to see if it works with a hub. I have this nice Belkin TuneSync powered hub. It is powered, has 5 USB ports and an iPod connector. Plugging the hub to the iPad and then the CF reader to the hub worked just fine. That means the Photos application is able to traverse hubs and iterate through ports to find the storage it handles. So far so good. Having a hub connected, I tried to plug in two card readers. And two is too much for the iPad. Once it finds the first one, it stops looking further. Unplugging either of the two let the other one be visible.
The final test was to plug a hard drive. I had this small 1.8 incher taken out from the Nokia Booklet at hand. Plugging it in (via the hub and an USB to SATA adapter), however, did not result in any action.
The bottom line is iPad is (hardware - wise) capable of interfacing to various storage subsystems. The limits are in the software, or more precisely - at the strategy level. For some reason Apple does not want people to make use of external storage.
But there was some fun at the end. I plugged my old iPod to the Belkin hub and guess what - it was visible by the iPad. Allowing to unidirectionally share content (photos) between the two. Is this something Apple has forgotten to block? I do not have a second iPad at hand to test, but it looks like the camera kit allows to hook the two together :)
Both adapters are aimed at performing just one function - copying digital photos from either an SD card or directly from a camera (over a USB cable) to the iPad. The Photos system application is responsible for handling this task. And there is nothing more. It simply scans a camera - specific subfolder of the \DCIM folder on the attached storage and lets you select and copy photos to the iPad. Disappointing, I have not even found a way to copy the photos to the host computer. I was hoping to see the copied photo files somewhere within the iTunes, but it seems like I was hoping for too much...
But I decided to play a little bit with the kit. There is nothing you can do with the SD adapter, apart from plugging an SD card into it, but with the USB... :)
First I checked the USB adapter works not only directly with a camera over a cable. It perfectly fine accepts USB card readers, in my case I plugged in a USB-to-CF adapter and the CompactFlash card from my FujiFilm S5 Pro was recognized. Still only the \DCIM\100_FUJI subfolder was accessible (photos outside this folder were not visible from the iPad). But at least the camera kit proved to be useful to interface the iPad to a CompactFlash card (via USB reader).
The second test was to see if it works with a hub. I have this nice Belkin TuneSync powered hub. It is powered, has 5 USB ports and an iPod connector. Plugging the hub to the iPad and then the CF reader to the hub worked just fine. That means the Photos application is able to traverse hubs and iterate through ports to find the storage it handles. So far so good. Having a hub connected, I tried to plug in two card readers. And two is too much for the iPad. Once it finds the first one, it stops looking further. Unplugging either of the two let the other one be visible.
The final test was to plug a hard drive. I had this small 1.8 incher taken out from the Nokia Booklet at hand. Plugging it in (via the hub and an USB to SATA adapter), however, did not result in any action.
The bottom line is iPad is (hardware - wise) capable of interfacing to various storage subsystems. The limits are in the software, or more precisely - at the strategy level. For some reason Apple does not want people to make use of external storage.
But there was some fun at the end. I plugged my old iPod to the Belkin hub and guess what - it was visible by the iPad. Allowing to unidirectionally share content (photos) between the two. Is this something Apple has forgotten to block? I do not have a second iPad at hand to test, but it looks like the camera kit allows to hook the two together :)
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