jerry wrote:
Gurus,

I need your help...

I am an amateur triathlete and I'm getting ready for the start of the
triathlon season and I had this problem last year that I'm trying to
solve.

The problem is that during an open-water triathlon swim I need to skip
a stroke every so often to lift my head out of the water and site the
next turn buoy. I usually find myself off course by a few yards and
need to make corrections. This costs me time from being off course
and from skipping a stroke. So, I had this idea to take apart an old
digital camera or picture phone and mount the camera part to the back
of my head and attach the LCD part in front of my goggles.

Sound crazy? I did a Google search and found that someone has
patented the same idea...

http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/pat...-20060620.html

The thing is, as far as I can tell it's never been built, and I need
your help to build it.

I took apart a digital camera and was able to power it up and get an
image on the LCD, but the LCD is connected to the camera by what looks
like a proprietary 24 wire ribbon cable and connector that I would
need to build an extension to. Any ideas if that is possible? It
would need to be about 15"-20" long to go from the back of my head to
the front of my goggles. The ribbon is about 1" now. Do you think
the picture quality would get much worse at 15"?

Another issue is that the camera has a lot of extra stuff on it that I
don't need. Do you think there is a way to trim it down to just the
ccd, lcd, a battery and a switch? Do you think a phone would be a
better starting point? I took apart a broken camera phone and I was
able to separate the pieces - but it has the same issue - a very thin
proprietary ribbon cable.

Any other ideas? Am I crazy?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

jerry

p.s. please respond to my e-mail and the group.


Fun experiment, but it will slow you down a lot
due to the additional drag and to the time it will
cost as you try to get a good visual fix with it.

Most people would call me a strong distance swimmer,
but those who know - good swimmers - would correctly
call me a crappy swimmer. (~ 36 minutes per mile)
But even being crappy, I can look when I breath
during every fourth stroke, so you can, too, without
missing a stroke. You do have to modify the head
rotation when there's a lot of churn, so the fourth
stroke is marginally less effective than it is in the
pool. But heck - if there's enough churn, follow it.
The guys/gals making it are heading for the same buoy.

Ed