Avatar of Bluewhale042399
Bluewhale042399
Flag for United States of America asked on

Portable Device to back up Digital Camera in the Field

We send engineers into the field to investigate damaged buildings. They take hundreds of digital photos each day. We recently had an SD card fail after the photos were taken, thus we are searching for a portable device to allow them to copy the photos to it at the job site thus giving us two copies of the photos, of which at least one should always make it back to the office for uploading to our databases.

We've found products from Wolverine and Hyperdrive, however they aren't quite right.  Also thought of a portable music play like the Zune, however Zune claims we can not connect the digital camera and the Zune directly to copy photos.

Is anybody aware of a small device which would allow us to :

1: copy photos to it directly from a digital camera
2: Allow review of the pics on the backup device
3: preferably be solid state: no hard drive
4: can operate using a car's lighter for power
5: Be small/light


Thanks for any and all suggestions.


Paul
StoragePersonal Electronics

Avatar of undefined
Last Comment
Bluewhale042399

8/22/2022 - Mon
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
lherrou

THIS SOLUTION ONLY AVAILABLE TO MEMBERS.
View this solution by signing up for a free trial.
Members can start a 7-Day free trial and enjoy unlimited access to the platform.
See Pricing Options
Start Free Trial
GET A PERSONALIZED SOLUTION
Ask your own question & get feedback from real experts
Find out why thousands trust the EE community with their toughest problems.
Bluewhale042399

ASKER
Thanks Lherrou, I'll take a look.
I've done more digging and have found the perfect device to do what we need: a Cell Phone/PDA like the Cingular 8125 I use. It has a mini USB connection, has a small version of Windows on it, can read the 2 gig data card I put in to store files... I'm going by Fry's tomorrow to see if they have a mini USB to mini USB cable and will experiment from there.

While larger than the cell phones most users have it would solve all aspects of our data loss potential. Might anyone here have done this already? Any idea of the wiring of sync cables? I'd prefer not to burn anything out just yet. <g>
lherrou

Yes, a PDA would work fine as well. Rather than a Mini-USB to Mini-USB plug, you might take a look to see if you can find one with both a SD and a CF card slot. If you can (some older models had both, I don't know about current ones), you can just insert the camera SD card and copy over to the CF card.
Bluewhale042399

ASKER
yes, a good idea. However camera models change often: as with PC's you generally can't get the exact same model a half year down the road.  Thus I would LIKE to find a solution using a sync cable and an adapter kit if need be. But still: will experiment with this thought tomorrow. Tks!

Paul
All of life is about relationships, and EE has made a viirtual community a real community. It lifts everyone's boat
William Peck
Bluewhale042399

ASKER
Thanks for getting my thoughts moving in the right direction. We've been searching half the day and now find that Apple already produces a sync cable to connect dozens or hundreds of digital cameras to IPOD's. Looks to be a perfect solution, save that we have to buy one for each engineer :[   But it should do the trick. I'm going to pick up a Nano tomorrow and see how well it does.
Thanks again!

Paul