I was lucky enough to take an Auto­g­ra­ph­er device on vaca­tion to the Unit­ed States this year.

This piece of wear­able tech­nol­o­gy is designed to be an ‘auto­mat­ic pho­tog­ra­ph­er,’ doc­u­ment­ing your life with­out inter­rupt­ing it.

Auto­g­ra­ph­er is a small wear­able cam­era, that uses five sen­sors to deter­mine opti­mal moments to take pho­tographs. The sen­sors include a three axis accelerom­e­ter, com­pass, light sen­sor, heat sen­sor and GPS.

A few years ago I con­struct­ed a device using a keyring dig­i­tal cam­era and an Atmel AtTiny chip (essen­tial­ly a tiny, low pow­er Arudi­no). The idea was to take a pho­to­graph at set inter­vals, in order to doc­u­ment a day’s activ­i­ties. Pow­er and stor­age require­ments at the time meant it wasn’t fea­si­ble.

I found my Auto­g­ra­ph­er cam­era last­ed most of a day with a full charge. The 8GB stor­age last­ed approx­i­mate­ly three weeks.

It was a great talk­ing point when meet­ing new peo­ple. And it is great to have mem­o­ries doc­u­ment­ed. I have found it ‘reminds you to remem­ber moments’ when look­ing through images. I believe back in the days of Sense­Cam, a tar­get for the tech­nol­o­gy were patients with mem­o­ry loss.

The soft­ware sup­plied can cre­ate short time­lapse videos, and com­bine it with music. I made a quick video of a day at the beach, and won Autographer’s pic­ture of the week, and received a t-shirt.

Here is the video (music warn­ing):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iohH-VZxOsA

The low­er cir­cu­lar part of the cam­era is a lens cap. When closed, it shows a bright yel­low area. I found myself clos­ing the lens cap dur­ing moments requir­ing pri­va­cy. This removed any doubt that per­haps the device was still oper­at­ing:

I would high­ly rec­om­mend this cam­era for any­one who would like a record of their dai­ly activ­i­ties, per­haps on a spe­cial vaca­tion. I have want­ed to be able to record in this fash­ion for years, and this device func­tioned admirably.

You can find out more about this device at the Auto­g­ra­ph­er web site