Vicon Revue Documents Your Life In Pictures

Remember the Sensecam from Microsoft Research a couple years ago?  While the guys at Redmond never really made anything of it,  somebody else thought it was a viable enough product idea that they bought a license and produced this: the Vicon Revue.

Released by UK-based Vicon Motion Systems, the neck-worn camera (it hangs around a necklace like a pendant) will snap random moments in your day, giving you snapshots to remember life’s little moments.  They’re marketing it as a way to help people with memory impairment problems, giving them a visual timeline to help recall their day.

The Vicon Revue measures 2.55 x 2.75 x 0.66-inches  and weighs 3.31 oz., which should be compact and light enough to wear without causing any discomfort.  Fitted with a bunch of onboard sensors (temperature, light color and intensity, infrared motion, a multi-axis accelerometer and a 3-axis magnetic compass), it makes informed decisions about good times to automatically shoot photographs, which it then stores on the built-in 2GB of memory.  There’s a privacy button, too, in case you’d rather have it stop shooting (you know, when you’re doing things you’d probably like to forget).

It comes with a software component which runs on a PC, where you can view, organize and annotate photos.  The camera tethers to the computer via mini-USB, which will also replenish its battery’s charge (a full charge gets it 12 hours of continuous use).

While the Vicon Revue sounds like a fun gadget even for those not suffering from memory problems, the price is likely to put a lot of casual users off.  At £500 (US$775), they’re obviously treating it as a medical apparatus, rather than a regular consumer toy.

[Link via Gizmag ]