Ask HN: How to teach an elderly parent how to point the camera?

1 year ago

I’m trying to help my parent set up a smart scale over FaceTime. This requires screen sharing for the app but also camera for seeing the smart scale’s display during setup.

My parent is perfectly fine with iPads and iPhones but after a decade of practice can’t point the camera at a thing I need to see.

Last time I was there I put some numbers on a piece of paper and we practiced pointing the camera at the numbers.

They understand conceptually that what they see in the “me” box during a FaceTime call is what I see of their camera.

Nevertheless they’ll show me the glass corner of the scale for a second, then the display, then at a critical moment during setup the glass corner again.

It doesn’t seem to be a device heaviness issue.

Any tips for permanently teaching my elderly parent how to point the camera at something and keeping it in view?

6 comments

unsupp0rted

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k310  1 year ago

If it's a useful data point, when I zoom (app) with the iPad in landscape orientation, I have to tilt the entire iPad to get myself entirely within the screen.

I suppose that orienting it in portrait mode might be a more "normal" tilt operation, but none of my awesome background photos are portrait mode. :-)

At least, in portrait mode, the camera is centered left-to-right.

I am elderly, if that matters.

And by the way, when you hold an iPad in landscape mode, the totally natural position for the left hand is over the camera lens for face ID.

floxy  1 year ago

I wonder what the historical reason is for having the camera lens at a corner, instead of at the center of the phone/tablet. Is this some fashion thing that everyone decided to copy? I can't imagine there is a technical reason, but I'm open to hear thoughts on this. Maybe originally battery shapes / sizes made a corner camera easier? And now everyone just follows the trend? Onions in the varnish style?

Is the "me" box on Face Time at a different corner than the camera lens?

https://www.joeydevilla.com/2001/12/03/4419/

  • gogurt2000  1 year ago

    For price and efficiency reasons you end up with 1 battery that's rectangular in shape. To maximize the capacity of that battery and minimize how thick the device is overall, you make the main PCB long and thin to sit next to the battery inside the case (instead of layering the PCB and battery).

    That means your PCB runs along one of the edges of the device. You really only have 3 options for where to put the camera: in a corner along that edge, in the center along that edge, somewhere goofy between a corner and the center along that edge.

    I would pick the corner because that's where people hold things the least. If you put the camera near the center and on the edge, then people are going to get their fingerprints all over the lens when they pick it up and hold it. It might be a little harder to aim the camera, but learning to work around that will be less annoying than learning to not touch the camera when you pick up the device or cleaning the camera every time you want to use it.

    You could certainly put it in the center of the device, but to do so you either have to layer your PCB and battery (making the device thicker and making thermal transfer to the case worse) or you have to put batteries around the PCB and deal with the added cost and complexity of having more than 1 battery.

    • floxy  1 year ago 

        +-------++------+
  |Battery|| PCB  |
  |       ||      |
  |       ||      |
  |       ||*     |
  |       ||      |
  |       ||      |
  |       ||      |
  +-------++------+

      * Camera Location?

  • unsupp0rted  1 year ago

    A camera bump in the center would be a nightmare when using the device flat on a surface.

    Also more likely to get fingerprints.