Swann's PenCam Will Help You Be a Better Stalker
Swann's PenCam Will Help You Be a Better Stalker
Posted 02/09/2012 at 6:58am
| by Paul Lilly
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Our minds go wild thinking of ways we could use Swann's new HD PenCam and regular PenCam, a pair of inconspicuous video surveillance devices that look and function like ordinary pens, but unlike your Bic ballpoint, there's a miniature camera and DVR hidden inside. That's pretty rad, and also a little creepy if you think about these devices falling into the wrong hands.
Swann's regular PenCam sports 4GB of built-in storage, which the company claims is enough to hold about 2 hours of video or 18,000 still images. The HD PenCam eschews internal NAND flash memory for a microSD card slot with support for up to 16GB, which works out to 8 hours of video or 72,000 still images. The other difference is battery life. Swann's HD PenCam records video for up to 45 minutes on a single charge and the other stays alive twice as long. When they run out of juice, unscrew the pen to reveal a USB connector and plug it into your PC.
The HD PenCam and PenCam 4GB are available now for $100 and $70, respectively.
Image Credit: Swann
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vrmlbasic
February 09, 2012 at 11:21pm
No HD in 2012? I couldn't support that.
The idea of the news site is to give me all the info I need to know right here, as opposed to forcing me to scour the internet for it myself. This is especially useful when one can reliably get to MaximumPC.com but not the links that are often in articles, which leads to a habit of not clicking the link.
I was also hoping that these pens wouldn't be something that is marketed as being awesome but actually being crap, like many things on ThinkGeek tragically are. The site doesn't have reviews and is sparse on information so I suspected, but their Bluetooth watch and Bracer of Battery Life +2 are infamous.
vrmlbasic
February 09, 2012 at 11:29pm
Tragic, the "HD" pencam only captures video in 1280*720. Technically that's HD, but seeing as how that's an inferior resolution to my backup monitor, a 5+ year old 4:3 1280*1024 VGA-only Acer AL1714 LCD, I have to scoff at it.
My phone also records video at 1080p. But hey, this is still a cool product. I wish it were cheaper though, 100 bucks for 45 minute bursts of 720 HD is rather pricey.
matt78
February 09, 2012 at 4:26pm
You do know that these types of pens have been on ebay for several years now, right?
vrmlbasic
February 09, 2012 at 10:59am
Can you record while having the USB plug charged into a power source, not necessarily a PC or another device which would seek to interact with the PenCam, but something that just supplies USB power?
Because 45 minutes isn't that much in terms of surreptitious recording. Also, where is the lens on this thing? Can it record relevant video while clipped in a pocket, or is it like other products where the top of the pen houses the lens so having the pen in a front pocket would only capture video of the user's chin and the ceiling?
r6srider
February 09, 2012 at 5:08pm
If you would have clicked on the link you would have seen that the lense is on the front just above the clip, so no chin footage, unless someone short stands right in front of you while recording. Also note the non HD version will record for 90 minutes.
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