Nanny cams come in all shapes and sizes. From Teddy Bears to cigarette packs, it seems there’s a hidden camera disguised as almost any common household item these days.
Now comes the “Mini MP3 Cam” designed by Chinese manufacturer Xiangyun Industry. This time the video camera has been cleverly hidden inside what looks to be a second generation iPod Shuffle.
The 1.3 MP video camera records 640×480 video at 20 fps in AVI or it can also take still .jpg images when triggered. The camera has a USB connector for getting the media onto your computer as well.
Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a U.S. distributor set up yet but the camera sells for only $15-$30 based on quantity purchased.
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2 reasons why I might get suspicious and spot one of these:
- I doubt it actually works as an MP3 player, given the price–and I have yet to meet anyone who keeps the volume low enough that you can’t hear anything from nearby. Also, it’d be strange to see someone wearing a player and not listening (apart from, say, pausing it to talk to someone else). When my MP3 player (that’s about that size) runs out of juice, I put it and the headphones in my pocket.
- While I wouldn’t notice it from across a room, if I were having a conversation with someone wearing one of these I might notice the extra un-Apple-esque hole compared to a real Shuffle… now, if they’d made the triangle of the play/pause icon into a hole and hidden the camera there, that would have been clever and possibly subtle enough to overlook, as long as there wasn’t a distinct difference between the black of the hole and the marks next to it.
So I’d be curious to see what someone could record on one of these without people getting suspicious, at least at close range.
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