As everything in the World, or so it seems, is getting smarter, a few things have been slow to catch up. One such product is cameras. Modern cameras are upgrading their technology at an almost exponential scale. However, there are a few areas in which they lag behind. The one aspect that sticks out the most is connectivity. For all the bells and whistles that modern cameras have, you cannot simply share a photo without plugging into a computer or other device. Well, now you can. We just came across a new Kickstarter Project that wants to make sharing from cameras as easy as sharing from a phone: Lumera. We had a chance to ask the team a few questions about their new device:

Lumera

What is Lumera?

Lumera is a new device for photography enthusiasts that connects to DSLR cameras, adding interesting functions to their cameras. When people buy a camera, they usually buy a fixed set of features and if they want upgrades they have to buy a new camera. Lumera closes this gap introducing a device with upgradeable software that helps to keep cameras up to date and makes it smarter by connecting them with your phone. Lumera adds Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a second contextual screen, navigation and one-click action buttons for sharing on-line, geotagging (optional built-in GPS), back-up on the go, a secondary USB port for external drives storage and a bunch of software utilities for a dumb DSLR camera.

Why did you build Lumera?

Today’s manufacturers create DSLR and mirrorless cameras which give users high quality images, but most of them don’t provide a connection to the cloud. On the other side, phone manufacturers create amazing devices completely immersed in the cloud but with poor optics giving users low quality images. Lumera close this gap by connecting cameras to the cloud using phones, through WiFi and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), a second contextual screen, navigation and one-click action buttons for sharing on-line, geotagging (optional built-in GPS), back-up on the go, a secondary USB port for external drives storage and a bunch of software utilities for a dumb DSLR camera.

How is Lumera different from what is currently available?

We believe what makes it incredible far more than other companies is building a product based on users feedback, its open source nature ecosystem, the high value that cameras has for photographers, and the hardware we use.

Tell us your founding story. Was there an “ah ha” moment?

During some years ago, we started working at local Hacker space on different ideas, at the beginning it was just a hobby, then one of us @hpsaturn came with the idea of making a device to fast transfer images from DSRL cameras to the cloud, then with time the idea started to grow and evolved to what is today. The product its of high interest to photographers, and also to developers and hackers. This is because the initiative is twofold: On one hand, with its software development kit for multiple platforms and languages (eg. Python, Arduino, Android, iOS, among others) and with the benefits of its open source nature, it enables unlimited tuning and improvement of the software. On the other hand, casual users will benefit from this because they can enjoy the software updates made by power users, hackers, developers and the Lumera team.

Tell us about your founding team and their backgrounds.

@hpsaturn @unjuguetero @tucanae47 (Twitter Profiles), we are the founders of LumeraLabs, we are all members of hackbo.co our local hackerspace, we have been working on embedded Linux, hardware development, mobile applications, cloud services, algorithm design and image processing during more or less 10 years.