We use Eye-fi or photo over the air. Eye-Fi Mobi memory cards allow you to send photos to mobile devices Own types of flash drives

I have been using the device for 1 month. I’ll say right away that if you use it for its intended purpose with a Wi-Fi module, then the card’s capacity is enough for your eyes, all the same, photos and videos will be sent via Wi-Fi to the computer. You can use the product as a regular SDHC card, and it will turn out to be a regular 10KL high-speed card, although it only claims to be 4KL. I’ll say right away that I bought the card, played enough, and wondered where it might be most useful. The card is suitable where there are a lot of photos or videos, and you need to constantly transfer files from the card to your computer. In this case, you do not need to remove the card from the camera slot, wearing out the contacts of the SD card slot. To transfer files to your computer, you also do not need to continuously connect the camera to the computer with a USB cable, risking rapid wear and tear. USB pins camera sockets, and wasting time connecting. SanDisk 4GB Eye-Fi, when working as a regular SD card, showed speed class 10 on my PC, and the writing speed in the card reader for it slightly exceeded 10MB/Sec. The read speed from the card was about 17MB/Sec. To work via a Wi-Fi radio signal, you need a working Wi-Fi module on your computer. If there is no built-in Wi-Fi, then you can buy such a module in the format USB flash drives or PCI cards. Next you need a point Wi-Fi access in the area where your PC is located with the password you know to access it. That is, you will need a router with a Wi-Fi module or similar Wi-Fi device for Internet distribution. This card comes with a regular SDHC card reader. You can use it, you can use any other. The card in the card reader is connected to the USB port, the Eye-Fi Center program is installed on Windows, which is in the root new card, but which will still download files for installation from the Internet. On Windows, in the firewall, if it is installed, you must allow the Eye-Fi Center program to work. After this, the card is programmed in the card reader for your Wi-Fi access point, and the computer itself must be connected via Wi-Fi to the same point. Even if it was previously connected to the Internet via a wired network. The Wi-Fi password is written into the card, after which it is inserted into the camera, which must have support for Eye-Fi cards, which is the majority of modern models. A menu for working with an Eye-Fi card appears in the camera menu; in it we allow data transfer. Also in the camera menu, in the “connection” item that appears, we check that the card has automatically connected to your Wi-Fi access point. That's all. We launch in Windows program Eye-Fi Center, with its help the computer automatically connects via an access point to the card in the camera. And after the end of photographing or video shooting, the transfer of photo or video files to the computer automatically begins after a short time. The Eye-Fi Center program will put all received files into the folder specified in its settings. Although this program does not have Russification, there are few options in it, and they are not difficult to understand. Photo and video files are transferred without changing the date and size. The original files remain on the memory card and can be deleted manually later. Advantages of the device: almost everything worked, as described in the specifications. Identified shortcomings: it is not easy to quickly understand how to work with the card; the program for working with it was not immediately clear. To work with the map via Wi-Fi, you need an access point with Internet access. Direct connection to the card without an access point and the Internet, as well as connection to the card Android devices Could not achieve it via Wi-Fi. If you are not afraid of technical difficulties, and you have all the conditions for connection, then I recommend this device for you.

Hello everyone!
Today we will talk, although not about Chinese product, however, with this very interesting device.
This device is called Eye-Fi Pro X2 8 GB, and speaking in simple language, then this is an 8 GB SD card with a built-in Wi-Fi module. I don’t know how it was possible to fit a wireless module into a card. Well, that is, microcircuits are certainly possible, but an antenna? In general, I never cease to be amazed at how much progress has come, as they say.

The parcel (from the USA) took about 40 days to reach me, which is probably not so bad, considering how our mail works.
The whole thing cost me (including all overheads, commissions, etc.) $100. And the seller's price was $79. It turns out that I spent about 20 bucks on the services of an intermediary, who is not usually mentioned on this site. It’s quite acceptable, since ordinary Russian stores, which have gone crazy, offered me to buy the same card at the price, attention: 7,000 rubles, which, as you understand, is at least 100% more expensive.

Package. This was my first package from the USA (all the other numerous ones are only from China).
I was quite surprised by the volume of the box. Well, you know, when you order an SD card, you expect to get something the size of a cigarette pack. But in fact, a big cardboard box arrived, here’s a photo:

Inside, in the parcel cardboard, the package itself with the card was heavily padded with some material, the closest analogue being polystyrene foam. When my wife opened it, she said: “Oh, corn sticks))),” and in fact, it felt, looked, and even smelled!!! similar to those same corn sticks.

To Amazon.com's credit, this packaging inspires respect. Being in the middle of the box, the card itself is unlikely to be damaged, no matter how you throw it. Because these very “sticks” really absorb perfectly. Damn, the Chinese will learn how to pack...

Now let's see what's inside. There was also a cardboard package with a card inside. The whole thing looks like this:

The card itself is nothing unusual, except for the color. Frankly speaking, its coloring is poisonous)))

What's included in the package?
The kit includes: instructions in English. language, as well as a proprietary card reader.
Well, and the card itself, of course. Instructions:

And this is what a branded card reader looks like:

What is this device for?

And this is what prompted me to order this device (SD card). I take a lot of pictures with my camera, and like all normal people, I am extremely annoyed constant search camera cable. And what’s more, the thought also occurred to me that the connector on the camera is the most ordinary one, and therefore it will spread/lose, just like all ordinary connectors. My camera costs 20,000 rubles.
For me personally, this is enough to think about how to reduce the risk of being left with a connector that is “buggy.”

But this wonderful card with a Wi-Fi module completely eliminates the problem of always having a cable at hand, and most importantly, constantly plugging this cable into your computer and camera.

Everything you shot with your camera is wireless communication magically appears on your computer. You just need to install it on your computer special program, which is called Eye-Fi Center.

This program comes initially on the card. That is, you don’t need to download/search for anything. The program has an English interface, but everything is quite simple, it won’t be difficult to understand.

Imagine, your device is lying on the table. You took it to capture, say, your child’s smile... And in just a few seconds, your photos will be on your computer. You don’t need any cables, connect something somewhere, copy this or that! Everything happens automatically.

If you have a modern camera, perhaps it has an “Eye-Fi” item right in the menu, as it turned out to be for me. In this case, you can optionally turn off wireless data transmission, say, on the street, to save battery power.

If your camera does not natively support Eye-Fi cards, then there are still no problems! I specifically checked, for example, with the Samsung WB-5500, which does not claim support for Eye-Fi cards, everything works just fine.

Or you just came from a walk. Where they filmed a lot. And already on the way, within the Wi-Fi coverage area, your photos will begin to be transferred to your computer. You didn't forget to leave it on, did you?
And by the time you change into home clothes and sit down at your favorite laptop, all your photos will already be at your fingertips.

And don’t forget that the connector in an expensive camera does not suffer. No need to look for constantly disappearing cables... Simply beautiful.

Bottom line. If you take a lot of photographs, and often, this device is definitely for you! There’s nothing to even think about.

Well, if you shoot, God willing, once a week, then of course you can connect a regular USB cable and not bother yourself with cards that cost $100 for 8 GB!

I must say that some more functionality has been announced, such as: geotagging, uploading photos to online service, but all this is of little interest to me personally, and I have not checked these options.

And so - in the kit we get a branded card reader and a card that, in general, will save you from wires forever.

USB wires, flash drives, card readers - I’m very tired of them, I want something light and airy. In one of the online reviews, I came across a device called eye-fi - a mixture of an SD card and a wifi transmitter. The gadget is capable of transmitting photos in jpeg and raw format over a secure channel, works with wi-fi networks 802.11b/g/n with secure channels Static WEP 64/128, WPA-PSK, WPA2-PSK.

I bought it from the online store bhphotovideo.com. When purchasing, a nuance arose - as always, marketers put their hands on the device and made several types of cards: eye-fi, eye-fi pro, the differences may be in the amount of stored information (4-8 GB) and eye-fi pro can connect directly to wi-fi map, bypassing the router. An adapter for compact flash cards can be purchased as a separate option. I bought the most inexpensive model in order to test the operation of the card and possible use in the studio for shooting on a monitor.

After 10 days I received this box:

And then the first disadvantage of the cheaper wi-fi card model surfaced. This model works only with a Wi-Fi access point (the connection diagram is shown in the second picture above). That is, in order to connect a computer or laptop with an eye-fi card, you need to switch the laptop or computer to operating mode as an access point. To do this we need a small program like connectify or virtual router.

So, to make your computer an access point, install connectify, the icon will appear in the tray. The program interface is simple; to create an access point, we will use the Easy Setup Wizard.

We set the name of the network being created through which we will connect the camera to the computer:

In the last window, select the network through which the connection to the Internet will occur (the Internet is needed during the first connection, registration and configuration of the card).

The network is ready, now we’re setting up our miracle map. To do this, install the eye-fi helper and eye-fi center applications (included). After installation, you may need to update to new version, update. The program interface is simple, nothing superfluous:

Using an adapter, we connect the card to the computer and create new account(Internet required):

After successful registration, the card will appear in the left Devices panel. If a new version of the card firmware is found, update it:

The card is recognized and updated, all that remains is to make friends with our created network, to do this, go to the card settings (Eye-fi Settings) and in the Networks - Private Networks tabs, select the network we created (in this case connectify) and connect with a predefined login and password:

All. The settings are saved on the card. We insert the configured eye-fi into the camera, you can shoot. Having used the map, I made clear conclusions for myself: convenient, but slow. I use it in studios as follows: Canon 1D Mark III with two cards: the original frames are recorded on a compact flash. On an eye-fi card – a jpeg copy with minimal resolution and high compression to speed up the transfer process. Photos uploaded via Wi-Fi are placed in the folder specified in the Eye-fi settings and sorted by creation date. You can also configure Adobe Lightroom so that it monitors updates in this folder and thus displays captured images directly to the monitor via wi-fi. You can also upload images to various photo storage services and galleries.

Tags: wi-fi, photo, memory cards

The preparation of any of the reviews on our website includes a photo shoot of the product in question, during which an impressive number of photographs are taken, only a part of which is selected, processed and “goes to print.” Before selecting the necessary photos, you always have to connect the camera to the PC or remove the memory card from the camera and load data from it using a card reader. This procedure does not add much convenience, and sometimes it takes a lot of time, given that you have to “merge” heavy images in RAW format. A few years ago, an interesting product appeared on the market that helped simplify this operation - Eye-Fi SD cards, capable of transmitting images to a remote source via wireless Wi-Fi networks. Even then there was an irresistible desire to try this technology. After all, judge for yourself, everything seems very convenient, at least in theory - you take pictures that are automatically transferred to the hard drive of your computer and are available almost in real time or immediately after the end of the photo shoot. And no wires, card readers or anything else!

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to find Eye-Fi cards on the Ukrainian market, and their cost from the manufacturer even now ranges from $50 for an 8 GB version with extremely limited capabilities, and years earlier it completely exceeded all expectations. But a holiday has come on our street - not so long ago, an agreement was concluded between SanDisk, a well-known manufacturer of flash drives whose products can be found here without problems, and Eye-Fi, allowing the first to produce Eye-Fi cards under its own brand. Of course, other manufacturers also did not stand aside and, in a hurry, released their solutions for “wireless” memory cards.

Actually, we received a couple of products - an 8 GB SanDisk Eye-Fi and a 32 GB version of the Wi-Fi SD card from Transcend. In this material we will look at what each of the products is.

As mentioned above, SanDisk Wi-Fi SD cards use Eye-Fi developments and are essentially clones of the above-mentioned cards.

• SD card of appropriate capacity;
• USB card reader;
• brief operating instructions.

Before first use, you must carry out the initial setup by first installing it on your PC. software Eye-Fi Center. After installation is complete, an icon will be available in the notification area for quick launch applications.

The disadvantages of the software include the complete absence of the Russian language.

The initial setup is carried out with the card installed in the card reader through the File-Settings menu in Eye-Fi Centrer or by clicking on the corresponding gear-shaped icon.

SanDisk Eye-Fi can either connect to an existing wireless network as a client or act as an access point itself. Up to 32 different networks can be stored in memory.

You will now need to connect the card again to the PC only when adding new network, setting data transfer parameters, as well as in one more exceptional case - updating the firmware. If there is a new version of it, that in offline mode is checked via the Internet, Eye-Fi Center will persistently inform you about this by displaying Exclamation point next to the SD card image. The update process is incredibly simple, you just need to press one button.

In the Transfer Mode section, let's pay attention to two functions. The first of them is Relayed Transfer, which will help if at the time of shooting the SD card and the computer are not within the same network, in which case the transfer will be carried out as soon as they are in sight again. Another function is Endless Memory, with which, when a specified threshold is reached, files already transferred to the PC will be automatically deleted from the card, thus freeing up some space.

The very procedure for transferring pictures “over the air” is trivial - you take a photo, and after a few seconds it begins transferring to a remote PC. Of course, Eye-Fi Center must be running on the receiving computer. During the transfer, a small window appears in the lower right corner of the screen, above the notification area, showing the transfer status of each photo - clearly and conveniently.

SanDisk Eye-Fi can only work with one PC or mobile device at a time. For example, it is impossible to organize a transfer to two computers at once. After installing Eye-Fi Center on a new PC, the checkbox that activates “filling” on this computer is disabled by default, and when it is turned on, it will automatically be reset for all other “clients”. Moreover, when you connect a new computer, only new photos will be loaded onto it. Those that were previously synchronized with another PC or mobile device will not be transferred.

Continuing to talk about important features, we also need to mention that not all files are transferred, but only certain types of them. For example, you won’t be able to transfer an mp3 file or a picture in PNG format to your computer. There is support for photos only in JPEG format, and for video the list of supported file types looks like this: mpg, mov, flv, wmv, avi, mp4, mts, m4v, 3gp. Maximum size transferred file limited to two gigabytes. Much to our disappointment, it does not support transferring images in RAW format, which is extremely necessary for professional purposes. The SanDisk Eye-Fi we received for testing is an example of one of the simplest Eye-Fi cards. It corresponds to class 4 read/write speed, the Wi-Fi part provides support for the 802.11g standard. For more professional tasks, you can pay attention to the Pro X2 series cards, which have a number of additional functions, such as geo-tagging images, and having the ability to transmit, incl. And RAW files. Unfortunately, it was not possible to find such cards among SanDisk products and the only option remains only the original Eye-Fi, which are still unavailable on our market, and their price on the official website starts at $100 for 16 GB.

I would like to say a few words about the speed of data transfer over a wireless network. It is not possible to measure exact indicators, because... the necessary tools for this are not included in the software, so you have to rely only on subjective impressions. To evaluate the speed, we measured the transfer time of a video file in MOV format with a volume of about 1 GB. The data was transferred to a computer connected via a wired connection to the same network as the SD card via Wi-Fi. The average data transfer speed was about 1.4-1.5 MB/s, which corresponds to 10-12 Mbit/s. Thus, transferring regular JPEG photos does not take more than 3-5 seconds, which is more than acceptable. Even if we consider the theoretical possibility of transferring pictures in RAW, then at this speed the transfer of each photo should be within 10 seconds, which is also quite acceptable. But if we talk about video, then in many cases it will be faster to remove the card from the camera and “drain” the data through the card reader, especially since the size of videos often exceeds the 2 GB mark.

In addition to measuring the data transfer speed over Wi-Fi, the usual measurements were also carried out speed characteristics. The memory card was installed in a card reader connected via USB interface 3.0. The CrystalDiskMark utility was used to measure read and write speeds.

Regarding the operating range in wireless mode, then, according to the manufacturer, it is about 25 meters with line of sight and half as much if there are obstacles to the signal. In practice, we are quite close to these numbers - the card remains accessible even in the next room. But still we must admit that for more or less normal operation It is necessary to be with the signal receiver within the same room in the absence of serious obstacles such as concrete walls.

It's time to consider the second SD card announced at the beginning of the material. This drive is Transcend’s own development and has nothing to do with Eye-Fi. For this reason alone, it is interesting to look at it as an alternative implementation and its capabilities.

• 32 GB SD card;
• card reader;
• instructions describing the main use cases.

Of course, you need to do the initial setup of the memory card before using it. Looking ahead, it’s worth saying right away that the Transcend drive can operate in two modes: either as a wireless network client, or as an access point, waiting for client connections. By default, the card operates in access point mode; no additional software is provided for managing the card from a PC, and all settings are regulated via a web interface, similar to, for example, routers. Thus, to configure the card, you need to connect to the wireless network created by the card (WIFISD). This can be done either from a laptop or PC, or from a mobile device running operating systems. Android systems versions 2.3 and higher or iOS 5.0 and higher. There is also support Kindle tablets Fire. If you try to perform the initial setup from a PC that does not have network Wi-Fi card, then it won’t be possible to do this in principle. Of course, this situation is quite specific, but it is quite possible if we want, for example, to use a computer connected by a wired connection to Wi-Fi router. Thus, for initial setup cards, you will definitely need some device equipped with a Wi-Fi module. In the future, by switching the card to “client” operating mode, you won’t have to remember this feature.

Let's look at the setup using the web interface as an example. After connecting to the WIFISD network and going to the address in the browser http://192.168.11.254, we get to the web interface by specifying the login and password provided in the instructions. On the left there is a small menu, among the items there is Settings. By the way, the Russian language is also absent in the web interface.

The Transcend Wi-Fi SD card is a self-contained independent device, so there is no need for it to be supported by cameras, as was the case with the SanDisk Eye-Fi. However, the list of supported devices is still available on the manufacturer's website. This may be due to the need for the camera to provide the required level of current to power such a drive.

As far as we have been able to find out, the card is a kind of mini-computer running on an ARM processor running one of the special Linux builds for low-power systems.

To view the contents of the map, absolutely all of it is available file system, including directories and all types of files. But if Eye-Fi cards independently initiate the transfer of newly taken photos, then the Transcend product implies remote access to the drive, from where you can independently “download” photos or any other data.

Although such theoretically broad opportunities have to be paid for with a number of disadvantages. Firstly, like any system, a Linux-like OS running “inside” the drive needs some time to boot after power is applied. For our SD card instance, this time is about 30-40 seconds. In addition, unlike Eye-Fi cards, where proper power management is ensured by the support of the camera of the corresponding standard, here you will have to deactivate the auto-shutdown of the camera and similar energy-saving functions, or enable a mode like LiveView in which the camera does not go to sleep. Otherwise, even during data transfer, the device may turn off safely and data via Wi-Fi will no longer be available, since for the camera such an SD card is absolutely ordinary, no different from others. And then - turning it on again and loading for half a minute... Naturally, in the active state, the camera battery will discharge faster. It is also worth mentioning that the card itself heats up quite well during active work with it.

Updating the drive firmware is possible in two ways. The simplest of them is to download a special utility, Firmware Update Tool, from the manufacturer’s website, which will independently check the availability of a new firmware version via the Internet, download it and guide you through several stages of the update process. Of course, the card must be connected to the PC using a card reader. The second, less obvious method is to download it yourself. current version from the website, transfer the firmware files to the root directory of the memory card, and then “reboot” it by removing and reinserting the drive into the camera or card reader. When starting the internal OS, the files of the new software version will be detected and the firmware will be updated within 5 minutes. Do not forget that when updating in this way and using the camera, power management in its settings should be disabled, since in the event of an unexpected power failure, the results can be unpredictable, even causing the card to fail.

Of course, the read/write speed was assessed in CrystalDiskMark, the results of which are presented below.

Results

SanDisk Eye-Fi uses the long-known Eye-Fi technology, and is an analogue of cards from the developer itself. The drive, together with the available software, creates the impression of a logically complete product that is extremely easy to use and does everything you expect from it. The main disadvantage, for our case in particular, is the lack of RAW support. This is implemented in higher-level Eye-Fi cards - Pro X2, but the availability of these solutions in our market is questionable, and the price is not at all affordable.

The Transcend card left behind two impressions. On the one hand, this is a rather interesting device, which is, by and large, a mini-computer, which means it potentially has a huge range of capabilities. However, the implementation of the software part let us down. The capabilities of the web interface are extremely meager and it is not without errors, not to mention trivial typos. Working with native mobile applications seems simpler, but it’s not entirely clear what the point is, say, in transferring photos from a camera to a smartphone... Well, don’t forget that such an SD card requires special attention to the continuity of the power supply, which means , which essentially means you have to put the camera into manual shutdown mode to prevent this from happening automatically. Users with sufficient experience, if desired, will not have any difficulty finding information on the Internet on hacking such cards, which will allow them to gain root access to the “internal” OS and configure the device almost any way they want. However, this topic is already beyond the scope of this material. Well, I would like the manufacturer to maximize the functionality, given that all the possibilities for this are available.

The first thing I remembered when I got acquainted with the hero of today’s review was the well-known phrase: “What has technology come to!” Indeed, the ability to merge technologies is very exciting. SanDisk has pleased us with the creation of a wireless flash drive called Eye-Fi, which allows you to automatically transfer just taken pictures and videos to your computer, as well as publish them on social networks. Today, the hobby of photography is very popular; every person is familiar with the basics of photography. I think the regular process of manually transferring images from the drive to the computer is tiring for many. Now, thanks to the SanDisk Eye-Fi memory card, it is possible to wirelessly teleport images and videos from the camera to a PC using the Wi-Fi module built into the card. This card is powered directly from the camera, its operation does not depend on the characteristics of the device, it can function perfectly both in a DSLR and in a simple point-and-shoot camera. In general, the device is clearly impressive, we will continue to get to know it further in this review.

Specifications

Manufacturer: Sandisk

Type: Secure Digital HC

Memory capacity: 8 GB

Speed ​​class: Class 4

Additionally: built-in Wi-Fi adapter

Format: FAT 32

Supply voltage: 3.3 V

IEEE 802.11b standard: Yes

IEEE 802.11g standard: Yes

IEEE 802.11n standard: Yes

Retractable protection tongue: Yes

Color: red

Card size: 3.2x2.4cm

Package size: 12.5×10×1.5 cm

Packaging and equipment

The device is delivered to the market in a very compact box made of fairly high-quality cardboard.

Equipment:

SanDisk Eye-Fi Card

Memory card reader

Brief instructions

Externally

SanDisk Eye-Fi memory is no different from a regular SD memory card and is a rectangular plate.

The device is made of matte red plastic, thanks to which the card cannot be confused with ordinary cards. The front side contains a sticker with the name and some information about the model. The left edge of the device contains a retractable security tab.

The body of the card reader included in the kit is made of matte white plastic.

On the front panel there is only the manufacturer's name.

The back side contains a sticker with information about the device.

It is worth noting that the card reader is quite large.

Both devices are made of high-quality materials, there are no complaints about assembly.

In progress

The device is very easy to use; for successful operation it is worth making some settings. Initially, you need to register on the www.eye.fi service, then install the software from the card using a card reader: insert the device into a free USB port and carry out the installation.

Changes to the Wi-Fi module configuration can only be made when local connection. Eye-Fi Center is a convenient panel for setting up wireless device. So, after completing these simple steps, the card is completely ready for use in a camera or video camera. The device is able to connect to both the only “safe” and the first available wireless network.

Notifications about new photos will be sent by mail or SMS, as well as via social services Twitter and Facebook. If the connection is lost, the copying will be delayed until the next time the connection is established. Also, if the space on the card runs out, the old photos are automatically transferred to the computer and the space is replaced with new ones - a very convenient function of endless memory. Files can be transferred not only to a PC, but also to a tablet or smartphone, which is very convenient to use, because at any time you can transfer pictures to a handy device and not worry about free space on the map.

The transfer of images to the computer is carried out instantly, I did not notice any slowdown in the process or long transfer of even heavy files. Reading through the standard adapter is at 16.5 MB/s, and writing is 11.5 MB/s.

Bottom line

The SanDisk Eye-Fi + Wi-Fi (SDHC) 8 Gb memory is an amazingly convenient device that can make life easier for people who at least occasionally engage in photography. The features of the device are: wireless transmission photos and videos from the camera to a PC, tablet or smartphone. An excellent tool for automatic Reserve copy, organizing and sharing photos and videos. It is very convenient to use the gadget while traveling. The price of the card is around 3,000 rubles, which is several times higher than that of traditional SDHC media, however, once you buy it, you will forever forget about the lack of space - it is clear that the new SanDisk product is worth the money.