The iSight Express and the iSight Extreme

So, as you prob­a­bly know, we do a lot of iSight-enabled iChat AV ses­sions with Grandma. On our end, we have the iSight attached to an iBook on a wire­less net­work, so we just wan­der around after the boy (nee Grand­son) and Grandma watches. He can go to the base­ment, to the bed­room, or even out­side, and we can follow.

And yet, the iBook is unwieldy. In a moment of frus­tra­tion as I shifted the a-bit-more-than-warm iBook around on my knee while try­ing to keep the boy in frame, it occurred to me… this would be bet­ter if it were a video camera.

The iSight Express would be an iSight cam­era, a WiFi con­nec­tion, and two LCD pan­els back to back. It is okay if they are small, maybe 320 x 240. You point the cam­era at your sub­ject, and you see them in the LCD fac­ing you. They, in turn, see the other end of the con­ver­sa­tion in the LCD fac­ing them. All of this gets sent via WiFi to your com­puter, which is man­ag­ing the connection.

The iSight Extreme is sim­i­lar, except that it is a full client on the net­work, nego­ti­at­ing its own IP address, and mak­ing its own con­nec­tions, no com­puter needed.

If Apple isn’t work­ing on this yet, they should be.