@dirkhaun XXL

While cleaning out a cupboard, I came across a device I had completely forgotten about: The 61N lifelogging camera, from a 2017 Kickstarter campaign.

It piqued my curiosity: Would it still work or did I just dig out yet another piece of electronic junk?

The bad news: The app required for the camera has long disappeared from the app stores, as has the website. Even the Internet Archive only has an incomplete copy of the latter.

The good news: When connected via USB, the camera mounts as a USB drive and gives you direct access to your photos. So it’s still usable, at least in principle.

Let’s have a closer look.

No way to change settings

Without the app, you can’t change any of the camera’s settings anymore. The USB drive is really just a directory with your photos in it; there’s nothing else that you could get access to.

From the Kickstarter page and an old blog post of mine, I gather you could set the interval at which photos are taken between one and five minutes. Fortunately, I left that at one minute. There also was a way to change the resolution and again, fortunately, I had left it at the higher resolution back then. Somehow, you should be able to record short video clips, but I haven’t figured that one out again – and that page of the manual is missing from the captured website at the Internet Archive.

On the Kickstarter campaign page, I found a comment about a name change that I completely missed back then. Apparently, the name was changed from 61N to MEWECLIP, with a new app and website, both of which are nowhere to be found anymore. So that didn’t help either.

Usage

I was also soon reminded why I had given up on the 61N soon after I got it: It’s really awkward to use in practice. First, you have to switch it on by pressing the little button on the side. Then you have to wait until the LED turns from red to green (it switches off entirely soon after) to know that it’s on and ready to take photos. When you don’t want to use it anymore, you have to switch it off, again pressing the button and waiting until it starts flashing red, then switches off.

Compare this to the ease of use of the Narrative Clip lifelogging camera: That camera is always on. Put it face down on a flat surface and it will enter sleep mode, from which it wakes automatically if you pick it up again – or double-tap it, to force it to wake up. The designers put a lot of thought into this, focussing on the camera’s main use case: Taking photos, effortlessly and discreetly. You don’t have to worry about it being on or off.

Back to the 61N. The other awkward design choice there is the clip on the back, which is really, really tight. There’s a video of the camera where people seem to just slide it onto their shirts, and let me tell you, this is not how this “pyramid clip” (as they called it) works. It’s a real hassle to clip the camera onto anything. There’s also a ridiculously large plastic clip that you can insert the 61N into and then clip that thing to your clothing. It’s a little less tight, but huge and not at all discreet.

Photos

Okay, it’s awkward to fire up and put on, but what about the photos?

What I already mentioned in my old blog post: A lot of them are blurry. As I only found out now(!) the makers already admitted this in a comment buried somewhere on the Kickstarter campaign page before the camera even shipped. There were vague promises of a version 2 of the camera that would address this, but that never materialised, as far as I know.

Summary: It’s still “meh”

After playing around with it again for a few days, my original verdict still holds: It’s not a great product. You can still use it without the app – which is good – but the photo quality is mediocre, and the overall experience is best described as awkward.

I’ll keep it around, as it may be a good addition (not: replacement) for my Narrative Clip cameras in some situations, but you won’t be seeing me wearing it on a regular basis.