Eye-Fi Wireless Storage Card

Note: This post has been edited since it was originally posted to correct what turned out to be erroneous information.   Additions are noted in [brackets] and are italicized, with incorrect information lightened in gray text and shown with a strike-through tag.

This week I purchased an Eye-Fi memory card for my digital camera.  I'm pretty sure nobody reading this blog knows what that is, but many may be interested, so allow me to explain...  It's an SD memory card for digital cameras that also has an integrated WiFi radio which automatically uploads your pictures to your computer wirelessly.  So you don't have to connect the camera to your computer or remove the card to transfer using a card reader.  It all happens on its own, in the background, automagically whenever the card is in range of your wireless network.  Or at least that's the theory.  In practice things are a little different.

I actually received two cards this week.  The first one arrived on Wednesday afternoon, and it worked for about 2 minutes before it just died.  Fortunately Amazon has a great replacement program, so they shipped one out Next Day Air for free.  Because I didn't report the first one as dead until after their Wednesday shipping cutoff it didn't go out until Thursday, so the replacement arrived Friday afternoon.

Since it's SD and my Canon 40D uses Compact Flash, I decided to try the Eye-Fi card out on my old Nikon Coolpix 5200 camera, which does have an SD memory slot.  So after configuring the card, I popped it in, took a few shots... and nothing... they didn't upload to my computer like they were supposed to.  I transferred the card into a SD-to-CF adapter and then into my Canon 40D [the officially recommended adapter has been ordered and is on its way], and it gave an error message indicating the card wasn't usable.  This is looking all too familiar from my experience on Wednesday.  But before trying to do anything else I called their tech support line and the nice woman on the other end was very helpful.  Together we were able to ascertain that my CoolPix camera doesn't supply power to the card when it isn't actively saving a photo, so no photos can be transferred wirelessly at all with that camera.  No big deal; I almost never use it anyway.

She offered me a few tips on how to get the card to work with my 40D, and we ended the call.  I put the card back into my 40D, no error this time.  So I take some pictures.  And they don't show up on my computer.  So I wait.  And wait some more.  Nope, still not showing up. 

I played with the settings on the card for what seemed like forever, and finally I see the popup on my computer screen showing the picture coming in.  But it only transfers 11% of the first picture before it just quits.  Odd.  So I play with it a while longer, and can't get it to transfer anything.  Format the card, take more pictures, wait for a transfer, nothing happens.  Do the same thing again.  And again.  Still nothing.  Re-configure the card one more time, take some pictures, and the first one starts to transfer.  Hurray!  It's working again.  Until this one gets stuck at 8%.  I give up.  So the card goes back into the computer to be reconfigured yet again, and... boom! all of the pictures transfer.  I guess it's sort of working now?

Anyway, long story short, it's got some significant quirks, and some limitations.  Its two most annoying limitations are (1) that it only transfers JPG picture files, yet I usually shoot my pictures in RAW format, and (2) the wireless network it connects to has to be connected to the Internet, even though the pictures aren't sent over the Internet.  While that may not seem like a huge limitation, my plan was to take my camera, a laptop, and the Eye-Fi card with me when I take pictures for photo directories to have those pictures transfer to the computer automatically while I'm still in the midst of taking them.  But 95% of the time when I'm doing that no Internet connection is going to be available.   Not going to work, not even with my wireless travel router.  So that's out.  [UPDATE: As mentioned in the reply to my post below (which looks like it was made by a company official, BTW), the card does indeed transfer pictures without an Internet connection.  I used it today (Sunday 7/27) to transfer pictures for a photo directory project I'm working on.  The only official restriction is that there must be an Internet connection available to configure the card for each wireless network it is to be used on.  With that said, it would be nice to have support for Ad-hoc wireless networks, and for a way to configure the card if no Internet connection is available.  (2) I still found it somewhat unpredictable as to when it would transfer pictures, waiting for between 1-5 minutes before it would start, and found myself having to remove the card for a few seconds periodically to kick start its transfer function.]

The overall idea has merit; being able to transfer pictures wirelessly from a camera to a computer would be very cool.  But the way that the Eye-Fi card is designed makes it nearly impossible to pull off anywhere but home.  And I don't know about you, but 99.7% of the pictures I take aren't taken at home.  They could have made the card work with any laptop with any wireless connection, irregardless of whether the Internet is accessible on that connection, but they didn't.  And they seemed to have botched the implementation at least to some degree even when the Internet connection requirement is met; getting it to transfer was unpredictable at best.  So I'm pretty [somewhat] disappointed in the product; they had a good idea, but screwed it up in its implementation the implementation could have been a little better.  I guess I'll keep transferring [I will still have to transfer] photos the old fashioned way [because it doesn't support RAW files] and wait for something else similar that actually does it right.  This card might be right for some, but it certainly wasn't designed for someone like me [due to the lack of support for RAW formats].