The Incredible Multi Use iPad Camera Connection Kit

When I got my iPad I also got with it the camera connection kit. The camera connection kit comes as two docking connector adaptors, one a USB port and the other a SD card reader.

I had in the the previous year since the iPad had come out heard reports that people could plugin other devices such as keyboards and microphones into the camera connection kit. And those devices would happily work with the iPad.




So what have I had working with the camera connection kit?

Well I listen to iPad today and Leo Laporte is an early episode spent way to much time of the episode looking at ways of transferring photos from the iPhone 4 onto the iPad using apps like Bump or Dropbox. At the time I thought "why doesn't he just try plugging in the iPhone via the camera connection kit?" So guess what one of the first things I tried with the kit was? Yep connecting my iPhone 4 up to it to transfer photos.




And guess what? It worked. Plug your iPhone into your iPad using the camera connection kit and a docking cable, and all your photos on the iPhone appear in the photo import screen ready for importing.

Now you get the choice of importing everything in your camera roll onto your iPad. Or if you touch just the photos you want to take over (a blue tick appears on them) then press import you get the option to import all or just the ones you have just selected. Once the import has finished you can then either keep your photos on the iPhone or delete them.




The next thing I wanted to do was transfer images from a PC at work where I don't have a net connection for my wifi iPad to use in documents I was writing on my iPad in Keynote and Pages.

So using the SD card reader adaptor on a PC I transferred the images to a SD card. The images need to be placed in a folder on the card named "DCIM". You also need to make sure that the filenames of your images (excluding the file extension) are 8 characters in length. So valid filenames are "picture1.jpg" or "pictur01.jpg". The iPad will also recognise PNG files as well as JPG (I've not tried GIF yet).
Once you have your files on the SD card plug it into the camera connection kit SD card reader, plug in to iPad and away you go importing the pictures on to your iPad and it's photo albums ready for use.

I also have an old Targus USB keyboard lying around that I use with my consoles when I have to browse the web and send messages etc. So guess what this also works with my iPad when plugged in. It complains initially that the "device is not compatible". But guess what? Once you dismiss that dialog, and start typing with the external keyboard it actually does work with the iPad (I'm writing this paragraph with it).

In a previous post I have already mentioned that I have used the USB Rock Band microphone to record student podcasts. And that was enabled because it works via the camera connection kit.

So there you have it another essential purchase for your iPad. I'm sure that Apple didn't intend this to be so useful and flexible. But I like so many are grateful that it is.

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