In order to implement his design, Pascal had to design and custom manufacture a digital-to-analog video converter board using direct-to-PCB inkjet printing.
Pixim's innovation is to give each pixel its own analog-to-digital converter so that photons are continuously converted to ones and zeros and the camera's microprocessor can tell exactly how fast each pixel is filling up relative to the other pixels.
As a test, I downloaded files from HDtracks.com, an online retailer specializing in hi-res audio, plugged a device known as a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) into my computer and listened over earphones.
Only a few of these modular components have been designed so far: the AVR-X (an Arduino-compatible microcontroller), FRAM-X (512 byte chunks of stackable Ferroelectric RAM) and ADC-X (an 8-channel analog to digital converter).
Case in point: the Icon iDo integrated digital-to-analog converter (also called a DAC) and integrated amplifier is geared specifically toward Apple portable devices like the iPhone and iPad.