Canon Patent Application: Hotshoe mounted external USB devices

This is a different kind of patent from Canon. It appears as if Canon has looked into USB connected storage devices, powered both from the camera, and also external power sources powering the camera.  The idea from Canon was to keep the distance between the internal battery and external sink or source as short as possible for both power efficiency as well as communications speed.

This may be interesting but to be honest - unless the distance is that critical to the performance, having this connection at the bottom to where a grip can take advantage of it seems like a much more likely position.  This in practice looks prone to weather moisture, and having it resting on the hotshoe looks awkward.

However, I do appreciate that Canon is looking at external storage devices.

Conventionally, in order to drive an image pickup device or charge a battery mounted on the image pickup device, an external power source that supplies electric power from the outside or image data taken by the image pickup device is stored. There are external devices such as external recording media. Further, there is an imaging device provided with a connector for connecting these external devices to the imaging device. The external device includes a cable with a plug corresponding to the connector. By connecting this plug to the connector, it is possible to connect an external device and an imaging device. Through this connection, power and data can be exchanged between the external device and the image pickup device.

Japan Patent Application 2020-182044