Comments on: Build a Google-style panorama rig for $300

By: Travis

Travis — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 21:11:02 +0000

Does anyone know of any way or commercial available software to stitch video together. I have six wide angle video feeds taken at the same time and I want to stitch them into a 360 VR type video? Any advice or suggestions?

By: rasz

rasz — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:28:09 +0000

@Chris
>You could do fine with four used $50 Nikon
>Coolpix cameras and hacked peephole fisheye
>lenses. Put them in fast shutter mode and you
>can race while taking pictures.

how is that more money?

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:04:09 +0000

@rasz – Throw more money into better cameras, and you solve the stationary capture issue. Trivial =/= cheap.

By: rasz

rasz — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:39:22 +0000

@mrgay its not trivial, as its the hardware that limits this hack to stationary captures. Hardware, not software.

By: mrgay

mrgay — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:33:23 +0000

The hardware is trivial. Any configuration that captures 360degrees is enough. The software to link up the images is a pain.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:02:49 +0000

once again the do’ers out think the thinkers. guys i am only scratching the surface of projects like this in my head but all of the idea presented here seem more reasonable then the approach taken.

Except that the guy actually did it, and everyone here is just talking smack.

By: MrX

MrX — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:26:26 +0000

Why can’t we use a rotating camera instead? I don’t see a problem at all if the shutter speed is quick enough and assuming photos are taken day light which provides a lot of lum.

By: captain

captain — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:21:44 +0000

Is this the best you all can do? Where is my holodeck? 360 views are nice, but want a holodeck-style rig like the one on Star Trek. Can ANY of you geniuses pull something like that off?

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:31:22 +0000

Lets see if I could be a average hackaday commenter… “I didn’t do that, but I could do it better, but I wont”

By: calebkraft

calebkraft — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:18:52 +0000

What about a reflective dome with a single camera? We used to do that all the time for panoramas, Sure you get a lower overall resolution, but no stitching, fast results.

By: Hackius

Hackius — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:35:28 +0000

Really stop hating on the man. It’s a proof of concept.

By: rasz

rasz — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:58:43 +0000

ideally you would want a hardware solution, like the one google uses (ladybug2/ladybug2). $10,000 last year including software.

By: kyle

kyle — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:45:30 +0000

once again the do’ers out think the thinkers. guys i am only scratching the surface of projects like this in my head but all of the idea presented here seem more reasonable then the approach taken.

one thing i do see as a sharp contrast is that each of your solutions would require substantially more software and hardware on the processing side. though i really doubt mr. sam wouldn’t shell it out

but i digress, anyone got a quote on the hardware to dump video, process the pics for the best and nearest result to each ‘tick’ and store enough of them to compose a decent sized hotzone (say we just do several city blocks per local system)

I would guess several million to develop the software side and if you were aloud to use off the shelf hardware about a grand or so for the truck mount unit and if you wanted to store iraq as it was when the last truck drove by another couple million on hard drives and networks

of course these numbers are for us doing the job, they will pay someone 10 times that for half he system then scrap it

By: M4CGYV3R

M4CGYV3R — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:04:13 +0000

Get 4-8 of the Flip Video UltraHD cams, $250 each new, much cheaper used, 2 hours of HD video on solid-state memory with built-in USB. You could probably rig some software to dump the video every x minutes and pick frames it likes for whatever features you want. As long as 30fps isn’t too slow it should be fine at most speeds.

By: rasz

rasz — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:04:50 +0000

From what I understood he cant take ANY pictures while moving because cameras constantly take pictures during this 8 seconds and software later picks the best ones (focus/light). This might be a direct effect of choosing one of the crappiest webcam vendor possible :).

M$ Live search something blabla meetoo technology is powered by EveryScape. They use Nikon D70 with Sigma 8mm F3.5 EX DG. Thats ~$800+$370 times four = $4700 for a perfect setup.

You could do fine with four used $50 Nikon Coolpix cameras and hacked peephole fisheye lenses. Put them in fast shutter mode and you can race while taking pictures.