Patrick,
thank you for your interest in the subject and my website.
You are very welcome.
Please find my answer below.
It is rather long to bring you up to speed and save you a bit of the
trial-and-error approach.
I assume your question is about 360 degree still panoramas and not "just"
video recording.
I take the liberty to post a copy to the panotools mailing list which I
strongly suggest to join:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/PanoToolsNGOn Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Patrick White <
[hidden email]>wrote:
> Hello Jan,
>
> My name is Patrick - I'm from the United States. I came across your
> site from the CHDK forums. I initially started browsing that site to
> look for information on tethering and remote capture. I had some
> ideas for cheap, high resolution home surveillance, but ultimately did
> not invest the money as I will be moving from the property I wished to
> observe. Instead I wish to embark on a similar project you have with
> one difference: have it be mounted on a bike or a motorcycle.
>
> First, the website went silent and hasn't been updated in a while,
> life get in the way of the hobby?
>
> Indeed I lost interest in my approach using P360M25 camera I purchased from
Korea.
I will return it these days for refund. Quality of the images is severely
hampered by lots of sunlight reflections caused by the clear plastic dome.
You can find lots of example images and even a time-laps video in my forum:
http://www.diystreetview.org/forum> I'm interested in your thought process behind ultimately choosing the
> camera which you did. Incidentally I wish I had my idea months ago as
> I taught English in Korea last year and hopefully am returning next
> year. My Korean is pretty bad, but I saw your screen shot of "cancel"
> and "okay" and might have possibly helped decipher some of the posts.
>
I picked the camera from Korean company
http://pentaone.co.kr because I
wanted to avoid assembling a multi-camera array as well as the stitching of
the resulting images.
The so called "english translation" of their manual is a joke. I got better
results translating their Chinese language manual into English using google.
Also they do have extremely limited English language skills all over their
company, which doesn't really help with support.
>
> The panoramic camera you chose is way out of my budget, too tempting a
> target for vandalism or theft, and too fragile (both in a material and
> mission critical sense). Google's Street View cars have hundreds of
> thousands of dollars in hardware on them and are recording images at
> some obscene resolution at 30fps.
Forget about video. Still imaging is the only thing possible on a hobby
budget and without mad programming skills in the area of video processing.
> I found this, but the hardware
> isn't fast enough to take pictures simultaneously:
>
>
http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/diy-streetview-camera/0>
> Did you notice that they need 8 seconds to take single panoramic picture
due to synchronization problems of the USB video cameras they use?
Check out this on synchronizing USB webcams:
http://sszymczy.rootnode.net/index.php?menu=projectsYou would have to stop every few meters to take a panorama. Also they did
not even publish a single panorama they claim they took. Not very
encouraging.
> Last month I played around with motion on linux with my logitech "HD"
> webcam. Here is a result from my front window:
>
>
http://skcub.net/surveillance/06-20090826063606-01.jpg>
> I did a bit of testing myself using 2 Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks,
but abondoned that idea for inferior image quality results. Also getting an
accurate time for each image for GPS tagging is a surprisingly huge problem.
Check out Jim Watters work on panoramas from USB web cameras:
http://www.photocreations.ca/panhead/index.htmlI too would refrain from recording images from 4-8 USB cameras using a
netbook or notebook. For a decent image quality one would have to record a
highest quality USB video stream producing such a lot of data that a single
PC could not handle it. Also there would still be the synchronization
problem. One cannot "just record" a single picture at the same time using 4
to 8 off-the-shelf USB webcams. After all they are video-cameras, not
still-cameras. The needed functionality for still pictures is not
implemented in the camera firmware and therefore not available by USB.
> I wonder about the ability of a netbook, or other computer small
> enough to mount on a bike to be able to capture 8 - 11 high resolution
> photographs at the same time, which is why the CHDK option looks
> better - eliminate the image processing from the pc entirely. The
> computer would just log when photos were taken and what the gps
> co-ordinates were.
>
I am sure this setup would work. I have a Asus Eee PC 901 netbook and a GPS
tracker that I use for such experiments.
>
> The issue of firing all the cameras simultaneously could be solved
> with an arduino or similar micro controller. I wouldn't have to worry
> about space as much since the speed of a bicycle and the maximum
> distance one could travel would be limited to the endurance of the
> peddler. As far as cameras go, I figured on watching ebay to collect
> similar CHDK compatible cameras for my surveillance project and so the
> same thing might work here.
>
Depending on your soldering and programming skills you could use a micro
controller, or more simply a remote trigger. (And custom wiring.)
Check Google for remote shutter trigger. Also I am sure one could find
"something USB" to attach to a netbook for even more control. But that might
be overkill.
Triggering is just closing a contact. Nothing more. You can fnd lots of DIY
plans in the internet.
>
> Another question - since I wish to build a google-like site, would I
> need to also log the direction the bike was heading and use a compass
> to determine north?
>
Long answer: Yes. Short answer: Not really.
In real life one would automatically take all the images needed for a
panorama at the same time. Lets say a panorama every 5 seconds.
Then at home stitch the panoramas from the images and preserve the
timestamp. Then geotag the panoramas and create a nice interface for
display. Like google maps or e.g.
http://www.mapjack.com which I like
better. No (compass) heading needed for that.
I thought about the free GPLed
http://panosalado.com flash viewer, but I do
not have the flash programming skills to adopt it for my needs. How about
you?
At mapjack you can copy the link to a panorama, and the link even changes
when you pan left or right. Try it. It's the button in the left upper
corner. The link updates in reatime when you pan left or right.
To do that one would calculate the heading of that panorama from the 2 GPS
coordinates of the actual panorama and the previous panorama. There are
limitation to that approach, but it will work very well for taking panoramas
every few seconds while driving.
I am sure google uses a electronic compass with tilt compensation and all
the bells and whistles.
Plus, since I would be pedaling this bike myself, and wouldn't want to
> attract too much attention, having the cameras point down from a
> central, vertical boom would not work. I would need to stagger the
> cameras outward on a frame.
>
Check out the reflection of the real-life working mapjack bicycle:
http://www.mapjack.com/?JxGnWgs7bFLCSDsAFrom my experience when testing my setup I can assure you that you will get
quite a bit of attention. Also there is no way of hiding. The camera needs
to be on top of you for unrestricted view. Also all the cameras need to be
in one place as close as possible to minimize the parallax error which will
screw up the resulting panorama with "ghosts".
Sorry for these ramblings, but maybe you can help me to weed out good
> ideas from bad ones.
>
This is what I will do once I have the budget again:
(Excerpt from my posting at panotools. Link below.)
-----------------
A hypothetical rig:
3x 280 Euros for refurbished Pentax K100D body (Or another cheap ASP-C
camera)
3x 230 Euros for Samyang 8 mm lens
1x 650 Euro for agnos.com MrotatorRS
1x 200 Euro for Remote Timer, SDHC cards etc.
Total: 2230 Euros or 3200 USD.
Remote timer cables are plenty (for timelaps) and I guess one could hack one
to trigger 3 cameras.
-----------------
If you go for 4 cameras you do not need the fancy MrotatorRS and get a
bigger vfov.
Find a lot about this approach in this thread (you might have to join the
group first, which you should do anyway):
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/PanoToolsNG/message/31203Also read this for closeup pictures of a way more advanced (and expensive)
rig of this kind:
http://www.officinepanottiche.com/blog/?paged=3A good test on the Samyang 8 mm is available here:
http://michel.thoby.free.fr/SAMYANG/Early%20test%20report.htmlIn short: It's the cheapest lens good enough for what you want to do.
However the project wouldn't be cheap. More like 3000 USD altogether.
There is just no cheap way of doing this.
Reason is that you would need a lot of CHDK capable point-and-shoot cameras
to cover 360 degrees. Like 8 or more. Lots of costs. And you still have a
smaller vfov.
Read on fov (field of view) hfov (horizontal field of view) and vfov
(vertical field of view).
Again, Michel Thoby postings to panotools are very good. As is his website.
Please continue this discussion at the panotools mailing list.
Good luck,
Jan
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