
Throwable 360 degree Panoramic Ball Camera - kachhalimbu
http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera
======
johnyzee
Here's what I am waiting for: The 360-degree 3D panorama video format. Videos
are recorded by holding up the torch-like camera orb which records in every
direction. You no longer just watch recordings; you explore them. On a
traditional TV, besides the playback controls, you control the direction to
watch at any point during playback using a simple remote control. But the real
experience is wearing the VR helmet which, using head-tracking, enables you to
watch in every direction during the recorded movie. You can pretty much go and
re-experience your vacation, even seeing things you never saw while you were
there in person.

How far are we from this being possible with current tech?

~~~
NakedRobot
We are nearly there. Here I am a couple months ago in Vienna with my prototype
360º video camera
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianjameswood/6103733114/in/set-...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianjameswood/6103733114/in/set-72157627444772753/)
If you want more info, contact me via 360cities.net please :)

The greatest limiting factor to this becoming mainstream is the availability
of cameras. Also, bandwidth and video capability is an issue: I can't download
OR view 4k video on my still very capable 3 year-old macbook for example.

Now, Johnyzee I think mistakenly called it "360-degree 3d" actually,
360-degree images are 2-d, they are simply projected onto a spherical surface.
They dont' however have any 3d information. Stereoscopic (i.e. "anaglyph, what
people call 3-d, like what Avatar was) 360 video is another matter, and i
don't think anyone has ever built that.

~~~
jmah
Paul Bourke has some notes on (static, not video) stereoscopic 360° panoramas,
in his treasure-trove of stereoscopic resources:

[http://paulbourke.net/miscellaneous/stereographics/stereopan...](http://paulbourke.net/miscellaneous/stereographics/stereopanoramic/)

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vacri
There is the advantage that in every photo you're going to have at least one
human supplicating to the ball :)

~~~
chrisfarms
supplicate: to ask or beg for something earnestly or humbly \-- word of the
day

Whereas a tripod 360 can't include the bass, won't all of these have a coy
person directly below pretending to act natural like they didn't throw a ball
straight up.

Great little product though.

~~~
bambax
If there are two people they can throw the ball at each other and not be
directly in the center of the picture.

Or, maybe you can throw the ball in front of you even if nobody catches it: it
looks pretty robust.

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mckoss
Very cool idea. Did you notice the patent pending? What's your thought on the
patentability of this "idea".

I know when I first saw just the picture of the ball camera, my first thought
was, "oh, if you throw the ball in the air you could take a 360 at the apex".
I then read that is what they are doing.

So, does the patent satisfy the "non-obviousness" test? It certainly seems
clever, but it also seems to me highly likely that this is neither novel nor
non-obvious.

~~~
hopeless
I think the non-obviousness part is calculating and taking the photos at the
apex of the curve because I didn't immediately get that. Also, why 36 cameras
(why not 20, or 72)? I think the bar for non-obviousness in patents is
ridiculously low.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Just capture steam in a cylinder, then extract the energy as the end of the
cylinder expands with the steam!

"Oh, that's obvious. At least once you show it to me."

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Zakuzaa
Very cool. Stitching needs a lot of improvement though.

~~~
swah
Compared to Google Street View?

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georgecmu
At my old lab we built something similar (camera + ball + throwable) 12 years
ago: <http://www.ri.cmu.edu/pub_files/1999/5/ICRA_Cyclops_99.pdf>

Available electronic components back then were way larger than what's
available today: we could only fit a single CCD camera in the ball. It did
send a real-time video stream, though.

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silverbax88
This + catapult = want.

Please don't mod me down for my dreams.

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jonnycowboy
Would be better to lock the aperture and focus for all of the elements to the
same values. Awesome idea!

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tikhonj
Seems like a really cool gadget. The resulting pictures are really cool and
remind of Google street view more than anything else. I wonder if some of the
techniques Google used to stitch together street view pictures could also be
used to improve the results from this camera...

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daliusd
Overall interesting idea but I would expect better quality from single device.
Now it looks like that each camera is completely independent - at least it is
very easy to see lines where photos are connected because of different amount
of light captured.

~~~
miahi
This can be improved in the stitching software. The fact that you already know
the position of every camera is a big advantage, so you can take shortcuts in
the stitching. Right now the stitch is probably just a spherical projection
with static image boundaries, based on the known camera angles. I see a bit of
individual HDR effects to compensate for the small sensor's quality, but no
blending or exposure correlation between the photos.

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perlgeek
Looks like even 4π² steradian solid angle, not just 360°. Very cool stuff.

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goombastic
What I am looking forward to is a walkable sphere with a projection on the
inside wall. You step in, walk in the direction you want to explore. Google
street view would rock.

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zaph0d
Much more usable & interesting than the Lytro, IMHO.

~~~
biot
Indeed. Just imagine a wedding where dozens of people are tossing their balls
as the bride walks down the aisle.

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mumrah
Shouldn't that be 41,253 deg^2, not 360 deg?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_degree>

~~~
hxa7241
Yes, quite right. Although it would be preferable as 4π steradians as that is
the SI unit of solid angle. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_angle>

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Shenglong
It'd be a lot more awesome if it were smaller. I can't imagine carrying that
around at the moment. However, it is really cool.

~~~
Game_Ender
This was a senior/masters project for some students. I am sure with more
custom electronics you could fit the camera modules everything in something
more baseball sized.

~~~
davidw
It seems like a small, cheap one might be a useful way to get a quick view of
a 'hostile' environment; be that military, or some sort of dangerous physical
environment.

~~~
mrsebastian
Yep, balls are already used in hostile environments -- and there's a camera-
ball grenade launcher, too! [http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/92192-home-
made-grenade-l...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/92192-home-made-grenade-
launcher-digital-camera-shown-off-at-def-con)

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jshort
Why does it have to be a throwable ball? I'd imagine a much better picture if
I had the camera on an extendable stick. Perhaps offering both options. I also
wish the stitching was better, Microsoft's Photosynth app does an amazing job.
An option to be able to lock exposure may help the quality.

~~~
thematt
If you made it smaller (size of tennis ball?), you could give them to soldiers
and instantly have a great intel gathering tool.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'd have thought a single line of cameras along an American football would
work 'better' for that, a sort of scan system¹ ...

¹ - realistically the scan would have to operate too quickly to make a proper
scan.

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haraball
Check out the other projects on that page also, the Augmented Reality Bridge
builder using a white board is really cool:
<http://jonaspfeil.de/arbridgebuilder>

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ethank
It would seriously make me vomit and be in awe if you could play these
sequences back in the AlloSphere at UCSB:

<http://www.allosphere.ucsb.edu/>

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Francon
Mind is racing with possibilities of what this could do when combined with a
water balloon slingshot. Wonder how waterproof and shockproof they have made
it.

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dylanrw
I'm sure this has the attention of the DOD. Personally I'd love to have one
for while I was hiking.

~~~
blhack
I doubt it. The DoD will likely go the right of micro-UAVs.

They're not even difficult to build. Give me the budget for it and I'll have
you a working prototype this weekend.

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swah
Its so cool that he lists hardware and software on the right side. (Hint: its
not Haskell)

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miahi
This + high-altitude weather balloon = nice panoramas.

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muxxa
Is that Khao Sok national park, Thailand at 1:03?

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vertr
This would be great if you could tie it to a helium balloon and anchor it down
with fishing line or the like. You could let it fly up 50 feet or so and
capture some amazing images.

