5 ms·

For true panoramic images, toss this camera in the air

49 points by Tzunamitom 13y ago

deletes 13y ago
It's a camera you throw in the air and it takes a panoramic picture of the surrounding area. The actual Indiegogo site: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/panono-panoramic-ball-camera http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/panono-panoramic-ball-came...
- evan_ 13y ago
  I don't think it's 3D, it's just a panoramic image you can scroll around.
  - deletes 13y ago
    Fixed; it would be cool if it took several shoots instead. Or even better, put cameras in there instead and throw the ball around while recording.
  - gngeal 13y ago
    Why not 3D, in fact, if it had accelerometers and gyroscopes? Just throw it at around 45 degrees of elevation, capture photos during flight at a few fps, and post-process the results for a 3D scene reconstruction. (You'd have to design it much more durable for that mode of operation, of course.)
    - GrantS 13y ago
      This is a nice idea -- the biggest practical problem would be motion blur while the cameras are in flight. If thrown straight up, there's a moment of zero motion at the top that mitigates that problem, but it's still an issue the rest of the time -- fast shutter speed helps but rolling shutter complicates it. Note that you could still get plenty of parallax for 3D from throwing straight up, just not right above and below the camera path, so that minimizes the durability problem from landing on the ground. It also provides a nice prior estimate (and additional constraints) on camera poses for structure from motion as the ball has to obey gravity. Edit: On the indiegogo page they specify throwing is mostly for outdoor use: "While throwing works great outdoors during daylight, you can also use the camera indoors or in the dark when mounted on a stick or handheld." This would be due to the motion-blur/shutter-speed/sufficient-light problem.
Fuzzwah 13y ago
I dream of a weighted version of this which I can use while skydiving. IE: like a spaceball https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRUoe1nPxOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRUoe1nPxOE
jebus989 13y ago
It's a very cool product but panoramas still look awkward and awful to me.
- sp332 13y ago
  Is it the really curvy bits at the bottom that bother you? You can fix it by using a different projection when rendering the spherical image to a flat surface.
  - jebus989 13y ago
    Yeah in general the warping and disconnect from our normal perceptions; I'd rather just see a wide-shot landscape than something distorted and alien. But I take your point, I have seen some that have been well-corrected and look pretty normal so I believe that it's doable.
    - sp332 13y ago
      The trouble is that the parts toward the bottom of the photo should really be beneath you! So you need an infinitely tall photo, or a screen that wraps around below your feet :)
- nakedrobot2 13y ago
  the image quality leaves a bit to be desired... decoding raw images from sensor components is not a trivial thing. Hopefully the funding from indiegogo will go partly towards improving that.
vanni 13y ago
Original website from 2011: http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  I thought I had seen it before. So it was patent pending in 2011, guess it takes a while in Germany too. One of the downsides of the new Kickstarter/Indiegogo etc world is I keep seeing article on new "products" which don't exist yet. Interesting that the time to print time has shortened and now come inside the 'time to produce' margin. I think we need some backup words for these things, like "Possibly a new camera that can take panoramas"
  - svantana 13y ago
    Well to be fair, the camera exists, you just can't buy it yet. But perhaps it would be good to have some way of differentiating headlines about buyable products from prototypes/research projects etc.
dotBen 13y ago
This isn't really a new idea - the military already have versions of these that they can throw into a room or inclosed space to gain optics on it upon before entering it to clear it. They also have versions that can be launched over a longer distance via grenade launcher. eg http://www.epicos.com/epicos/extended/switzerland/macroswiss/products_mq.htm http://www.epicos.com/epicos/extended/switzerland/macroswiss... see also from 2008: http://www.gizmag.com/the-i-ball-short-range-throwing-camera/10399/ http://www.gizmag.com/the-i-ball-short-range-throwing-camera...
micampe 13y ago
A similar project, that also supports live video http://bublcam.com http://bublcam.com

49 points by Tzunamitom 13y ago

It's a camera you throw in the air and it takes a panoramic picture of the surrounding area. The actual Indiegogo site: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/panono-panoramic-ball-camera http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/panono-panoramic-ball-came...

evan_ 13y ago
I don't think it's 3D, it's just a panoramic image you can scroll around.
- deletes 13y ago
  Fixed; it would be cool if it took several shoots instead. Or even better, put cameras in there instead and throw the ball around while recording.
- gngeal 13y ago
  Why not 3D, in fact, if it had accelerometers and gyroscopes? Just throw it at around 45 degrees of elevation, capture photos during flight at a few fps, and post-process the results for a 3D scene reconstruction. (You'd have to design it much more durable for that mode of operation, of course.)
  - GrantS 13y ago
    This is a nice idea -- the biggest practical problem would be motion blur while the cameras are in flight. If thrown straight up, there's a moment of zero motion at the top that mitigates that problem, but it's still an issue the rest of the time -- fast shutter speed helps but rolling shutter complicates it. Note that you could still get plenty of parallax for 3D from throwing straight up, just not right above and below the camera path, so that minimizes the durability problem from landing on the ground. It also provides a nice prior estimate (and additional constraints) on camera poses for structure from motion as the ball has to obey gravity. Edit: On the indiegogo page they specify throwing is mostly for outdoor use: "While throwing works great outdoors during daylight, you can also use the camera indoors or in the dark when mounted on a stick or handheld." This would be due to the motion-blur/shutter-speed/sufficient-light problem.

Fuzzwah 13y ago

I dream of a weighted version of this which I can use while skydiving. IE: like a spaceball https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRUoe1nPxOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRUoe1nPxOE

jebus989 13y ago

It's a very cool product but panoramas still look awkward and awful to me.

sp332 13y ago
Is it the really curvy bits at the bottom that bother you? You can fix it by using a different projection when rendering the spherical image to a flat surface.
- jebus989 13y ago
  Yeah in general the warping and disconnect from our normal perceptions; I'd rather just see a wide-shot landscape than something distorted and alien. But I take your point, I have seen some that have been well-corrected and look pretty normal so I believe that it's doable.
  - sp332 13y ago
    The trouble is that the parts toward the bottom of the photo should really be beneath you! So you need an infinitely tall photo, or a screen that wraps around below your feet :)
nakedrobot2 13y ago
the image quality leaves a bit to be desired... decoding raw images from sensor components is not a trivial thing. Hopefully the funding from indiegogo will go partly towards improving that.

vanni 13y ago

Original website from 2011: http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera

ChuckMcM 13y ago
I thought I had seen it before. So it was patent pending in 2011, guess it takes a while in Germany too. One of the downsides of the new Kickstarter/Indiegogo etc world is I keep seeing article on new "products" which don't exist yet. Interesting that the time to print time has shortened and now come inside the 'time to produce' margin. I think we need some backup words for these things, like "Possibly a new camera that can take panoramas"
- svantana 13y ago
  Well to be fair, the camera exists, you just can't buy it yet. But perhaps it would be good to have some way of differentiating headlines about buyable products from prototypes/research projects etc.

dotBen 13y ago

This isn't really a new idea - the military already have versions of these that they can throw into a room or inclosed space to gain optics on it upon before entering it to clear it. They also have versions that can be launched over a longer distance via grenade launcher. eg http://www.epicos.com/epicos/extended/switzerland/macroswiss/products_mq.htm http://www.epicos.com/epicos/extended/switzerland/macroswiss... see also from 2008: http://www.gizmag.com/the-i-ball-short-range-throwing-camera/10399/ http://www.gizmag.com/the-i-ball-short-range-throwing-camera...

micampe 13y ago

A similar project, that also supports live video http://bublcam.com http://bublcam.com