[OSM-newbies] DIY Streetview Camera - Was: Streetview / OSM Integration

[Sebastian Arcus]

On 15/05/13 09:51, Florian Lohoff wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 02:31:34PM -0400, Tac Tacelosky wrote:
>> One issue, though, is that the camera is very expensive (around $17,000).
>>   I've been driving around the DC area, and have collected about 15,000
>> images so far.  We're still figuring out how to manage them, even at that
>> relatively low number, processing them and uploading them to Amazon's s3
>> can be very time-consuming.
>
> I have been thinking about putting together a camera rig with used
> pocket cameras on the roof of the car to make Streetview like 360°
> Images.
>
> For a while i thought about using pocket cameras like the PowerShot G3
> ff. and mounting 6 of them in a 60° angle on a plate on top of the car.
>
> Then using hugin to make 360° images as the overlap is the same for
> all images this should be an easy task.
>
> The problem with that i have identified is Synchronous shutter release.
> Pocket cameras tend to have a long shutter delay and one could easily
> only trigger it via USB (Or by soldering wires to the shutter release
> button). So triggering like 5-6 Cameras at once would be near to
> impossible. Most likely this is the cause Google uses video not still
> imagery at least as far as i know.
>
> So i thought about using USB Video Cams like the Microsoft HD 1) stuff.
> With HD video at 1920x1080 and most likely a much larger focal length
> so one would need more cameras for getting the 360° panorama. Getting
> those images together would be more difficult.
>
> Problem with the Microsoft HD cam could be autofocus you dont want at
> all to happen. I am unshure whether that could be disabled.
>
> Flo
> 1) http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/lifecam-cinema
>

As far as I know, autofocus can be disabled on most usb web cams that 
have it. At least under Linux. The Linux uvc development list 
(http://www.ideasonboard.org/uvc/) is a really good place to get more 
info. One word of warning about the MS LifeCam Studio and MS LifeCam 
Cinema: they both seem to have an inbuilt bug/feature which makes them 
request all available USB bandwidth, even if they don't need it, even if 
they are set on low resolution, even if they work in mjpeg. That makes 
using more than one of these cameras on the same USB root hub 
impossible. Extra PCI or PCI-e usb cards would solve this problem I 
believe - if one operates them from a desktop. I think there is 
somewhere a PCI-e usb expansion card with 4 usb root hubs (chips) on 
board - which would allow 4 extra cameras to be connected.

Sebastian