EEVblog #734 - Giroptic 360cam Kickstarter Prototype - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 17, 2015, 12:18:22 am
content: Dave takes a quick look at the first run Kickstarter developer prototype 360 degree waterproof HD camera from GiropticIt produces real time 360deg 30fps MP4 video with spatial audio in360deg video on youtube is here:Kickstarter Project:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/giroptic/the-worlds-first-full-hd-360-camerahttp://www.giroptic.com/http://360.tv/

author: Tek_TDS220
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2015, 04:28:38 am
content: Cool product, but the sound reminds me of the old Myst game where you open one of the time travel books: "Bring me..... the..... blue pages... the..... blue.... pages"

author: hikariuk
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 17, 2015, 10:13:32 am
content: That audio is bad enough that you really have to mute it or it drives you nuts.I'm actually kind of impressed by the way YouTube handles 360 video.

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2015, 11:24:33 am
content: Quote from: hikariuk on April 17, 2015, 10:13:32 am?? I'm not.Edit: Oh, wait you have to use Google Chrome to view it....PS: Is that an arcade machine over in the corner behind Dave II? What game? The video is too low res. to see.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2015, 12:20:34 pm
content: Wow, the 360 player must be ridiculously processor intense... I've got plenty of graphics in this machine but I can't play anything beyond 480p in real time! Lots of optimization to go, I suppose.Tim

author: firewalker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2015, 01:02:34 pm
content: This is what I get under Firefox on GNU/Linux. Both on HTML-5 and Flash players.Is it a Chrome only thing?Alexander.

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2015, 01:07:23 pm
content: Quote from: firewalker on April 17, 2015, 01:02:34 pmYep. That's what I got as well.Quote from: firewalker on April 17, 2015, 01:02:34 pmLooks like it.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2015, 02:31:21 pm
content: i like the idea, the case design is very clever, like the led matrix . this thing is full of clever design bits, excellent. but... ,pardon my french, the video is CRAP.Now, that being said : from the flaring around the lights in your ceiling : either the lenses have greasy fingerprints on em , or there is a protective film on em you forgot to remove. or the lenses are out of focus.If that ain't then they got some mayor work to do on the camera optics. i would expect at least 'gopro' quality video ( and that's not really high quality )

author: Muxr
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2015, 05:04:20 pm
content: I dunno about the clever case design. It would have been smarter if they put the heatsink at the top and away from the battery.

author: German_EE
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2015, 05:34:16 pm
content: First comment from my girlfriend, "it looks like a frog, why don't they make it in green"?

author: bitwelder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2015, 08:35:12 pm
content: Dave could have let it run for a while and the open it and measure the internal temperatures (and compare with the external bottom part).

author: Unixon
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2015, 09:03:25 pm
content: How about doing an X-ray scan of that thing?

author: Grapsus
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2015, 11:02:32 pm
content: Looks promising but a lot of work remains on image quality and audio.I'm not sure that stitching is such a huge processing deal, as long as all the sensors and lenses remain at a fixed position. Once the transformation has been computed for one set of images it could be applied to all subsequent frames and it becomes just a matter of moving the data around. Still it's not ideal, in the demo video we can see a stitching line when Dave moves around. This suggests that they don't even blend images from several sensors together, it's just three vertical stripes with data from each sensor.Edit: Don't expect the 3D view on Youtube with anything else than Chrome. Even if it was possible with another browser why would Google bother implementing it ? It's like the Maps application which became unusable on any other browser after an update, another gentle pressure on the users to install their stuff.

author: Agent24
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2015, 12:34:25 am
content: Quote from: Tek_TDS220 on April 17, 2015, 04:28:38 amHa, it totally does! Although I think the audio in Myst was even more distorted.Quote from: German_EE on April 17, 2015, 05:34:16 pmFirst thing I thought of was one of these:http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-photos/grimpoteuthis-dumbo-octopus

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 18, 2015, 01:25:09 am
content: Quote from: Grapsus on April 17, 2015, 11:02:32 pmAh, yes, true. I'm thinking of regular stitching of images that require figuring out how the images have to best blend together because the angles and field of view etc are always different. In this case everything is fixed and known, so yes, should be much easier and quicker.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 18, 2015, 01:27:06 am
content: Quote from: free_electron on April 17, 2015, 02:31:21 pmI cleaned the lenses before shooting. Apparently they are clip-on lenses some how.Yes, the video quality is pretty crap, they have a long way to go before Joe Public will want to use this.

author: mux
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2015, 06:32:29 am
content: The primary reason why this is processor intensive is much simpler: there are simply NO fixed-function video codecs for this resolution and aspect ratio. The stitching isn't a problem; encoding is. You're definitely going to need some fancy media processor or FPGA to do that.

author: Grapsus
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2015, 08:12:50 am
content: Quote from: mux on April 18, 2015, 06:32:29 amThat's a good point. Maybe they have been too ambitious here by trying to get 3*HD resolution ? Another possibility would have been to just use a small FPGA or CPU for the stitching and down-scaling everything to a standard resolution so that an integrated low-power encoding chip could do the encoding ?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 18, 2015, 08:23:45 am
content: Quote from: Grapsus on April 18, 2015, 08:12:50 amThat would explain the low resolution and quality of the video, they just ran out of oomph on their processor.And they just admitted on Twitter that audio issue is firmware. So they either:a) Deliberately shipped known faulty firmware to developersb) Didn't test the audio at all

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2015, 03:51:53 pm
content: Quote from: mux on April 18, 2015, 06:32:29 amI agree. The stitching is a red herring because it's the same for every single frame of video. You only need to do the image processingoncewhen they hit record then you can use the exact same distortion map for the rest of the recording.(and the stitching didn't look great to me...there was an awful transition band when Dave walked around it)

author: tchicago
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2015, 05:01:59 pm
content: Quote from: mux on April 18, 2015, 06:32:29 amWhy can't they encode three streams in each camera's native resolution using readily available fixed function hardware codecs, and then do stitching and reencoding on PC? That would save a lot of energy and extend battery life.

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2015, 07:52:28 pm
content: Quote from: tchicago on April 18, 2015, 05:01:59 pmThere are FPGA-based codecs out there that should be configurable for frame size.eg. This one says it can do up to 4096x4096 on a single FPGA:http://www.a2etechnologies.com/products.htmlI imagine a bit of tweaking could make it do 8192x2048 or whatever...(found via google, I don't know anything else about it)

author: bktemp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2015, 08:21:57 pm
content: A teardown would be interesting.The processor/FPGA needs 3 camera inputs. Since 3 cameras is unusal for a hand held device, I doubt there are many small processors/GPUs/SOCs capable of handling 3x 1080p streams at 30fps, so is it most likely a FPGA doing all the low level acquisition stuff such as reading the 3 synchronized video streams and stitching them together.

author: Grapsus
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2015, 10:30:31 pm
content: Quote from: tchicago on April 18, 2015, 05:01:59 pmThat's because they're looking for a "frictionless user experience". The thing has WiFi, so they want the users to be able to press a button and boom, the 360° video goes on youtube. It's a noble goal as long as it doesn't sacrifice quality...

author: firewalker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2015, 07:17:48 am
content: This gadget doesn't stream 360 in real time?Alexander.

author: Artlav
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2015, 06:03:08 pm
content: A 360* camera that can do video?!Shut up and take my mon....$499 ?!Are you shitting me?This can't cost more than $50 after all bugs are fixed, and eventhatwould be a stretch...

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2015, 02:27:00 pm
content: Quote from: Artlav on April 21, 2015, 06:03:08 pmWhy? Take a look at the price of GoPro cameras, etc. sometime (and they only have one camera in them).