Technology

Videopanoramas camera is composed by three modules, a camera head with three image sensors, a recording unit with built-in storage and battery, and a removable touch screen. The touch screen can be removed in some applications when it is not needed, for example for video surveillance, where the camera can be managed remotely.

Workflow

The images captured with Videopanoramas camera do not require any treatment or post-production work. The spherical 360 degree images are composed automatically in the camera, and can be transferred directly in JPEG format (single images) or MP4 (videos or timelapse). Anyway, internally, the camera records the images in a special format with the separated images from each sensor. These original captured files can be extracted from the camera and open with Videopanoramas player for Windows, for example, to make any adjustment in the stitching, to extract the individual images of each sensor, to extract all exposure levels of a HDR image, or to extract single frames from a video file.

Hardware specifications

  • Optical: 5MP image sensors with high quality lens
  • Removable 5" LCD TFT display 640x480 pixels
  • Resistive touch screen interface
  • Internal storage: 128 GB SSD
  • Built-in magnetometer
  • Wifi connection
  • Ethernet connection
  • USB 2.0 connection
  • HDMI output (for real time viewing)
  • Bluetooth connection *
  • Battery: 12v LiFePo4 3300mAh (3 hours autonomy)

* The plan is to build a mobile app to control the camera and manage capturing remotely, but this option will be developed after all the other main features.

Camera body

  • Dimensions:     camera head:   60mm x 64mm x 98mm
                              recording unit:   80mm x 120mm x 140mm
  • Weight:  1.2 Kg aprox. (head + recording unit + touch screen)
  • Material: Aluminum housing
  • Protection (camera head):  IP66
  • Mount: 1/4" thread

Capturing features

  • Field of view:  Spherical 360 x 162 degrees (some hardware manufacturers would announce 360 x 324 degrees, but this is a bad nomenclature, the correct way to speak about field of view is 360 x 162 degrees), this is about 95% of the whole view.
  • Resolutions:  (5MP) 5600 x 2800 pixels at 10 FPS
                          (3MP) 4600 x 2300 pixels at 15 FPS
                          (1.3MP) 2800 x 1400 pixels at 30 FPS
  • Capturing modes: Single image, timelapse, video
  • Programmable shooting timers
  • Noise reduction mode (for single image capturing)
  • HDR mode (for single image capturing)
  • Programmable exposure, brightness, white balance, saturation
    and sharpness

Software

  • Updatable firmware
  • Possibility to add customized features and options in the interface of the camera as request.
  • The Videopanoramas player (for Windows OS) can be used to manage the camera and preview images through Wifi connection or Ethernet.
  • An API library can be released to manage the camera from Windows applications.
Screen capture of touch screen of the camera (click to see the video)

* Specifications subject to changes, project under development...