Slashdot Mirror
Throwable 36-Camera Ball Nearly Ready To Toss
An anonymous reader writes "About 2 years ago, Jonas Pfeil, created a Throwable Panorama Ball: A rugged, grapefruit-sized ball with 36 fixed-focus, 2-megapixel digital camera sensors that capture simultaneously when thrown in the air, creating a full spherical panorama of the surrounding scene. Now, an Indiegogo campaign aims to produce the the camera (Now known as Panono) available for about $500. The quality of the sample images is impressive: the resolution is quite good and most importantly, the stitching artifacts are hardly visible."
Will it survive more than 1 hard landing
Expensive for a 1 shot device
All sorts of mischief will ensue from this. Thought it was bad enough guys taking cell phone pictures of girls' asses in line at McDonald's? How about ball-toss down-the-blouse shots? How about tossing it over fence level at your topless sunbathing neighbor?
Where do I get one?
Two guys, one with a large backpack, are in the middle of an always very busy Time Square, NYC, NY. They look around, excitedly talking to each other. They stop, the back pack goes off and a big, rugged, grapefruit-sized ball is taken out. They are seen fumbling with it, like they are using some kind of activation mechanism. Then one of them is what looks like preparing to throw said ball in the air. The police officer, who had been observing the whole thing, takes immediate action!
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
I wonder how long before we'll have software to interpolate a series of images from the same area into a rendered scene.
I'd be tempted to get one if the stitching algorithm could be run locally instead of on their cloud.
Better hope Indiegogo likes your project or it will get buried and rendered invisible by about day three.
You have to get it noticed by other websites of course. Like Slashdot, for instance.
Crowdfunding sites do absolutely nothing to help indie projects get off the ground. They collect their cut while they make rude gestures, and that's it.
Crowdfunding sites are about the only reason why I pay those projects in the first place. If it's not on kickstarter or on indiegogo, your chances of getting my money are very close to 0.
Frankly, I can't understand why anyone uses those sites. They're going to do all the work themselves. Why not keep all the money?
For the project starter, it offers a way to host the information, communicate with contributors, and receive money. All those things take time to do on your own, and the people doing the project would rather spend time on it, and not on setting up Apache, web sites, and working out how to deal with card payments.
For the contributor, it offers a filter that rejects the obvious crap. Also provides an intermediary that helps me waste less of my money. If a random project needs $100K to be viable and I donate through paypal, if they only make $10K, I can't really expect to get my money back. On kickstarter, that is assured.
On the project's own site, they control the interaction. They can ignore annoying questions and pretend everything is going great. On sites like kickstarter and indiegogo they can't do that, and it works as a great indicator to potential contributors about whether there's anything fishy about the project.
And I also don't believe for one fucking second that a bunch of clowns can put up a web page and raise $250,000 for a board game in four weeks. The fragrance coming off that shit makes my scam alarm strip naked and run into traffic.
And that's precisely why kickstarter and indiegogo are so awesome. You see what the project wants upfront. You lose no money if the required amount is not reached. People digging into the details of the project can post about it, and you can read their warnings.
There is still considerable risk of course, but so far I've not seen anything better than this. It's certainly loads better than to just send money through paypal to some random person.
While a novel concept,
360 degree panoramas have been around for 20+ years - this is just a new way of capturing them (and from previously inaccessible locations, such as 20 feet in the air).
You make it sound like you've never seen one - or haven't understood how the ball is being used.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
You'll always have some yutz in the middle of your photo staring up at the camera with his hands in the air.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
And that's precisely why kickstarter and indiegogo are so awesome. You see what the project wants upfront. You lose no money if the required amount is not reached. People digging into the details of the project can post about it, and you can read their warnings.
Indiegogo has a slightly slimier feeling option on their projects where the project gets to keep the money regardless of whether they meet their funding goal or not. If you are supporting a project on Indiegogo and this matters to you, be sure to check out the conditions on funding the project.
From Indiegogo's FAQ.
What if I don't reach my funding goal? If your campaign is set up as Flexible Funding, you will be able to keep the funds you raise, even if you don't meet your goal. If your campaign is set up as Fixed Funding, all contributions will be returned to your funders if you do not meet your goal. Flexible Funding campaigns that meet their goal are only charged 4% as our platform fee, whereas campaigns that do not meet their goal are charged 9%.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
I made the same mistake as him from reading the summary: I thought the ball was taking some sort of video of being tossed around, which doesn't sound all that interesting. After going to the project's site, I realized it's taking 4 steradian panoramas at the height of the ball's arc, giving the entire field of view from that point (including up and down).