Panono Camera

The Panono is an Indiegogo crowdsourcing project to create a camera ball which records 108 megapixel, 360° x 360° full-spherical panoramic images with 36 separate cameras built into the ball. It is thrown into the air and an accelerometer calculates when it is at the peak of its height and takes the photographs. Photographs can also be taken with the Panono in hand or mounted on a pole.

The results can be previewed in the iOS and Android Panono App with stitching available in the Cloud.

http://www.panono.com/ballcamera/

The Panono Camera costs €549.

Example
An example panono panorama of Grunewald Tower in Berlin taken with an octocopter (drag mouse to rotate image).

Potential
The Panono camera has potential to aid in recording, post-excavation work and and visualisation of sites. Its ability to quickly record 360° panoramic images can allow important/complicated areas of an excavation to be recorded in a moment and later viewed when post-excavation work is being carried out allowing the easy visualisation of what is being written up. They can also be put on websites to show the site to the public and aid with their interaction with archaeology.

Limitations
The camera is aimed at use by the public for recording things they find of interest and is of limited use as it only takes static photographs in one place unlike the similar 360cam.

Eye Mirror 360º Lens

The Eye Mirror is a series of panoramic lenses that can be attached to existing cameras allowing a 360º view to be recorded, it was funded as a Kickstarter Project. The images/videos can be processed in real time in the web browser version of the software or the Android or iOS app,
producing a rectangular 360º product. The 360 lens video publisher software gives the ability to sharpen, brighten, add contrast and reduce video noise and output the video as a flv, mov or avi file in various compression ratios. The software costs $99.

Eye Mirror
The Eye Mirror attaches to a DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex), video cameras and underwater cameras, it screws into the camera filter thread on most cameras although adapters are available.

GP 360
The GP 360 is designed to work with the GoPro series of camera, although a modification to the GoPro is required.

It cost $249.

Wet Lens
This is a sealed version of the lens designed for underwater work and can be screwed onto the front of many underwater cameras.

It costs $450.

Potential
The system provides the ability to record 360º photographs/videos with existing cameras, enabling the immersive viewing of both Archaeology site and Cultural Heritage. The created photos/videos can be viewed in a number of ways including the Oculus Reality VR (Virtual Reality) headset.

Limitations
In order to use the GoPro lens the camera lens needs to be replaced with a custom replacement lens provided by the company, although if damage is sustained during the process the company will fix the camera, or the company will do the replacement for a fee of £40. A firmware update needs to also be conducted.

Bublcam

The Bublcam is a Kickstarter 360º camera which records spherical photographs and videos for everything from photographic enthusiasts to baby monitoring.

The Bublcam utilizes 4 190º, 1.6 megapixels lenses to capture an overlaping digital bubble. The sensor captures 5 megapixels allowing a 3840 X 3840 as a 14 megapixel multiplexed photo to be created and has high quality low-light vision. The system can also export both panoramic and HDR (High Dynamic Range) photographs. It’s tri-axial accelerometer can assist with stabilizing images when the the orientation is changed. It is capable of recording video at 30fps at 720p or 15fps at 1080p and exports MP4 format.

The sensor OmniVision will allow the user to set gamma, contrast, gain, brightness and saturation.

The internal Bublcam Wi-fi unit will allow the video to be streamed to a PC, Mac, and mobile devices on iOS or Android using the bublApp, VLC or Quicktime. Live video stitching will be available at some point.

The Bublcam costs $699 and will begin shipping in spring 2015.

Potential
The fact that Bublcam is leveraging the Oculus Rift and Leap Motion APIs (application programming interface) means that Bublcam photographs and videos can be viewed within the Oculus Rift and controlled remotely with the Leap Motion hand tracking controller.

The Bublcam can be attached to UAVs recording both photographs and video while in the air – http://www.bublcam.com/portfolio/bubl-takes-flight/ – indeed the PlexiDrone is designed to carry the Bublcam as a payload with a dedicated mount.

It can also be worn on top of a helmet allowing wearable recording to be conducted.

Limitations
The relatively low level of image quality, together with the fact that the system is designed to create a panoramic photo bubble, may limit its potential for use with other techniques such as photogrammetry

News – Google Street View Trekker

Google has announced that their Street View Trekker backpack will be available to borrow by organisations including tourism boards, non-profit organisations, government agencies, universities or research groups. The Trekker bacpack was designed to enable the recording of areas of the world where the Google Street View Car could not reach, so that the imigary could be incorporated in Street View within Google Maps.

The Street View Trekker backpack consists of a dome of 15 5-megapixel digital cameras which record images every 2.5 seconds as a person walks forward, two GPS receivers which log the location data, two SSD (Solid State Drivves) which store the data and dual lithium batteries which allow 8 hours of recording. The images are procecssed into 360 panoramas when the system is returned to the office. The system weighs 42 pounds.

Potential
With a partnership with Google heritage bodies have the ability of recording walkthoughs of important monuments easily with advanced digital technology which can be incorporated into the free Google Maps system; and as of December 2014 Historic Scotland have taken advantage of this showcasing 16 of their properties.

The system provides quality site tours of important cultural heritage which can be viewed by anyone using the Street View system.

Limitations
As the system is ground based only views from this angle will be recorded, meaning that informaion from other angles is lost.

The cameras are only 5-megapixel, which work well for the intended purpose of creating web accessible 360° panoramas, but limits their usefullness for other techniques such as photogrammetry.

Raspberry Pi Camera Module

Although the Raspberry Pi itself comes with no digital recording capabilities out of the box, for another £25 the camera module can be purchased and used to record video at 1080p30, 720p60 and VGA90 modes and images can be captured with its 5 megapixel camera.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/products/camera-module/

This has been to create a body scanner with 40 Raspberry Pis and cameras.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/pi-3d-scanner-a-diy-body-scanner/
http://www.pi3dscan.com/

This has had some fairly impressive results using the free Autodesk recap software.

The camera module also costs around £25.

OpenROV

The OpenROV Kickstarter project is an open-source underwater robot for exploration and education.

It can reach a depth of 100 meter/328 feet of seawater which is more than double the depth that recreational SCUBA divers can reach and the battery can last up to 2 hours.

The system is powered by two horizontal thrusters at the rear of the ROV (remotely operated underwater vehicle) which allows it to move forward and aft as well as rotate, and a vertical thruster which allows the vehicle to change depth.

The system is controlled via a web interface with the tether cable attached to a computer using an ethernet cable from “Topside Adapter” box which connects to the tether cable.

The OpenROV comes with:

• Live HD video with a wide-angle lens and a tilt function.
• LED lighting which means that it can work low-light environments.
• Beaglebone Black AND Arduino MEGA microprocessors, which have dozens of input/output channels and are powerful enough computers to allow a number of features and experiments to be run.
• A 100-meter lightweight 2-wire tether cable.
• A payload area where additional hardware or equipment can be incorporated.

http://www.openrov.com/

The OpenROV is available as a kit for $849 or fully assembled for $1,450.

Potential
The OpenROV allows the quick and cheap exploration of sites of archaeological interest at depths beyond what recreational divers can reach, this includes the exploration of shipwrecks.

Work has undergone on adding laser scaling abilities for underwater archaeology and other functions.

It has its own community which provides assitance with the OpenROV, shares adventures as well as developing the system.

Limitations
The length of the tethering cable which attaches to the OpenROV limits its depth but also poses a hazard where the cable might be cut and the system lost.

It is not autonomous so must be controlled by a driver on the surface.