Vistumbler Car Cam

[ACalcutt]

Anybody who uses the unreleased svn versions of vistumbler may notice I have started adding network camera support into vistumbler. What I would like to accomplish with this is something similar to google street view.

The latest svn release (rev 802) contains the start of this camera experiment. In addition to this code I have started building a base for cameras to experiment with. Since this is a prototype I decided to make it out of wood. I also decided to make an octagon shape with the plan to support 8 cameras eventually.

First I created a octagon shape out of 2x4s. Each of the 8 sections is 8 inches on the inside and cut at a 22.5 degree angle. I used 1 8ft 2x4 to create this base.


I then created a bottom for this so I could put some equipment inside and not have it exposed to the wind



Since I decided to use the inside to store equipment, I made a top piece connected by a hinge. For now I am just using velcro to hold it shut, but I will probably and up getting some latches (depending on how our tests go)


I bought a few different cameras to test with. My test cameras are a cheap ebay camera (same as this), a edimax 3030poe (like this), and an original droid running ip webcam


I've also done some messy wiring so I could test this with vistumbler




This is still a work in progress and there is more to come. I have ordered 3 vacuum suction cups that can support 100lbs each to attach this to my car. Once I have those I can do some more testing

[ACalcutt]

I got in my vacuum cups today. I got them mounted, but it was raining out so I didn't get to test them yet. They seem like they will work well.

[ACalcutt]

Phil and I did some testing over the weekend.

Friday night I tested with most of the cameras removed on my car.



Then on Saturday Phil and I did some testing with the cameras



Unfortunately it seems the side cameras we tried (the droids, and the edimax at 30fps) weren't fast enough to capture the side shots. The front and back wern't bad, but the edimax camera kept going out of focus. I may try to rework this to use regular digital cameras with a faster shutter.

[Freebe]

Nice try on this one keep it up.

[ACalcutt]

Unfortunately the webcams i was trying just can't take the sideshots without being blurred.

I am trying a new approach with some cannon A720s. These cameras support the hacked firmware "CHDK" which gives the ability to trigger with a special usb cable. I bought a relay board so I can trigger all the cameras at once over usb.

I have already tested one camera and I can take nice side shots with a shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second. Now I just need a few more cameras.

[ACalcutt]

This is from one of our tests. Phil spliced the shots together into a video. We started a little late, so it gets really dark about halfway through.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWhR4twojVQ

[yongping]

That's wonderful!