Technabob » 360 degree

Tamaggo 360-imager Shoots 360-Degree Images With Ease

Technabob — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 05:11:03 +0000

With CES 2012 only a couple of days away, information about some of the gadgets we can expect to see at the show is gradually starting to leak their onto the Internet a little before official announcements are made. One such product I stumbled across today is the Tamaggo 360-imager.

This unusual looking, egg-shaped device claims to be the first dedicated consumer device which takes full 360-degree panoramic images using a special “panomorph” lens. Unlike some gadgets which shoot panoramas by slapping a fish-eye lens or mirror onto your smartphone, or spinning around with your point-and-shoot and letting it stitch an image together, the 360-imager is a dedicated camera just for such immersive images. This can only mean that the image quality should be better than add-ons for standard cameras. The gadget will shoot high-res, fully navigable images with a single click. While its not clear from the beauty shot above, there’s an LCD viewfinder built into the bottom of the device too.

A little Googling turned up this product page which details the nifty sounding gadget’s specs, which include a 14 megapixel resolution, autofocus, and the ability to automatically detect whether you want to shoot a 360 degree, horizontal or vertical panorama. It’s also got Wi-fi and Bluetooth wireless connectivity in addition to a USB port. At this point it doesn’t look like it can shoot video, but the panoramic images it shoots look impressively sharp and bright.

No word yet on pricing or a release date, but I expect that all will be revealed next week on the CES show floor. Keep an eye out on Tamaggo’s website for more details.

Throwable Panoramic Ball Cam Gives You a 360 Degree View

Conner Flynn — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 17:00:35 +0000

Smartphones are great for snapping pictures, but what if you want the shot from more than one angle? Well, that’s what the Panoramic Ball Cam is for. It has 36 mobile phone cameras built in, so you can just throw it in to the air and capture 360-degree panoramic photographs.

Just throw it up and once it reaches its highest point, all 36 cameras take a pic and all you need to do is catch it. Maybe in the future, all sports will have camera balls like this so we can see instant replays and other stuff from every angle.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

After you take the pics, just download them to a computer and it stitches them together into a panorama. The Panoramic Ball Cam was created by Jonas Pfeil, Kristian Hildebrand, Carsten Gremzow, Bernd Bickel and Marc Alexa. It was programmed using C, C++, QT, and OpenCV, and the pictures that it takes are pretty impressive. No word on if or when this gadget might hit the market, but I’m sure it won’t be cheap.

[via SlashGear via Geeky Gadgets]

GoPano micro Captures 360-degree iPhone Video

Shane McGlaun — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 16:20:56 +0000

I will admit that I am not really sure why you would want to be able to record 360-degrees all around your iPhone in most instances. I guess if you wanted to shoot a panorama it might be cool. A product concept has surfaced on Kickstarter called the GoPano micro.

It’s a little gizmo that clips to a case on your iPhone 4 and fits over the camera lens. The device will let you shoot panoramic video all around your iPhone at the same time. A special app lets you view video from any perspective. You can also use the device to upload the 360-degree video to your website with a special web platform. I guess that would be cool for car salesmen or realtors that want to show off a product easily online.

The GoPano micro needed $20,000 to get the product off the drawing board into the real world. As of now, it has nearly $30,000 and still has 38 days to go before the project is funded and the product goes into production, so it’s pretty much a sure thing now. You still have time to back the product and get one if you want. A $50 or greater pledge will get you one of the initial batch.

Sony 360-Degree Volumetric Display: the Stuff Sci-Fi Dreams Are Made of

Technabob — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:33:47 +0000

Sony just introduced a video demonstrating this amazing new 360-degree display technology that’s something you might find in a James Cameron movie.

The new autostereoscopic display projects 360 individual slices of an image onto an array of special LEDs, providing a volumetric display you can walk around and view from any angle – without glasses. It can even recognize gestures, allowing you to manipulate the object displayed on screen.

Check it out in the demo video below:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

If you happen to be at SIGGRAPH 2010 in Los Angeles between July 25th and 29th, you’ll be able to see the Sony 360-degree display in action at the Emerging Technologies section of the show.

[via The Awesomer]

Dynascan: 360-Degree LED Television

Technabob — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 23:05:26 +0000

Designed primarily for commercial installations such as in shopping malls and at special events, these LED-based televisions can display 360-degree panoramic video.

Dynascan’s systems display video all the way across the surface of a cylindrical fixture, using thousands or super-bright LEDs to produce an image. Dynascan developed a proprietary technology which spins LEDs around a drum to produces all light colors at the same pixel location, rather than using clusters of adjacent red, green and blue LEDs, which is typical in large color LED systems. The result is a much finer level of detail and better color accuracy than could be achieved with a standard grid of LEDs.

The displays have already been featured in aiports and malls all around the world, so it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing these all over the place.