{"id":684,"date":"2011-08-07T07:41:11","date_gmt":"2011-08-07T12:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Site\/?page_id=684"},"modified":"2016-02-19T17:04:27","modified_gmt":"2016-02-19T22:04:27","slug":"robotic-panorama-capture","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Site\/robotic-panorama-capture\/","title":{"rendered":"Robotic Panorama"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Devil is in the Details<\/h3>\n

\"Robotic<\/p>\n

A 12 megapixel camera can be used to collect a realistic 360 degree panorama by taking 5 rows of 15 images in sequence.\u00a0 That’s 75 images in all.\u00a0 It’s also 75 times you need to snap the camera, and 74 times you need to realign the camera.\u00a0 \"Orion\/PapywizardWhat if you wanted to double the rows and\/or columns in the panorama?\u00a0 What if the size of the panorama generated were so large that you could not read it into memory and stitch it in one shot?<\/p>\n

As you get more ambitious, the panorama capture and process becomes more tedious.\u00a0 To get around this, you need a robotic capture system.\u00a0 There are several complete commercial systems out there, though many of them have significant limitations with respect to the weight they can manage, and for the cameras they support.\u00a0 There is no surprise here, but when it comes down to it, the best bang for your buck is building your own robotic mount yourself!<\/p>\n

It turns out that there is a reasonably priced motorized tripod mount called the Orion Teletrack(Merlin in Europe) that a few smart people (Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Mantegazza and Claude Vanhemmens to name two) have figured how to convert into a motorized panorama collection systems.\u00a0 Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Mantegazza even wrote software called PapyWizard<\/a> which guides the Orion through the collection process.<\/p>\n

The Merlin\/Orion Mount<\/h3>\n

In order to get the Orion to work, you need some clever bits and pieces of hardware and software.\u00a0 First, the Orion obtains its information via commands it receives on its hand-controller jack which is RS-232 based.\u00a0 The serial port is a 5 volt TTY interface.\u00a0 In order to generate the necessary commands to the Orion, you need a small computer.\u00a0 For this task, an old Nokia 770 tablet with the hacker’s 2007<\/a> edition of the OS will do.\u00a0 In order for the Nokia to communicate with the Orion wirelessly, you can use its Bluetooth capability.\u00a0 To receive the Bluetooth signal, a Parallaxboard can be used.\u00a0 The benefit of this board is that it can receive the Bluetooth commands and directly convert them into the exact TTY signal the Orion needs.\u00a0 Furthermore, it can consume the Orion’s power right from the mount itself (8 AAs).<\/p>\n

Once the Nokia is loaded with the Papywizard software, the commands can be sent wirelessly\"Orion to the robotic mount over the Bluetooth paired connection.\u00a0 Before collection can begin, however, the Papywizard needs to know what you want to capture, and the characteristics of your camera and lens.\u00a0 To produce the panorama correctly, you will also need to make sure that the camera’s lens is placed over its nodal point<\/a>.\u00a0 The Orion comes with a bracket that lets the camera slide forward and backward in the portrait position making this part easy to do.\u00a0 The Digital Rebel XT pictures on the right is shown with its 50mm lens in the nodal position.<\/p>\n

If the mount is kept level, all the pictures are acquired in their correct positions, and the lighting doesn’t change significantly during the collection, stitching a panorama out of all these images can still be difficult.\u00a0 In order for the panorama stitching process to work, it is helpful if none of the adjacent snapshots (25% to 30% overlap) contain subjects in motion.\u00a0 Stitching may also fail when there is not enough detail (control points) to distinguish one image from another – for example – in a large solid blue filled sky.\u00a0 Commercial panorama stitching software can handle most of these situations, but with a large number of images, its best to avoid as many problems as you can in the collection phase.<\/p>\n

My First 360\u02da Panorama Collected Via Robotic Mount<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Assateague Sunrise Example<\/h3>\n