A 360 rig of r200, possible?

[Lorenzo_B_2]

We are interested in shooting 3d virtual envirorement scan of spaces, indoor and outdoor. 

I have been looking at the current 360° rigs for vr shooting and I am wondering if 6 r200 could help achieve the same goal. I hope I can find someone interested in this forum.

Kindest Lorenzo

[MartyG]

Intel demonstrated something last week that sounds close to what you want to do.  A drone with 6 R200 cameras connected to an i7 computer to provide a 360 degree view and scan.  

http://mashable.com/2015/09/02/intel-realsense-drones/

[Lorenzo_B_2]

Thanks for the link Marty.

This would actually make recording very easy / effective. Now the company selling the camera has invested heavily in software development to be a software first company vs hardware producer. It's for them surely a smart move but current owners of the camera will see their hardware loosing value till being soon out to date.

My idea was to find an alternative solution that would make use of the 6 r200 cameras (flying, mobile tripod etc) and a dedicated software, considering also an open source solution for better integration / customization.

What is the actual file type spitted out by the R200? Is it editable in Unity mainly? Once again we could put together some resources to have something ad hoc developed that's a bit more free. Currently all the working models by the company I mentioned reside on their servers, useless if not used trough them, camera just about the same useless without their service, it's a thing many users are not happy about.

[MartyG]

As far as I know, Intel have no plans to open-source their official drivers for RealSense.  But apart from that, Intel do give a lot of freedom for making your own camera algorithms and using them commercially.   Some users have also had success in connecting the camera to unusual hardware such as the Arduino board.

This article by Intel staffer Colleen Culbertson provides plenty of useful technical details about the R200.

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/realsense-r200-camera

According to the article, Unity support for the R200 is included in the RealSense SDK.

Somebody else on this forum can probably explain what file types can be exported by the R200, since my specialty area is the F200 camera and so I can't help with that piece of info.  *smiles*

[Lorenzo_B_2]

Thanks so far for your additional comments and leads, I am looking forward to some feedback from current r200 devs. I think building a solid / robust indoor / outdoor 3d navigation system is a cool app to build right now with these tools. Thanks, 

[samontab]

It is definitely possible. The first step would be to create the hardware to keep them all in one place, similar to the LadyBug, and then write the software to merge the 3D data from all the cameras. Probably the synchronization would be tricky though, since they don't seem to support any external triggering.

[Lorenzo_B_2]

Hello Sebastian, I had a first look at some power battery operated pc's from sd-omega, inol and other chinasome brands. It should power the 6 cameras, then a 3d print case could wrap it up, what else for hardware?

The software developed by the first company I mentioned (beside I think it relies on kinect like cameras and not realsense) if far enough down the road, how much time would you think it'd take to achieve something similar:

recording of spaces

stitching

creation of vr tour

creation of levels to switch floors

Thanks again for your reply, Lorenzo

[samontab]

Your guess is as good as mine.

[Lorenzo_B_2]

ok thanks!

[Lorenzo_B_2]

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