Tag: Software

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Hero 4 Black Genlock

Hero 4 Black genlocking is demonstrated in the video. The system uses MewPro 2 and up-coming sync signal generator.

The prototype system consists of a sync generator (at the left), three GoPro Hero 4 Black + MewPro 2’s, cables etc. And it is perfectly controlled by an IR (Infrared) remote as in the clip : Power On – Mode Change – Start Recording – Stop Recording – Power Off. The prototype as well as up-coming sync generator is based on Arduino Mega 2560 and will be an open hardware/software as our other products.

Note: The system will work with any number of cameras but can only shoot in the following two video modes (the restriction is due to camera’s firmware).

  • 2.7K 4:3 30fps NTSC / 25fps PAL
  • 1440p 60fps NTSC / 50fps PAL

H4B-genlock
H4B-genlock-w-txt

We are currently designing a PCB for the product so please wait until it appears in our shop. 🙂

This post is outdated. We are already selling Iliad in our shop. Please refer more recent post for info.

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MewPro/Genlock in the Aleutian Islands

There’s a project in NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) that uses our MewPro + Genlock system.

The researchers made a special housing for GoPro cameras and the system: It has bulkhead connectors for water-proof cables and these enables control of cameras from the ship.

The following video shows underwater of the Aleutian Islands, USA.


(Video and photo by courtesy of Mike Levine, Contractor to NOAA AFSC RACE)

The interesting deep-sea clip was taken during a trip reported also in their official blog:
http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/Science_blog/StellerSeaLions_1.htm

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DIY Geofence Hardware and Software

A DIY stand-alone unit for watching geofence breach is made by using Teensy 3. The general purpose device, which has a similar functionality of geofence or sending notification by location on smartphones, is also usable to automatically start/stop recordings of GoPro camera with aid of MewPro.

Details

Although each MewPro has a microcontroller (AVR) on its board, we decided to separately use Teensy 3 (Cortex-M4) that can do with double-precision floating-point (64 bits) numbers. Implementing geofence as stand-alone enables the unit to control not only GoPro cameras but also other equipments (such as LEDs and buzzers) with regard to preconfigured geofence, which can be a union of convex polygons.

Testing Geofence
Connect to LED to Test Geofence Function

To test the unit we connect an LED to its alarm pin: SHUTTER signal (red wire) at the audio mini plug in the photo becomes LOW/hi-Z if it enters/exits the geofenced area. We use digistump’s ATtiny85 Digispark board to watch the pin and to turn on/off the LED, however, you can use any device such as GoPro+MewPro or something as Digispark.

The following is a teardown of the DIY unit.

Geofence Module Teardown

Resources

The module is an open software/hardware. The schematics and the source code with a simple README document are downloadable from:

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Mani Wheel Rig

A detail of our open-hardware rig, Mani Wheel, which you can make or buy, is addressed in this article.

In the previous post we published two 360-degree videos of Japanese Cat/Rabbit Islands. These clips are made by using the following hardware and software:

Hardware

  • 6x GoPro Hero 3+ Black
  • 6x MewPro Cable
    Plug’s enclosures removed. A newly designed, dedicated PCB disk is utilized to simplify solder works.
  • 3D printed top/bottom disk lids made of ABS
    (STL/IGES files are downloadable from our GitHub repo.)
  • GoPro Dual Hero
  • 2x MewPro Genlock Dongle
  • Adafruit Bluefruit LE UART Friend – Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
    Connected to the serial lines (RxD/TxD) of Dongle #0. And the whole system is controlled through BLE from the terminal application installed on iPhone or PC. (Note: In GenlockDongle source code, the serial baud rate must be modified from the default of 57600 to 9600 for Dongle #0.)

Software

  • Kolor Autopano Video Pro
    Exact sync is detected by the software automatically.
  • YouTube 360 Video Metadata Tool
    This is necessary for uploading 360-degree video to YouTube.

The hardware items are connected as in the following figure:
no-master-6-cam

In addition to the above diagram we actually used

to supply 5V power to Dual Hero and Dongles through the USB connector. However, this can be done by any USB battery pack.

The following is top view of our Mani Wheel Rig:
topview
Two Dongles (black small/large casings) and a Lipo battery can be seen. Next photo shows the inside of Dongles’ casings:
topview2inside
Opening and removing the orange top lid enables us to look inside of the hexagonal cavity consisting of six cameras. There sits a dedicated PCB disk to simplify soldering:
toplidremoved

Note: We can sell 3D printed lids (top and bottom) and dedicated PCB disks starting from 200.00USD. Please ask us for detailed pricing of the items and/or extra soldering charge if you don’t want to do it by yourself.

UPDATE 22 May 2017: We received a STL file from Julien Brault-Chénier at LEOFILMS.CA. Thank you, Julien! The file can be 3D-printed and fit to use in place of our top lid so that the Mani Wheel rig can hold one more camera for shooting the zenith. (The STL file is also downloadable from our GitHub repo.)