Facebook Open Sources 360 Surround Camera With Ikea-Style Instructions

Reader joshtops writes: Facebook needs you to fill its News Feed, Oculus Rift, and Gear VR with 360 content. So today it put all the hardware and software designs of its Surround 360 camera on Github after announcing the plan in April. Thanks to cheeky instruction manual inspired by Ikea's manuals, you can learn how to buy the parts, assemble the camera, load the image-stitching software, and start shooting 360 content. Essentially 17 cameras on a UFO-looking stick, the 360 Surround camera can be built for about $30,000 in parts. The 4-megapixel lenses can shoot 4K, 6K, or 8K 360 video, and fisheye lenses on the top and bottom remove the blindspots. Facebook forced a random engineer to try to build the 360 Surround from the open source instructions, and found it took about four hours.FastCompany has more details.

Re: 4-Megapixel Lens?

[Adriax]

Because they need to pass it through the Gigahertz. Duh.

Re:

[TheRealMindChild]

Because underneath them, they have an image sensor, not film

Re:

[bjwest]

Lenses are analog so have no pixels at all, unless you count each photon as a pixel.

Re:

[by (1706743)]

Although it is entirely possible to have the lens be the limiting factor in terms of resolution (e.g., an 8MP sensor but a "4MP lens" resulting in 8MP images with only 4MP worth of image information).

Of course, that's not at all what was stated...

Duh

[s.petry]

Flux capacitors require them.

Re:

[Skinkie]

A lens passes light, in some sense it is a filter. The filter passes through information. Typically a lens is qualified in either lines-per-inch of megapixel. How can you check this out yourself? Just make a photo of a subject far away and tell if you can make a distinction between one row of pixels and the adjacent row. Typically the light blends because your sensor is better than the lens. unless you have some very nice (read: $$$) prime lens.

But in another subject. Why is this really news? The Elphel

why again?

[Anonymous Coward]

They expect someone to spend 30k on a DIY project and then give them the pictures for free? Who thought of this?

Re: why again?

[Adriax]

Bragging rights/advertising for companies and organizations.
This isn't really targeting average Facebook users for their selfie needs.

How did they find the random engineer?

[drinkypoo]

Normally all I can find is psuedorandom ones

Re: How did they find the random engineer?

[Adriax]

Math.
And meth.

Re:

[magarity]

Since Facebook has declared text to be dead I'm guessing all the instruction manuals were video only.

Have you never seen Ikea instructions? They consist of illustrations of a cartoon figure doing the assembly without any text. It's like a Henry cartoon.

At Facebook HQ:

[Anonymous Coward]

Earlier today: Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech to the employees of Facebook.

"We shall go on to the end. We shall fight privacy in France, we shall fight privacy on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our data collecting, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight privacy on the beaches, we shall fight privacy on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight privacy in the hills; we shall never stop, u

Hey, that's pretty quick

[Actually, I do RTFA]

For a series of random actions to produce a device in 4 hours is pretty fast. I wonder how long it would have taken with deliberate actions.

Waiting for 3D 360

[SuperKendall]

What I'm really wanting is some kind of 360 #D setup - all of the 360 cameras I know about at the moment just record flat video all around, without any separation required for true 3D playback (as with a VR headset).

Re:

[swb]

You would think they could have cameras with overlapping fields of view and the software to mask the overlap correctly to provide a stereoscopic effect. Even cardboard videos seem to do this OK.

Re: Waiting for 3D 360

[jsh1972]

I have an LG 360Â camera with two huge fisheyes, one on each side, giving a full 360Â pannable view, including video. Smaller than a pack of cigarettes by about half, 200 bucks, works with other Android, iPhones, etc. SUPPOSED to work with Facebook but haven't tried it yet.

Re:

[SuperKendall]

Thanks, I'll have to check that out.

Expensive for a DIY project

[Diac]

For $30,000 I would rather buy one of the shelf so if it does not work I can get a refund from someone.

Nice there releasing these plans but would it not be better to try and design one that is more affordable to everyday people?

"Facebook needs....."

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"Facebook needs you to fill its News Feed, Oculus Rift, and Gear VR with 360 content."

Like I give a FUCK what Facebook needs.

But anyway, yeah, I'll just get right on that. I'll just run out at lunch and buy $30,000 worth of camera shit so I can help poor little Facebook keep its content flowing.