Notices

Okay, I have this N810 and there's this application called Hike. It's a great idea - take a picture of a park map and calibrate it on the fly with the GPS. Amazing, wonderful idea, except the camera on the N810 produces pictures that are even smaller than the screen, near useless for viewing a map. Great app; no way to use it. Very frustrating.

So, lacking a camera that can send real photos to my N810 via bluetooth (they make them, but I'm not impressed with the camera-side spec's) I'm thinking that, maybe, I can get something better out of the N810's camera.

What I'm thinking is taking the video camera (in video mode) and grabbing a bunch of frames as the camera plays over a scene (like the park map) and then automatically stitching them together into one big image. In use, you would start the app, slowly pan the n810 camera over the target is some preset fashion, and then let the n810 chunk the results into a single large image.

I know, I could carry a couple of usb cables, and an adapter, and use a real camera, then transfer the image, or start swapping around micro-SDs and adaptors... but we're talking about going for a hike - it's a little cumbersome. Besides, there has to be some use for that N810 image sensor, besides taking pictures of your nose.

I know, I'm asking a lot, but has anyone heard of some Linux projects that might sorta work like that... video frame grabber to composite image stitcher? Something that is light enough for the N810 to maybe run? Has anyone managed to capture video from the sensor? If I can get the data out and a way to process the images, I'm not opposed to writing some Perl script to hack the two together.

David...

I don't think there is enough processing power to do that on the fly. I am sure someone made a project like that in Processing.

Just to follow-up my original post...

In doing some research, I've found: Videoorbits from: http://comparametric.sourceforge.net

Which basically does what I want. It takes a video (in a very specific frame by frame format) and runs it through a 4-stage process, ending with a single composite image.

Now, I have no idea how fast it runs, or if it can even run at all on something like an N810, but I'd like to find out. However, it's a little beyond my current abilities.

As I see it, here are the steps to get there:

1) compile videooribits on the N810 (I've not set up a sandbox nor compiled anything yet.)

2) get some app that can pull a video stream from the N810 camera.

3) convert that video stream to the format required by videoorbits.

4) run the video through the conversion process

5) convert the resulting image into something that Hike can use.

So, okay, this is a lot of work... Currently, it is also beyond my skill level and I'm not sure how to proceed. I could just go off and, in my spare time, tinker with the various steps, learning as I go, until I get it working. Which, given my spare time allotment, will leave me with a working system sometime after Warp-drive technology is obsolete (just being honest). Another option would be to start a project in the Garage with the hopes of attracting more skilled individuals. Or, I could just let it go in the hopes that someone else might read this and be interested??????

Maybe if someone could just do step 1 for me? Pretty please? An Armel deb of the videoorbits package? Once I get the command-line vidoeorbits tools in the N810, I can figure out whether or not the basic process is possible with limited memory and processing power.

David...
(still trying to find some use for that video camera, besides taking pictures of my nose)

P.S. "...a project like that in Processing"
Where is this "processing" that you speak of?

I guess he means http://processing.org/