The 2nd annual 2019 Science and Arts Technology Application Workshop presented us with several challenges honed by last year’s event. We loved the Nikon KeyMission 360, but found the underwater lens compromised the experience when viewing on our Class VR stand-alone headsets. A visible thick black lens frame cut the view into sections and created a big diving bell helmet effect for the viewer and so distanced the viewer from the immersive environment.. The simplicity and the palm-size of the Nikon was spectacular as was its capture. Underwater videography is a huge part of some of our field studies, so the this key issue with the Nikon lead us to consider other options.
Like the Nikon, the 360FLY is weighty in the hand, but instead of 1-inch thick, and one inch square, the FLY HD is geometrically round with one big fisheye instead of the two lenses of the Nikon stitches internally as it records. This self, near-simultaneous stitching function contributed to our initial love affair with Nikon’s KeyMission and so made the no-stitching-needed quality of the 360FLY quite attractive. To be clear up front, the FLY is not 360. It is more 240 as it cannot capture from the horizontal midline of its body sphere; meaning, a wide swath of space below its mid section and underneath cannot be captured, a diminishment in the experience. However, this deficit weighed against a rugged, durable, waterproof design; a simple one-button operation of on-off and record on-record off, and a two hours record time per charge with no external access to the battery, meaning no battery changes, which we saw as a plus, was not enough to deter us, until in hind-sight it became apparent that the friction and inoperability of the 360FLY app, made us regret our concession.
We located 32 of the 360FLY for $68.99 each on Amazon. They arrived with no manuals and not one camera arrived with a mic plug, which meant not a single camera was waterproof, not at all and certainly not up to 30 feet as is supposedly the case with a mic plug. We now understood why we got them at such a great price, and weighed the idea of returning them, but considering what we outfitted an entire classroom for, including teachers and volunteer parents and foundation volunteers, we opted to try a more creative solution: waterproof medical tape over the mic plug hole. We tested it on one camera in the kitchen sink prior to committing to the workaround. In the meantime, we dealt with the more pressing FLY issue, Its app. The app is easily found but not updated for the last two years. It is made for Apple and “Android” iPad, tablet, and mobile devices with one major debilitating truth. It doesn’t actually work on Android devices. This mattered because we had just purchased 32 brand new 4GB/64GB octo-quad core Android K107 tablets for 89.99 each. The friction associated with the FLY app was so infuriating and unresolvable that we were forced to abandon the app and turned team energy instead to finding a backdoor into the camera for participants to access their experience footage. While at first, this seems relatively easy, keep in mind, we are talking about 32 cameras, each paired to a corresponding android tablet on which each participant would view and edit their footage, had we an app that recognized the file.
360 footage is captured using single multi-lensed cameras or multiple cameras. Both means produce separate video files that are stitched together using the cameras internal stitching software or external stitching apps. In-camera is more time efficient though not necessarily the best stitch quality (yet) and requires little to no stitching know-how. given workshop time constraints and participant exposure, quality of experience determined our preference for internal stitching, which the Nikon had. The issue we found with the FLY is that since it is a single lens (fisheye) 240 camera instead of a multi-lens 360 camera, few apps recognize the file. Viewing the footage seemed impossible, until we tried a drastic measure to bypass the app altogether. We found that the camera docked with the iMAC without issue, showing up as a FLY camera icon and recognized as a flash drive. This allowed us to access the footage in the camera. From this access point, we renamed the footage FLY20 to correlate it to the participant who used camera 20 during the field study on the previous day. We then dragged it into a google share drive file which could be accessed from the classroom by each participant on Day 2 of the event. This issue seemed the fact that the camera capture was neither 2D nor 360, captured like a 2D with a single fisheye but gyroscopic and navigational like a 360. This complicated its recognizability. The Nikon KeyMission SnapBridge app opened the footage but viewed it as expected like the flat 2D capture it was. Most 2D and 350 viewing and editing apps including the built-in tablet media viewer failed to recognize the file though played its accompanying audio without issue.
As to the classroom part of the workshop, our first concern was internet access for the classroom. Should PCSB internet safeguards prevent us from accessing the share drive files, we needed a back up. To address this, we determined to set up each tablet with hotspot access off my iPhone 6s. Our first few tester tablets demonstrated positive results. While this solved the issue of participant access, it failed to provide editing capability for participants, a disheartening dilemma to say the least given a large part of the technology exposure involved editing and producing individual 360 experience clips for sharing. Now we seemed reduced to view-only on the google drive if nothing hampered our internet access or hotspot.
To balance out the impossibility for learners to view and edit their footage, we will also provide six GoPro style action cameras in waterproof cases on rustproof dive poles, two Nikon KeyMission 360s on similar poles, cell phone gimbals for, plus one DSLR camera with a mounted Go Mic. Adults, staff, foundation volunteers and service learning volunteer students from local high schools and USF, and youth participants will employ the variety of cameras to document wildlife, the ecosystem, human impact, group dynamics, conversations, observations, technology applications, and any other topic they find relevant in their shared examination of Ft. De Soto, North Beach to which many of the youth participants have never been, though it is a vital resource of their St. Petersburg community.
Trace Taylor 