I recently used our THETA robot to test remote interval shooting and automated cloud upload with RICOH THETA SC2, V, and Z1 cameras.
I used a Raspberry Pi 4 as both the controller for the camera and to communicate with the THETA camera. The RPi4 has an additional USB Wi-Fi adapter to communicate with both the THETA using the WebAPI and the Internet.
Although many robots use the THETA USB API to control the camera, setting up the software needed to use the USB API can be daunting.
For this project, I used the WebAPI as this is the most widely used API for automotive dealers, real estate, and construction. Although my educational robot will not be used in any of these markets, the test results can help solve software development problems in those markets.
There are four videos that show my solution to different problems.
RICOH THETA and Raspberry Pi Control
How to use simple bash scripts on the Raspberry Pi to automate setting camera parameters and take thousands of shots with custom delays between shots. Explains process to modify example scripts with the pre-built Raspberry Pi binaries. The Raspberry Pi automatically checks the camera and downloads the images from the camera to the RPi.
RICOH THETA Raspberry Pi Monitoring Robot with Protective Case
Uses a clear protective case for the RICOH THETA to protect the camera from rain and mud when the robot is in the field.
Runs a web server on the Raspberry Pi to allow laptops to grab the images from the THETA while the robot is monitoring a site with sequence shots.
Build 360 Image Remote Monitoring Robot with RICOH THETA, Raspberry Pi and Cloud Storage
Robot automatically copies THETA images onto an Apache web server in the cloud. This example uses Digital Ocean’s $5/month account for cloud storage.
Add Mobile Data Upload to Remote 360 Image Monitoring Robot Using RICOH THETA and Raspberry Pi
Robot uses onboard mobile data from an Android phone to upload images to the cloud using LTE data. Robot can now monitor an area that does not have a Wi-Fi hotspot but has mobile data coverage.
Lessons Learned
Untethered Battery Power Management
The onboard power source of the robot is too weak to effectively run the RPi4 with all the accessories I jammed onto the Robot. The Raspberry Pi Dramble blog has more test results on RPi power consumption.
As I normally test the Raspberry Pi when it is plugged into a wall outlet, the move to battery power was a bit of a culture shock for me. I need to be more careful to the power consumption of accessories such as a Wi-Fi adapter plugged into the Raspberry Pi when it is untethered.
Mobile Network Workarounds
Moving from the Wi-Fi router in my office to a mobile hotspot using
LTE was also more tricky than I assumed. On the surface, it is the
same, but as I’m using a Pixel 2 as a hotspot and not an actual
mobile router, I needed to type ip neigh from the Pixel to find
the IP address of the Raspberry Pi. I then used a laptop to
ssh into the Raspberry Pi and set up the scripts I used to control
the camera.
network routing on the Raspberry Pi
When the Raspberry Pi booted with two Wi-Fi interfaces, it set up two default gateways which conflicted with each other. I needed to manually delete the default route to the THETA and just route traffic from the 192.168.1.0 subnet on the Raspberry Pi to the THETA.
SC2 API Quirks
Although the last iteration of this project used an SC2, it took a while to overcome the API quirks of the SC2. Some things I had to work through:
- when the SC2 loses Wi-Fi connection, it loses the current settings and loads my settings when Wi-Fi connection is restored
- the SC2 takes at least 8 seconds to take a non-HDR shot compared to 4 seconds for the Z1
- The SC2 may respond to camera.reset differently from the Z1. I’m still looking into this
- The SC2 can only use 2.4GHz, not the 5GHz that the Z1 supports. As the Wi-Fi chipset is different in the SC2, there may be additional quirks with my specific Wi-Fi adapter that I need to look into