New Xiaomi Mi Panoramic 360 Camera

It is on sale now at Banggood: euro 178,46. I just ordered one.

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Is there a possibility to stitch the photo’s made by the cam and copied from microSD on your desktop? Or should the pictures always be transferred by the app in order to be copied and stitched correctly?

I am wondering how long it would take to perform the combined transfer/stitching for e.g. 1000 pictures by the app in case desktop tools are not available.

Cool! Yes there is a desktop app: http://360rumors.com/2017/08/xiaomi-mijia-mi-sphere-desktop-pc-app-updated-fixed.html

I have also ordered one, so will see which is the best way to stitch and upload and let you know :slight_smile:

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deal warning on the Mijia… not as good as the previous but still good (172€) https://www.banggood.com/XIAOMI-Mijia-170-Degree-Dual-Lens-Panorama-VR-Digital-Camera-p-1140021.html?rmmds=search and https://www.gearbest.com/action-cameras/pp_651543.html?wid=4

I’m trying to find out a good 360 camera, and see this review for Ximi Mi Panoramic 360 Camera, Tiny Yet Beefy: Xiaomi Mijia Mi Sphere Camera Is The Whole Package | VeeR VR Blog

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I would go for the Xiaomi. Right now you can pay twice as much and get a camera with lower picture quality.

I agree. There’s nothing at this price range with the quality it offers. Just wait for the right flash sale to save a few bucks.

OK I’m excited, have just received my new Xiaomi Sphere 360 camera (which cost £110!)

It’s looking really good, GPS capture and also its intervalometer can take a photo every 2 seconds!

It is also possible to turn off the LED lights.

I am going to test it out soon and will post some examples ASAP!

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I’ve also just received the Mi Sphere. I’ve already done some testing and will report later too. So far I am happy with the photo quality but there are also some dissapointments. The 2 second interval looks more like 4 seconds than 2 seconds. Also the stitching does not seem te take place within the camera but should be done in postprocessing. I’ve tried the PC app but that has difficulty with large number of photos and crashes. After the camera restarts you have to connect to the smartphone to set it back to timelapse photo mode. The timelapse setting is not kept within the camera. I will do some more testing…

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First impression of the mi sphere (xiaomi mijia 360) .
I have experience making Mapillary images with the xaomi yi (xiao yi) actioncam and also with the LG360 cam that I won in the Mapillary contest. I will compare the mi sphere with these 2 every now and then when it comes to the specific needs for Mapillary. If you want to know more about the mi sphere itself I suggest you google around or maybe just read this first so you know all about the specs and image quality of this device.

Recording
Make sure you use a micro sd card that can write fast. I use the Samsung Evo plus that should write at a speed op 90/MB sec.
The camera can record while charging. The photo time lapse options are 2, 5, 10,30, 60, 120 and 300 seconds. The 2 second interval however is in reality a little more than 4 seconds. I’ve tested the 2 sec interval mode in home and ourdoors but for some reason it stops after a while . The camera shuts down and reboots.
The camera can shoot video which can be used for uploading to the Mapillary. Unfortunately the video upload site is not able to display video. It does play audio but there is nothing to see so it is impossible to upload a video that is in sync with the GPX track. I do not know why this happens. With the LG360 it has not been any problem.
All mentioned cameras have a button on it that toggles between video and photo mode. The cheapest camera of them all (the xiao yi) is the only one that stores the photo mode settings in the camera (like time lapse 2 seconds) so you don’t have to use you smartphone and adjust the photo mode. It is a shame that you have to use a wifi device to set the camera to time lapse mode every time you switch the camera on. Especially with the Mi Sphere that reboots in timelape photo mode this is very annoying
Both the Mi Sphere and the LG360 can record location but this is only done when connected to a device with gps. The camera themselves do not have GPS recording abilities. I have not tried this yet with the mi sphere.

Stiching
Unlike the LG360 the mi sphere does not stitch the images in the camera. For stitching you have to use the app on your smartphone or alternatively use the PC software. I use the latter because of the quantity of the images. I insert the micro sd card in my laptop and stitch the photos. This takes quite some time and is an extra step compared to the LG360. The software is a bit buggy. It crashes every now and then. The good news is that it is worked on so a better version should be available any time soon.
Video stitching is also not done in the camera but should be done with the app or the PC application.

Uploading
I’m used to adding GPX info an uploading the images via Python scripts. Yesterday I tried to upload a 84 image sequence. Unfortunately it did not work. Images were uploaded but the script reported 0 for the “succes” and also 0 for the “failed”. I’ve reported this to support and hope they can sort this out.

I did manage to upload 1 image via manual upload. That worked just fine. On the same location you can also see an imaged that was made with my LG360. You can see there is a big difference.

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thanks for your detailed review about this camera and mapillary.
serious, the price is stunning, but as expected, too good to be true. None the less, the price is crucial…

@peewee32 thanks for sharing your test experience.

About the xiaomi mijia 360, I’d also like to know:

  • if the camera can record image (compass) direction;
  • if the desktop software allows for automatic straightening (levelling) of the images. When the answer is affermative, if this can must be performed on individual images or the command can be invoked for a batch of images.

The camera does record location (when GPS on smartphone is on and settings in camera has GPS on ) but does not record GPSImgDirection. It looks like the PC app straightens automaticaly. I took a picture that was clearly tilted but after processing in PC (and android app also) the images is perectly level. The PC app hase a setting for “Gyro calibration” but this does not seem to do anything wrt leveling.
The PC app can be downloaded for free from here. The interface is pretty straightforward. Once you’ve told the app where the images/videos are located it will show a thumbnail. You can then select one, many or all items and then press export selected so it stitches. (but as said… it also crashes every now and then)

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Thanks for checking. Good to hear that the pictures are automatically straightened during the stitching. Really, the out of camera stitching seems to have more advantages than drawbacks: fast shooting rate, and automatic levelling as byproduct.

Too bad for the lack of GPSImgDirection, but I reckon that in most use cases it doesn’t matter.

Out of curiosity, I tried the My Sphere Camera PC app you linked to straighten images taken with a Ricoh 360 (ricoh doesn’t provide a function for batch processing). Unfortunately, as to be expected, it doesn’t work with them :frowning:

It would be interesting to see how well the tilt correction works when the camera is subject to accelerations as well (shooting while walking and moving the camera). In the Richoh theta is quite unsatisfactory, unless the camera is stable.

Today I tested some more. The tilt correction works just fine. Both in video and in stills. Here is some more tillting info.

Today for some reason the timelapse photo recording did not stop and shut down the camera. I did try the 5 and 10 second timelapse. The strange thing is that the 5 is more like 7 and the 10 is more like 11/12 seconds. I can not figure out why they taken some seconds longer than expacted. I was thinking that maybe my sd card is not fast enough but on the other hand 90/MB sec writing speed should be more than enough.

I again tried uploading via video and found out that a small file can be displayed and thus be used for upload. Unfortunately this footage was not suitable for uplload (no gpx) so I’ll try to upload a file in the next few days. Video resolution is less than stills but I like to see how the result is.

I’ve been following here with great interest. Does anyone know if you can choose to do in camera stitching? What about stitching with the Android app? What does it output to the SD Card if it doesn’t do stitching on the device, is it simply the front and back JPG separately?

I don’t run Windows so based on the supported platforms listed at http://360rumors.com/2017/09/ultimate-xiaomi-mijia-mi-sphere-360-camera-faq-wiki-and-resource-page.html, I’m trying to work out if I would be able to stitch myself using Hugin or something else on Linux or any other way.

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As far as I know in-camera stitching is not possible. There is no setting for this and I have’nt heared about this either. The android app is no option for me because of the sheer number of photo’s . The output on SD is a jpeg with 2 circular images that need stitching.

Today I did some more testing. I mounted the camera on my velomobile (human powered vehicle) and found out that these images are not level. Last sunday I had the camera mounted on my helmet but these images where a lot more level than the ones taken on my velomobile. When such an image (after stitching) is opened in irfan view e.g. (equirectangular) you can see that the horizon is curved. I’ve just uploaded one of these images and it seems very hard to pan around because of this. Just try and you will see what I mean. So where the leveling of video seems Ok this is not the case with photos. I have not experienced any such thing with the LG360. Also today the interval stopped after 15 minutes or so. I am also curious to see how Adam is doing. Is he experiencing the same issues?

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Sorry I haven’t had time to test it yet, hopefully will do so next week!

Last Friday I uploaded a video (resolution is a lot lower than with photos). Not bad but of cource I hoped for a better result.

Today I did some more testing. It seems that the camera does not stop (reboot) while taking time lapse images when I disconnect the wifi connection from the phone. (I leave wifi on camera on but just stop wifi on my phone).

Today I also found out that curved photos I reported on earlier seem ok when I view the unstitched circular images. It is only after stitching that I see this strange phenomenon. I noticed that it happens both in the PC app and in the android app. If you click on the 3 dots (bottom right) and then “download immage” you get the equirectangular image that shows the strange curve.

The tilt correction information is probably stored in the exif tags. Could it be that the camera was pretty level when the image was taken, but the sensors made bad measurements?

In Ricoh Theta S the correction tags are named something with roll and pitch.

On LInux I use GitHub - simonmikkelsen/theta_rectify: Bash script to rectify Theta S spherical images to correct my Ricoh Theta S images - this should also work for others, perhaps with some changes.