iOS users, try toggling on “use ultra-wide angle” in Mapillary app settings to enable the wide angle lens camera which will capture significantly more of the street than the traditional camera. This is great for street level imagery as you’ll be able to capture more context for both sides of the street.
However, one of the challenges with using wide angle cameras is that if you are mounting your phone inside a car the wide angle will capture a significant amount of the dashboard and hood (and even parts of the phone mount itself) instead of the street. In order to avoid this you want to mount the phone as close as possible to the windshield. Traditional phone mounts include arms which make it difficult to this.
We’ve just tested this inexpensive “360” mount from AliExpress (~$6 shipped) which solves this problem by allowing you to mount the phone very close to the windshield because it doesn’t have a traditional arm. The mount itself is not extremely high quality, but it is “good enough” and most importantly well suited for Mapillary use with wide angle support (it also helps that its inexpensive and globally available). You can also find additional vendors selling the same mount on AliExpress by searching for “360 phone mount”
Here are a couple photos of how it looks mounted. Let us know your experiences with this mount or if you have other mounts that have solved this problem well for you. Also, let us know if there is interest in enabling this feature for Android as well.
- Boris, Product Manager, Mapillary
