Anyone try and build there own 360 view camera ball (18" housing)?

It would be nice if I could just do it with 3 cameras, but it seems unlikely. It would be GREAT to find a small box camera. I've tried one small box cam already, but the quality isn't as good as say a basic Sony with 420 lines. I suppose my other option would be to use the board cameras of a dome.

The ball will be about 15 feet up centered in a 40' x 40' square space.

There are three obvious options;

The first is to use four 1/3" board cameras as you've already suggested - each fitted with a 2.8 or 2.9mm ultra wide lens covering 90+ degrees. You could do the same with conventional 'box' type cameras but of course the housing will need to be much larger.

2nd option would be to use a 180 degree fisheye lens on a conventional camera, but the distortion can be a bit of a pain to work with.

3rd option is to mount a camera fitted with an ultra wide lens, onto a minipan (or scanner) revolving platform.

As the furthest distance to view is about 25' any option should work reasonably well.

[url] http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2005-12-07-baseball-security-cam_x.htm?csp=34[/url]

http://www.odfopt.com/

It's an IP based camera which mounts the camera on a gyro.[/url]

Have a look at this Videolarm QFID housing. Planning on using this for a parking lot application looking different directions.

Their housing can accommodate up to 4 board cameras. You choose the lens/canera combination. Dome housing is 12 inches with an 8 inch dome. Housing is all factory wired.




Maybe this will meet your needs.

Cheers......Rapid

Ge has a 4 camera dome, extreme and provideo both have dual camera domes ...

I looked at that camera ball, but it was too much $$ for something that utilizes 4 board cameras. So I'm trying to do better and stay within a budget by making my own. I'm using their 18" dome and I just found some small cs mount cam bodies. So it should be better, but I'm not going to try and get a 360 view. I've decided to add some domes to cover the rest of the space.