I finally got to the same conclusion, @HeikkiH ! For me live streaming easily from a small device was a must. 2-3 years back, I tested all possible devices, but quality was so poor. Only Insta360 pro quality was acceptible for me, but itās too big sized and costs 4 times more than Z1. I was planning to build a platform, didnāt know that I need to build a device tooā¦
And I investigated a lot, tested, Z1 had the best possible hardware and static images looked fantastic! Live streaming and video did notā¦ I spent 1 full year development effort last 2.5 years to get here. After I spent 6 months effort to adjust original wireless live streaming plugin which code was open source, I was tuning it. Originally it was working only for ~15 minutes in a warm room and it shut down. Also at that time it could stream in 2k only! and FPS was unstable too (less than 15FPS)
After 6 months effort, I got it to run in 4k, also in HDR mode and FPS I made it up to 20FPSā¦ OPeration time was 30-40 minutes in a warm room. Clearly last 2 years Ricoh also spent some time on their own live streaming plugin, so now it can stream also in 4k, but only with ~12 FPS, which is hard to call even videoā¦ OPeration time was increased thanks to firmware upgrades for both plugins, but my works longer now. Because I rebuilt it, I dropped 5-6 months of effort I was looking into lot of different streaming libraries, tried to optimize and we got here now, again 6-7 months of effort. 24-25FPS, both h.265 and h.264 encoding, HDR mode, also playing with some stabilization tests (Worldlock)ā¦ Clearly I reused from earlier code as much as possible, so those first 6 months of effort wasnt for nothing. An average gross salary in Europe for a software architect/engineer is 4000-8000 EUR/month, but this clearly requires some attitude and dedicated works also some special debugging skillsā¦
Now there are other devices available, but I still think z1 is the best in price/quality/weightā¦ Qoocam Enterprise (~2000EUR) is also a good device for live streaming, I own it too, but Iām afraid to keep it running longer as it becomes soo hot. I using it to test 8k live streaming in h.265. Also it has inbuilt fan, which is extra noisy. Of course it has 1 advantage that it has external microphone plugs too. There are several reported issues with it, I feel like Iām luck that my still worksā¦
Clearly Z1 would be perfect if Bluetooth adapter/microphone would work. I tried, I was able to make it programmatically connect, I was able to listen to sounds of Z1 device, BUT microphone wasnāt working for me. I think Ricoh could make it work by a firmware upgrade.