Manual control over ISO sensitivity/white balance during LIVE mode

Hi,

I’m a final year Engineering student at Durham University working on my masters project. The project regards omnidirectional stereo vision, and I am expanding on work done by previous students, a link to which is posted below for those interested.

I am currently looking into upgrading the current camera rig, which consists of two Ricoh Theta S cameras. One of the problems posed using the Theta S is that there is no manual control over ISO sensitivity and white balance during live mode. I know that the the Ricoh Theta Z1 has the same issue, and was wondering if it is possible to gain manual control on the Z1 over these settings through the use of the API/SDK or if there are any available plug-ins that can do this.

Thanks for you time,

Mike

The output of the THETA S is a motionJPEG stream. I do not know if the UVC controls work with the Z1. Do you have access to a Z1 to try it?

I can try it with my Z1 if you know what I should try?

Will MotionJPEG work livePreview from the Z1 work for your test?

I don’t have access to a Z1 to try for myself. A MJPEG stream should work, but I don’t have any experience using plug-ins so i’m not sure if manual control over ISO sensitivity or white balance is possible. I’m just trying to find out before I spend the departments money on some cameras so I can justify my purchase.

Thanks

I’m going to take another look at this question today and will post a longer response. Very prudent to assess the options.

What are the requirements for FPS for resolution? also, the stream from the Z1 is going to be equirectangular. Will that meet your project requirements?

If you run this from Linux, it doesn’t seem like there is an easy way to control the white balance and ISO sensitivity.

$ v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video2 --list-ctrls

User Controls

                    keep_format 0x0098f900 (bool)   : default=0 value=0
              sustain_framerate 0x0098f901 (bool)   : default=0 value=0
                        timeout 0x0098f902 (int)    : min=0 max=100000 step=1 default=0 value=0
               timeout_image_io 0x0098f903 (bool)   : default=0 value=0

Compare this to the output of a logitech C920.

You may be able to get more control of the THETA stream by modifying the source for libuvc. I do not know how to do this. Unless you want to dig in and modify the src, the camera may not meet your requirements. I’m not sure it can do this even if you modify the source.

Thanks your help Craig, it looks like i’ll have to find a different camera.

If you find a suitable camera, please post what you find. I’m assuming that you’re running the project on Linux. There might be more UVC controls for the THETA on Mac or Windows, but I haven’t checked.

You may find options by searching for “industrial 360 camera”. I’m not familiar with the “industrial” camera options.