Question: RICOH Official Support of USB-C Ethernet Adapter in THETA X?

Ricoh Hardware and Software
#21

I think RICOH wants to clarify technical information for developers and has several processes to understand requirements:

  1. they check this forum and can read your post and requirements directly
  2. they have allocated time for a serious manager to discuss issues from the community with us
  3. there is also a direct communication mechanism for @jcasman and I to send information to other managers

I will include your latest information about the potential Wi-Fi interference in the agenda today.

At what resolution and framerate are you going to stream the THETA X? At 4K 30fps, you may run into heat issues. Please advise on how long you need to stream the video for.

The Z1 can stream 4K, 30fps indefinitely without heat issues, but it cannot use Ethernet.

If Ethernet is supported on the X, can you blow a fan on the THETA X while it is streaming? Or, does the setup (like on a robot) not allow a small 5V fan (like the type used to cool computer equipment) to blow onto the body of the THETA X?

The Z1 had several firmware upgrades that reduced the heat and increased the time it can stream.

#22

@craig

I think RICOH wants to clarify technical information for developers and has several processes to understand requirements

Great to know. I am very glad you and Jesse are excellent developer advocates for RICOH. Reducing development friction during prototype phase between manufactures and developers is very important for adoption. For example - I am hesitant to work with QuooCam because you have to sign a NDA with them to use their APIs! RICOH is great in that regard and your support on this site is huge for adoption. Sounds like RICOH understands this well.

At what resolution and framerate are you going to stream the THETA X? At 4K 30fps, you may run into heat issues. Please advise on how long you need to stream the video for.

We are currently streaming with WebAPI’s _livePreview (i.e. 2K 8FPS). It is not ideal of course but good enough for today while we are slowly remotely navigating the robot. We take THETA V’s 5K snapshots periodically as robot travels and download them to laptop automatically using WebAPI. We are planning to continue using this approach unless RICOH says that they will not officially support USB-Ethernet for both IP address acquisition and power. In that case - we will have no choice but introduce embedded computer into the robot, consider our camera options (make & model) and write more software to consume camera’s stream within embedded computer and retranslate it to the topside laptop

On related note, it’d be awesome to have higher FPS and resolution for livePreview if possible or at least higher FPS for 2K resolution

If Ethernet is supported on the X, can you blow a fan on the THETA X while it is streaming?

Yes - we should be able to do it if it is required for the camera to stream higher FPS and resolution. However, as I mentioned above, if Ethernet continues to work on X then we will probably stay with WebAPI’s livePreview for now because of budget constraints for the customer. Our inspection runs are pretty short (I think ~1 hr). BTW, do you think for livePreview we need to worry about the heat ? I can’t remember how long I tested it but I don’t think camera was getting hot with the livePreview

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