This is kind of a tough problem to identify. It may be a problem with the combination of the mobile app, phone, and camera. It may be unrelated to anything in your control.
What I would try:
disable bluetooth, mobile data, and battery saver on your mobile phone for the duration of the shoot
after you take the shot with the SC, wait about 15 seconds before you put your phone and the camera to sleep.
there may be a setting on your phone to maintain the wifi connection even when the Wi-Fi connection has no Internet.
Thanks Craig, but these āsuggestions for a fixā are really voodoo science and are totally impractical for myself and I suspect most people: I need bluetooth on all the time for my fitness tracker watch and to get alerts on my watch when I get a text etc (might not hear the phone if itās in my rucksack). Similarly the need for mobile data for other apps. And, as Iāve said earlier, I already have the images downloading each time to the phone (so camera is not turned off prematurely anyway) and the Theta app is not cancelled/stopped, only the phone screen blanked, and only then when I can see that the Theta app has received the image and has reverted to the appropriate screen.
The phone does not need any adjustment to maintain contact with a WiFi source without an internet connection (indeed there is no such setting that I can divine). My phone is a Google Pixel 3 and thus has the most vanilla Android OS you can get, and one which is totally up-to-date.
Even if I did all these voodoo workarounds, the sheer time and effort to do so would negate - for me - the purpose of having the camera: I might as well revert to the slow, clunky method of using my phone camera to generate the 360-degree image, rather than what I hoped would be a quick and trouble-free method using the Theta SC.
The sad conclusion is that the Theta app is simply not fit for purpose. It works properly about half of the time (so doesnāt need these workarounds to actually function) and thus itās an app reliability issue, nothing that I can fix. To say that Iām disappointed is a massive understatement. I can only hope the app developers are aware and will fix this terrible app
Your best course of action is to try and find someone with an SC and ask if they use it with StreetView photos.
Although youāre welcome to post here, most people on this forum are software developers and likely using the Z1 or the SC2 as these are the only two models on the market. I also posted on Facebook to see if anyone could replicate the problem you are having. Unfortunately, the problem does not appear to be widespread.
With the SC2 and the Z1, the mobile app works on my Pixel 2. Without being able to replicate the problem, I canāt offer advice. I donāt have an SC, so I canāt replicate your test.
Itās possible that someone with an SC will be able to comment on this topic, so keep an eye on it in the future.
Keep in mind that realistically, I doubt if RICOH would fix the mobile app if there is a bug specific to the SC.
Also, note that we donāt work for RICOH. So, weāre just guessing based on personal experience, which is quite limited as our primarily use is to test the functionality of the current model camera APIs. I donāt actually use the camera in real-world conditions that frequently.
OK, thanks Craig, I very much appreciate the help youāve tried to give me. The Google reviews are pretty damning about the WiFi connection issue for all models of camera, affecting lots of owners, so that problem is certainly not specific to the SC. And the OP (Ghine) in this thread has a Theta Z and GPS issues, so that problem is not confined to the SCā¦ Iāll just have to hope that an upgrade for the app helps with the connection and GPS issue.
Just for infoā¦ the most recent Theta app update has not improved the issue of connecting to the SC camera (still need to do this in the theta app every time I take a new photo after the camera has been switched off between shots). Nor has it improved the GPS issue: bike ride a few days ago, took 5 photos, only 1 was correctly located, the others were waaaaay wrong, generally a km or so out.
StreetView looks like it might work - but will not make the connection directly: I need to use the theta app to establish the connection with the camera, and then SV appears to recognise the camera. I will experiment with SV to see if that fixes the GPS issue and report back, in case this helps someone else.
My next experiment will be to install the app and SV on wifeās iPhone to see if that all works as it should.
Update: having managed to connect the camera to Street View (see previous post: this wasnāt as easy as it should be) then I can report back that, based on taking a few photos direct with SV, the GPS issue appears to be solved. So the problem is definitely with the Theta app and Ricoh need to fix this.
Even though SV will āseeā the camera once the Theta app is used to make the connection, if the camera is turned off, I need to go through the whole pain of using the Theta app to connect so that SV then connects. But sometimes SV will not reconnect unless I restart SVā¦ Aaargh!
I realize that this thread is a little old, but I can confirm that Iām running into the same exact issue with my Theta Z1. Right down to using the Time-Shift plugin. GPS coordinates seem to be stuck on wherever I turn the app on. Those coordinates will be used for the next 20-100 pictures, and then it seems to forget even those coordinates.
Iāve tried this on 2 different phones (Pixel-3, and Galaxy A30S), using either built-in GPS or a dedicated bluetooth GPS receiver (which is typically connected to about 10 satellites). Everything (including the camera) is attached to an external power supply, so nothing is shutting down. I am using the wireless connection.
Overall Iām shooting about 2 time-shifted pictures per minute.
Things I will be testing (maybe this weekend);
A) Does the problem persist if I do normal pictures, instead of time-shifted pictures?
B) Does the GPS update if I stop/start the plugin between pictures?
If either or both of these are true, that would lead me to suspect the time-shift plugin is the culprit to this problem.
Please report back on your findings. I have not been able to replicate the problem. I donāt use the time shift plug-in or GPS map placement very often.
Traveling in Portugal now with my Theta S. I use it with the app about 1/2 the time, in 5 second delay mode about 1/2 the time. Another solution might be a standalone Bluetooth (or wired) GPS that would work regardless of the status of the Theta app.
