No, it’s not a deranged beholder out to kill the party, the Eye Ball is a prototype camera device.
Back when digital photography was new, I had friends that spent way too much time taking hundreds of shots and then stitching them together with PhotoShop to form a panoramic image. Even though applications exist which will take care of some of this for you, there still exists the problem of taking the right shots and from the right angle, especially when you are in an amazing vacation setting. One vacationer Jonas Pfeil at the Technische Universitat Berlin decided to take matters into his own hands – with the Eye Ball.
A foam-covered plastic ball covered with 36 cell phone cameras set for a 2 megapixel resolution, you use the Eye Ball by throwing it up as high as you can. The accelerometer inside detects when the the ball is at its apex, and snaps 32 photos simultaneously. Splitting the Ball apart reveals the micro-controller that – when connected to a computer via USB – will upload a 3D panoramic image that you can rotate and enlarge with custom-made software.
Pretty much everything about the softball-sized prototype built by Jonas Pfeil was designed carefully. The battery, easily the heaviest part of the device, was placed as close to the center of gravity as possible. The Eye Ball can store only one panoramic image right now, but expandable memory slots would allow it to hold more.
Pfeil is shopping around his designs and the prototype to see if anyone would want to market it commercially. As long as the cost was kept below $150, I could totally see this being sold in Brookstone to people who will never use it. Or maybe Sharper Image. Wait, no Hammacher Schlemmer.
Source: Technology Review
