Ricoh Theta S image hosting

I recently purchased a Ricoh Theta S, a camera with two fish-eye lenses, which creates both 360 degree spherical panoramic images as well as spherical videos.  You can find out all the information about the camera on the Ricoh site here.

The images taken with the camera, when imported in Photos on the Mac, look like this.

When you run them through the Ricoh Theta app (available for Mac and Windows), they are turned into spherical panoramic images. These images then live on the Ricoh Theta360 where they can be shared with other via the URL or embedded in a site using embed code, like the one below. The images can be rotated in any direction using a mouse (or a finger on a touchscreen or tablet) and be zoomed in and out.

NEW SHOT WITH BETTER TRIPOD - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA

However, I did not necessarily want to host the images on their site. I did a lot of searching around, and there were bits and pieces of how to host the images somewhere bu I could not find a definitive solution.  

My son, Rockwell, located the Pannellum page which, if you host your images on Imgur or  in Dropbox, you can make the same spherical panoramic images and give you the embed code to use or share with others.

The steps are as follows:

1. Make sure your Ricoh Theta M camera is set up not to remove the photos when downloading them to your smartphone.
2. Take your pictures with the Ricoh Theta M.
3. Hook the Ricoh Theta M up to your Mac via the USB cable.
4. Open the Image Capture app on the Mac and drag copies of the images onto your desktop. (You can remove the images on the camera through Image Capture at this point if you wish.)
5. Resize the images to 4096x2048 pixels.
6. Put the images online somewhere where they will have a URL and can be shared.
7. Open this Web page:  https://pannellum.org/documentation/overview/tutorial/
8. Put the URL of your hosted image in the panorama URL box (real URL from Imgur and take off the "?dl=0" from the Dropbox image URL), add a title and author if you wish, check the autoload box, and generate the panorama. 

Below is the filled-in form.

And below you will see the embed code version of the spherical panorama via the code from the Pannellum site.

 

IFRAME

iPad Apps Review 1: FreeSpeech & Draw on Slides

I decided to combine two short iPad app reviews in one blog post.

FreeSpeech

The first review is the release of my son's no-cost (and no ads!) AAC app, FreeSpeech, which was created to support those with communication disorders. The goal was to provide an app that would be easy to use, scalable, and encompass new features. The team has been developing the app for over a year and formed a non-profit, GiveSpeech, to help keep the app free. They are working hard on enhancements all of the time!

The app includes a series of symbol libraries upon download, and the ability for the user to add their own icons. However, the coolest features are the community and collaboration aspects. Users can upload and share icons they create or photograph and also download those from others from within the application iteself. This allows for an never-ending shared library of all kinds of new icons! I just visited the community area and downloaded a set of photos called "Trip to the Farm" uploaded by another user. I can see the community growing and perhaps including a discussion board to include requests for images needed and users volunteering to create those icons for others.

I used the Reflection app to create a short video to showcase FreeSpeech. This is only a brief overview of how it works. (The voice sounds a lot clearer in real life than it does in the video, promise!)

Download FreeSpeech for yourself and try it out!  There are also instructional videos located here, but FreeSpeech is so easy you probably won't need them!

Take some photos in your area of things that others might not have in their region or town and take the time to upload them to the FreeSpeech community area. I am going to add some regional Cape Cod items like lighthouses, windmills, and cranberry bog to the community soon.

Draw on Slides

In the video above, I took a screenshot of the last screen of FreeSpeech and added an image to my photo library. I then used an app called Draw on Slides to mark it up. You can see that there are different colors and thicknesses of lines to chose from as well as the ability to place an arrow on the line if you wish. This marked up image can be saved as a new image to the Photo Library, sent to Facebook, or emailed. Draw on Slides is a useful app to mark something up in front of students or share an instructional image with others.