diy - DIY & Electronics

Why not just webcams? They're common and there should be software readily available to deal with them.

>>899
The only issue with the cellphone cameras is that they all have terribly nonstandard interface and the electronic knowledge required to connect them to some SOC is quite difficult.
>>901
is your best bet
If you have enough money this company is doing some cool things around 360° video

Have a look at how the Pano Pro works. You use one camera with a curved (parabolic?) mirror to get a single image which you then unwrap into a 360-degree panorama.

>>903
Probably the best way.

>>901
Probably a cheaper way, especially if you can't build the controls for a mirror like that. Although, with the right software and two 555s and a servo, you could probably control the mirror fine- that's not a bad electronics intro- do you have any technical background at all?

If you want to stream data from webcams, my advice is to not use a raspi, its USB stack is crap (as in, it has documented bugs but the chip manufacturer gives 0.0 soykafs). You could probably use something comparable, though (cubieboard, banana pi- not actually sure raspi 2 has any bugs), many go ahead and compress data onboard so you don't have top sweat bandwidth- 480 Mb/s on a single port is fine.

>>899
you can find cheap camera modules and other parts on aliexpress. i have no idea though how to stitch the individual video streams together.

Either webcams or full-blown FPGA + some standard camera modules.
There is also a variant with 1-2 highres cams and fisheye lens (and nonlinear postprocessing).
FPGA variant is the best because it allows syncronization. Webcams won't be in sync.
Webcam approach is a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper and easier.

This will get you 360 degrees in 1 axis. You could also try sticking a clear marble in front of the lens.