Waylens camera - how should we loan this out?
RobJN
Public
Seen by 32
Hi all. With thanks to telenav, OSM UK have now acquired a Waylens Horizon camera [1]. It's a great bit of kit designed for car enthusiasts - mounted in the windscreen and hooked up to the cars in board computer, it captures high quality images. Originally video, but Telenav have worked to adapt it to record photos and automatically upload to OpenStreetCam. Very slick process (although a internet connection with quick upload speeds helps) meaning less time fiddling and more time out surveying.
The camera will be added to our rental scheme. The only thing we need to agree is the rental cost. Due to the value of the kit we probably want to be shipping this as special delivery. If a volunteer could help figure out prices that would help me get it loaned out as soon as possible.
Also what do people think about shipping direct from one OSM UK member to another member, rather than return postage to me? It would require sharing of address details with the member who has it before you so a small data privacy issue, but it would save on cost.
For comparison the US rental scheme is at [2]. They have several cameras and rent out for a period of 3 months.
Thanks for your help.
[1] https://www.waylens.com/horizon
[2] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States/Waylens_Camera_Lending_Program
Gregory Marler (former Director) Thu 30 Aug 2018 9:09AM
For the weight of it, RM Special Delivery costs £11 and is insured to a specified value (up to £500).
We could have a tick box on the form "happy to share my delivery address with previous renter, to enable direct passing on", not ticking that box would have to add cost and I think have to be reflected in the rental charge.
With direct deliveries, I think renters should have to e-mail the coordinator (Rob?) to confirm it has arrived with everything on the packing list (could be a form with check boxes). There might be no need to put blame on the previous renter, and it might still work for the renter that then has it, but allows arrangement of it returning to Rob for a check-up.
Note: the kit is specifically for cars. It attaches to the glass of the windscreen, and has one of those bits that plug in to the car's secret accelerometer data etc. I don't drive, but I wonder if a month is a suitable rental time?
Brian Prangle Thu 30 Aug 2018 9:15AM
I think a month is fine - it gives renters an impetus to get out and use it and gives more folk a chance to use it. I can see why Rob wants to send it renter to renter as it cuts down on his admin time and shipping costs but I'm a bit nervous and I certainly think we should hold renters accountable for losses/damage.
Brian Prangle Thu 30 Aug 2018 9:18AM
As for rental cost just do a multiple of the camera value on the existing rental
RobJN Thu 30 Aug 2018 11:05PM
That would equate to between 20 and 40 quid dependent on how you price the LG 360 camera (RRP or the discounted price we paid).
Steven Horner Thu 30 Aug 2018 9:24AM
I had a similar experience to @shaunmcdonald and chose Mapillary. Ideally though it would be great if the images existed on both Mapillary and OpenStreetCamp. Would it be easy to also upload to Mapillary even if manually?
This looks great I've never had the greatest success with phones in my current car due to the slope of the windscreen. No matter how I adjust, I always ended up with either bonnet or focusing too much on the sky. I did play around with using my dashcam images but involved too much cropping even automated.
Shaun McDonald Thu 30 Aug 2018 9:34AM
I heard at one point that Mapillary were looking at ways to automatically do the appropriate cropping, however don’t know if that went live.
Steven Horner Thu 30 Aug 2018 9:52AM
I managed to automate much of the process but also found that a lot of the images were quite blurry and needed a lot of manual checking before uploading to not be uploading rubbish. I guess this could be the same with the Waylens camera. Often the images look fine when moving video but once used as stills they can look horrific unless conditions are perfect at least from my dashcam experience, see here.
RobJN Thu 30 Aug 2018 10:57PM
Hi @stevenhorner. This solution takes away the need to do any work to the images before uploading. It's designed specifically to avoid the bonnet. Upload to Mapillary would not be easy:
Unfortunately, it is not yet possible to use this camera with only FLOSS software. Ignoring that the camera's software is proprietary, there is currently no set of upload scripts that can get the data it gathers to either OpenStreetCam or Mapillary.
Regarding "snapping to roads", I don't have enough knowledge to comment on this for other devices. For this device, it has built in GPS and also has the ODB2 port access to on board computer. A few SotM US's ago, Telenav presented how they can use the car data to follow the route when GPS is not available (e.g. in a tunnel with a curve). No idea if this camera uses that trick. Having said all that, this is a car camera, not a bike or walking camera as it requires the ODB2 port connection. Cars since 1996 have had this.
RobJN Thu 30 Aug 2018 11:04PM
So based on Gregory's notes we are looking at £11 minimum for member to member shipping, and £22 minimum for member to base (me) shipping. These minimums represent shipping cost only.
Duration: I had 45 days in mind (half of the US version as we only have one camera and they have several), but the 1 month suggestion is ok. Basically somewhere between 30 days and 45 days seems ok to me. Views of others welcome.
Shaun McDonald · Thu 30 Aug 2018 8:19AM
Last time I tried uploading photos to OpenStreetCam, the photos were getting snapped to the nearest motor vehicle road, which meant that cycle paths or pedestrian high streets had very odd snapping of the photos to adjacent street. This car centric view which Mapillary doesn’t have is why I took the view to contribute to Mapillary instead.
Shaun