Do It Yourself Street View Camera System for Under $1000

Have you ever looked at a Google Street View and wanted to be able to create something like that yourself. Unlike most of us, Roy D. Ragsdale actually ran with the idea as a student project at West Point, and built a…

DIY Street-View Camera (IEEE Spectrum)

He took 8 Microsoft LifeCam NX-6000 webcams, 2 D-Link USB hubs, a GPS receiver, a notebook running Ubuntu Linux, and shop skills to build a 360-degree panoramic photography device with GPS location information. The total cost of this project?

- $200 for 8 LifeCam cameras ($25 each)
- $50 for 2 D-Link USB hubs
= $37 for a GPS receiver
- $400 (estimate) for the notebook computer
- $300 miscellaneous hardware

Total price = $987 (estimate)

A combination of Open Source and homebrewed software rounded out the development effort. The assembled project took one set of images every 20 seconds.

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