I saw most of the street view images have not been updated and some of them are a bit confusing to people who navigate through the street view to check businesses and other places through Google street view. I have used my previously made DIY 360 car set-up with two air suction cups on top of my car and did many trials to make sure the stability of the camera as well as the output quality. Once I have passed this self QA, I have driven nearly 30+ Kilometers in two-days. Yes, you won’t believe me doing this on comparatively narrower roads of Sri Lanka. I felt super cool and updated all the roads of the city where I currently live. Yes, this update includes main roads and inner roads.
Earlier I was thinking too much about the outcome of my mission and wondered about the final publications in Google maps. Yes except for one small road, (0.2km) all other roads got published on GM. Excitingly, people started viewing the images too. I’m really happy about this too
Setting up a couple of missions this week to complete my city drive to make sure that I’m keeping my city with 100% updated street view images.
Ok, now it’s time to explain the methodology on how I’ve achieved this.
Camera I’ve used: ThetaV which I received as a gift on 2018 Connect Live
Camera Mountings: please check this post to get some idea about how I’ve made it with DIY
Publishing: using Google street view app published.
Speed: 50kmph speed in the car
Capturing method: video mode using Google street view app.
Backup battery: used 20,000 mAh power bank to charge the theta v
Challenges faced in undertaking the task;
My ThetaV has little inbuild memory and a few times I had to stop the car and copied the recorded videos from the camera to my laptop and deleted the old videos from the camera. It took nearly 5 minutes to copy.
Yes, the uploading is matters and it eats quite a lot of GBs of the internet. Also, you need to be very patient. I recommend using the night time to upload and when you wake up, it will be done!
Safety first: while driving the car you have to be very careful in handling mobile phones and I would advise mounting the phone on the place where you can see the screen clearly and make sure the screen’s timeout time is set to the maximum time.
Do you know street-view updates help people to see what was on the location earlier and now? Yes, several SV image updates can give more helpful information to people and this is one of my cool things on Google maps.
Great contribution @IlankovanT and thank you for.all your recommendations to use street view app as a way to up date the images of some routes of a city on google maps
Thank you and a very interesting read @IlankovanT . I would love to try this one day when I have the right camera. I noted you mentioned Safety first and here in the state of Victoria, while driving, a car driver can make or receive a phone call, use the phone’s audio/music functions or perform a navigational (GPS) or intelligent highway vehicle system (in vehicle warning system) functions but only without touching any part of the phone, and the phone is not resting on any part of the driver’s body. All other functions (including video calls, texting, emailing, task management, photography, social media, shopping and share economy apps) are prohibited.
Great work! @IlankovanT I would love to do it in some area that I’ve visited recently where the information needs to be updated but I do not drive and I need a camera like yours.
@IlankovanT That’s a nice setup, you are right these files are huge takes a while to upload. Have you tried creating connected photos with your Pixel3? I used to get in to phone heating up issues, things have gotten better, if I turn off the screen.
@AdamGT Ohh… yeh. In most of the counties, they do the same. we need to be careful, and this is the main reason I mounted this on the car, and when it stopped, I stop my car in a side and transfer the files to my laptop
thanks @IlankovanT for such a great and live contribution will surly try once get the perfect camera however the mounting and driving is risky affair for me will take help of some one for sure,
I love the set-up and I can see it works greatly or partly great for you. I recently got my Theta V camera and I’m set to start my mission on adding blue lines across my city because they never existed. But quite less often my car doesn’t have a sunroof. So I’m still trying and seeking ideas of how to do a DIY mount (ps i tried extending a 2-metre camera stick from window)
That is great from a car but you don’t even mention that you also took several km from a boat. And you have exactly the same setup as I use with a Theta V on a quick release pad on a helmet (I use hats and have experimented with about 15 hats/helmets so far). My main activity is walking tracks (ie as for Google Trekker type applications), and it is a real thrill when Google actually connects the blue dots as blue lines.
