[Recap] Habarana - Galoya Blue Line meetup - 36 km of street view covered

Bit of my 360 background story

My focus on 360 photography came about a year ago. From then on I began to research and learn about it. I have heard from my friend @Rumal95 about Sri Lanka’s first Blue line meetup organized by @AnuradhaP . Since then, my interest in 360 photography and street view has grown steadily.

I discussed this regularly with my local guide partner @ravindus. After looking at many things, we bought an Xiaomi Mi Sphere camera. But with the desire to contribute to street view, we decided to buy our second camera, the Insta 360 one X. The decision to choose the Insta 360 camera was taken after considering the price, quality, its dynamic range and ease of workflow to SV contribution. After doing some preliminary experiments, we started contributing to Street View.

I hosted my First Blue Line meetup

@ravindus organized our first Blue line meetup on January 26th. There we were able to successfully add the blue-line to the newly opened section of the Southern Expressway between Kadawatha, Kerawalapitiya.

After that I noticed that there was no street view in the section on the Kurunegala - Trincomalee A6 road from Habarana to Galoya. So I organized the Habarana - Galoya blue-line meetup to complete that section.

Due to the limited seating inside car, the number of participants was limited to four. @ravindus , @Chthuwa and Suranga joined me for this meetup. On the morning of February 21st, we left for the meetup from our home.

We had lunch in the Dambulla area and reached Habarana around 2 pm.

This 360 recording experience was new to Suranga and Chathuranga. First we gave them an introduction on street view and 360 photography. After setting up the 360 camera, we started recording 360 along the road.

It was an amazing experience drive through green paddy fields and nature. We were little bit worried about encountering wild elephants on the way driving through the forest, but never had such experience.

Recordings were made from Habarana to Galoya on the A6 road and then to Minneriya on the B617 route. It took us about an hour to cover that 40km, and we had about 25 gigabytes of data recorded in the memory card.

At the end we took a dip in the stream from the Thambalawewa reservoir. @ravindus and I uploaded the recorded data to google map. That way, our second blue-line was successfully completed.

Here is the link to shared album of the meetup.

Enjoy the recap video of the meetup.

@IlankovanT @InaS @KatyaL @PaulPavlinovich @love_ikoma_toyo @Aruni hope you would enjoy this RECAP. Please tag anyone who would love to read this recap.

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Beautiful write-up @kasunaaa . Another 36 km of Street view we covered together. Now the total is 82km… :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

with the Express way we will pass 100km in style.

@PaulPavlinovich we didn’t see any Wild Elephant friends on the roadside. But who knows 360cam might have captured elephants we missed.

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@kasunaaa This is great. I am still waiting to host a meetup with you all. Let’s do it soon.

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@ravindus Can’t wait to see your recap of the Hambanthota Express way blue line meetup. 360 footage uploading would take some more time I guess.

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@AnuradhaP Thanks for the comment. Yes we need to get our selves together soon in a meetup maybe another blue line one.

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82km - nice work indeed @kasunaaa @ravindus well done - one day you’ll get some elephants onto the Map :slightly_smiling_face:

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@PaulPavlinovich Thank you for your compliments.

Just two days after the meetup, I heard news that wild elephant had broken into the Galoya village. In the dry season wild elephants come out of the jungle frequently for food and water.

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Hi @kasunaaa ,

Thanks for sharing your incredible recap and thanks for the tag!

This is really impressive you managed to cover so many kilometers of Street View! Well done! I’m glad to see your enthusiasm and activity!

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I imagine it could be quite terrifying when a creature that large comes into your home @kasunaaa

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@PaulPavlinovich We have that kind of incidents happen in some areas in our country. Not only they damage to property and crops but also sometimes attack to people. This conflict between elephants and people has been there for a while. Authorities are taking steps by making electric fences to control but still happening.

P.S. those beautiful intelligent animals not aggressive normally.

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I can imagine it would be challenging. In Australia we don’t really have any large animals that cause problems in most areas of the country. Balancing the human needs with the environment we live in is always very difficult @kasunaaa

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@PaulPavlinovich I’ve heard that you have kangaroos and camels in Australia. I guess camel is the largest animal in your country. Balance between animal and human activities is very difficult indeed. Specially when we construct new roads through forests it separates lands of the wild animals. Specially it effects on larger ground animals like elephants causing accidentally break into villages.

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We have kangaroos and wallabies everywhere @kasunaaa you don’t see them too often in suburbia but you certainly don’t have to go far to find them.

Camels exist in the central deserts and are rarely seen away from there.

Our biggest animal would be the blue whale and sperm whale that frequent our shores during their breeding times.

Paul

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@PaulPavlinovich Cool.

No doubt that blue whales are the biggest animal on the planet earth. We do also have blue whales around shores in Sri Lanka. Blue whales can be seen around Mirissa (Sri Lanka) area through out the year even they are migrating animals. By the way we are going Mirissa next Saturday for scuba diving. We may not going for snorkel with whales this time but some day I will. See this video a blue whale that I captured at Mirissa couple of years ago.

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Wow! what an amazing RECAP @kasunaaa .

that day I was at Mahiyanganaya for a meetup and missed this. I can see you all had a nice time :slightly_smiling_face: keep paint more lines on GM

see you soon somewhere…

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That is cool @kasunaaa you got whale tail :slightly_smiling_face:

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@PaulPavlinovich yes he finished its surface interval and going under for another 15 minutes saying see you soon!

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@IlankovanT Thank you. Your tips always helping for the meetups.

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@KatyaL Thank you for your encouragement ! I will share my future works with you. Tomorrow we are going Mirissa (down sounth Sri Lanka) for a diving.

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@kasunaaa learned lot of things about localguides and contributing to google maps. It was cool to know how draw blue line using 360 cmera. Thank you for educating us. Hope to contribute more with my new 360 camera . I got inspired about 360 photography from this meetup

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