Decouple capture mapping

General
1

Hello, how are you? I am impressed with your recording proposal. Your idea of pairing the hardware with the “iPhone” to piggyback on technological upgrades is incredible. I’ve been racking my brain over this topic of recording and clipping for a long time, and I’ve made significant progress, mainly with the help of Claude Code.

Today, my setup is:

a) Futsal recording - two cameras in the middle of the court, one facing each side, covering 70%. I only capture the relevant attacking highlights for my team (I admit it’s limited, but it yields good footage);

b) Field recording - I bring my xBOT Go Chameleon.

c) Highlight identification - ElevenLabs skill in Claude when there is commentary.

Recently, I developed an app exclusively focused on capturing highlights… So, here’s what I do. Many games in my city are broadcast, so an auxiliary phone is mounted on the cameraman’s cage to buffer the match (it doesn’t interfere with the broadcast, there’s no overlay). When a relevant highlight happens, it gets marked, and the clip is sent back to the cameraman’s website.

I use this same app for the xBOT Go Chameleon. Since the device itself does the tracking (and not the phone—I only turn the phone on to activate the device, and then I mount my other phone with the app)… so when a relevant play happens, I trigger it, and it sends the clip back to the website integrated with a Telegram API. The highlight is ready instantly…

What I mean to say with this experience is… I thought your project was sensational, but couldn’t some of the limitations be due to using only one device? Have you ever thought about the following… what if a fisheye lens were placed on the iPhone, and it was responsible for tracking the field from a 180° image and controlling the gimbal that carries a separate, independent phone… Wouldn’t that open up countless possibilities for a more robust app on the gimbal, allowing for instant clipping, since it wouldn’t need to process the match tracking? For example, you place the phone centered on the tripod, well elevated, with a fisheye lens, next to the gimbal, and the gimbal carries the other device.

2

Thanks for sharing all the details. Your setup is very interesting, especially the instant highlight workflow with Telegram integration.

Yes, I agree that using only one device has some limitations. Actually, I’m working on something similar to what you described, but instead of using an iPhone with a fisheye lens as the tracking camera, I’m building a dedicated AI tracker with its own CPU and a wide-angle camera.

This is more of a hybrid-tracking approach: the AI tracker has a full-field view and determines the rough direction the gimbal should look, while the iPhone can focus on pinpointing exactly where the ball is.

3

"Perfect, the idea is basically the same. Since you mentioned taking advantage of iPhone technology (and its advancements), I thought the fisheye lens (which is reusable) could handle the tracking and send the information to the gimbal… but I believe the dedicated AI tracker serves the same purpose.

Look, I have the XBot, and the feature of tagging highlights and getting a summary at the end of the match is excellent. It’s true that I can do the same thing using a smartphone sending data to a VPS alongside a Telegram bot, but most people won’t be able to set that up. It’s a top-tier feature, so separating the devices is a great way to go, in my opinion.

Strictly speaking, I actually prefer the Xbot Chameleon over the Falcon. This is because sometimes I mount my GoPro on it, and with the 8:7 lens, I get a slightly wider field of view (about 30% more), which is super important to avoid missing goals. Then, I trigger the highlight using the Telesin remote, and later I extract it using a simple software I built to detect those markers.

With this separation, for example, I could theoretically mount a GoPro instead of a smartphone to take advantage of the 8:7 ratio (I say “theoretically” because I’m not sure what kind of adapter I would need for the gimbal).

Anyway, it’s really good that you thought about this. Another important thing, based on the videos I’ve seen of your project, is to make the camera movements smoother. Once you combine that with your top-notch tracking, it’s going to be really good.

Just out of curiosity, if it tracks the ball, how do you handle the goal celebrations? I tried doing an auto-frame (16:9 and 9:16) using an open-source solution, but it didn’t turn out very well… If you’d like to check out my project… it’s still in the early stages (this capture one, I have others that are already up and running—championship manager, club)… it takes that idea I mentioned to you of sending the broadcast clip to a website."