Make:

How much is this going to cost? I followed the links and the 360 one VR is a whopping 749 dollars.

@cal - i think under $200 - when i find out, i'll post up.

We did designs for this product, and all of them were better than that thing.

Like my buddy above me, I was part of the design class that was brought in develop the character for the exterior of the camera. They asked us to turn their camera into a toy, and many of the students did a fantastic job. Problem is the guys in the company completely vanished, never even showing up to see our final designs. They are apparently struggling from some inside problems or something, so it remains to be seen if this thing will even make it to market. They won't return calls from the school which is pretty unprofessional.

You know what else is unprofessional? Not making your designers sign a non-disclosure form...

...so let me tell you all about this thing.

There's nothing to it. The magic is in the mirror and software. I'm sure at least some of the makers here are smart enough to figure the mapping end of that out. But as for internal components, this thing is slim, so consider that big dumb smiling face to be begging for a repack. you could probably fit the guts into a toilet paper roll sized tube.

As far as price point we were designing it with a cap of about $120. That seemed real liquid but I wouldn't expect to pay any where near that $700 price. The difference is in the lens shell. This is a clear acrylic housing compared to the camera lens which was glass. Plus simple markup of a toy vs. professional camera equipment.

The lens was the largest focus in our designs. Several students worked this thing out to have a retractable lens. I'm sure it was brought up in the initial meeting we had with the guys, so they were aware that we thought it was a bad idea to leave it exposed. It looks like the threw out that input and when with the cheaper way. Frustrating for a young industrial designer, but it happens, so why not learn it early.

The only other difference between the final product and what we were presented with earlier is the addition of the Eye-Fi SD card, which was a great move. We were designing around mini USB. I'm not sure what the difference in cost on that is, so look for a bump in the price from that possibly.

The real possibilities for this technology isn't in the toy field though. We brainstormed over a 100 uses for this camera in just a few minutes. If you really want to be amazed download the Videowarp software from their eyesee360 site. The real time panoramic video is unreal.

These guys are real gun-ho about starting this off as a toy, so seeing anything serious from them any time soon might be a bit of a pipe dream, but from what I saw it is simple enough that we could have some real fun with this thing once we break it open.

Hello to the design students,

While we were quite excited at the prospects of working with your class, we simply ran out of time to implement a new design. In late-November we proceeded with our initial design in order to make the show.

If you want to discuss this more, by all means contact us through the eyesee360 web site.

I'm with the other disgruntled designers...why ask for our help and completely waste our time? We may be students, but we do deserve respect and I feel, we acted far more professional than any of you. It's a shame you acted as you did and passed up an opportunity to work with some very talented designers and take your idea to the next, marketable, level.

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