Build an Arduino-Based Monitor for the RICOH THETA VR Camera

The RICOH THETA 360° camera is widely used to take images and video used in VR scenes. One popular model, the THETA V, doesn’t come with an LCD screen. Fortunately, the camera does feature a microUSB serial port that can be used to send and receive data to devices such as an Arduino or GPS module.

In this project, we take the M5Stack M5Core BASIC ESP32 platform, and use it to output data from the THETA V to an LCD screen.

The front of the M5Stack comes with 320x240 LCD screen and three buttons.

The finished project will show a QR code on the LCD, which can be read by a mobile phone to display equirectangular pictures taken with the camera. The RICOH THETA can supply power to the M5Stack over USB-C.

Source code for the RICOH THETA plug-in is available. The RICOH THETA runs a full Android OS inside the camera. This project relies on the usb-serial-for-android project from mik3y for serial communication.

Aside from the QR code, the LCD screen can display a wide range of information from the RICOH THETA, including battery status, firmware version, and picture details.

The M5Stack uses HTTP commands to access the API of the THETA over the serial cable. To parse the JSON responses from the THETA, M5Stack uses ArduinoJson, which is extremely helpful.

In addition to communicating with Arduino devices, a variation of the THETA plug-in enables the THETA to pair with a USB GPS module to provide location information to the camera that can be attached to the image metadata.

Although the RICOH THETA doesn’t have a screen, you can using a virtual screen with Vysor. This will allow you to see what is going on inside the RICOH THETA. You can also install standard Android apks, including Serial USB Terminal to display serial data.

Development for the RICOH THETA is done with Android Studio. You can use the same Android development tools — logcat, debug, and adb.

To receive a guide with over 25 source code examples — including HDR2EXR, FastCV, OpenCV, and TensorFlow demos — sign up for the RICOH THETA Dream and Build Contest. Beyond just the code examples, you’ll receive an asset pack of 360 video and images for you to experiment on. If you don’t have RICOH THETA, you can still experiment with the concepts in an Android Virtual Device (AVD).

The RICOH THETA Dream and Build Contest is currently live on Hackster. 10 participants who apply before April 16th will receive a RICOH THETA to develop with. You’ll then have time and resources to build a customized plug-in to make the camera do what you want.

The friendly and active theta360.guide developer community is available as well to get assistance from other developers just like you.