@snapdragon #capturethedragon #freetablets #sxsw #gotyousucka twitter.com/AndyCheeks/sta… — Cheeks (@AndyCheeks) March 13, 2013

Our brand ambassadors, Josh and Jess:

The band Surfer Blood plays to a packed crowd at Antone's Nightclub.

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• See our full SXSW photo gallery at our Snapdragon Facebook page.
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Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ processors sponsored the Pandora Discovery Den where they showcased a great and eclectic mix of bands. If you couldn't make it to SXSW this year, you can still hear all the music on the Pandora Discovery Den mixtape.

Jason works on the digital marketing team for Snapdragon, including the website, online advertising, and social media. Prior to working at Qualcomm, he led digital efforts for brands such as Bank of America and TaylorMade-adidas Golf.

Jason has a bachelor's degree in History from The George Washington University in Washington, DC, and has no intention of ever moving away from San Diego.

Opinions expressed in the content posted here are the personal opinions of the original authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of Qualcomm Incorporated or its subsidiaries (\"Qualcomm\"). The content is provided for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement or representation by Qualcomm or any other party. This site may also provide links or references to non-Qualcomm sites and resources. Qualcomm makes no representations, warranties, or other commitments whatsoever about any non-Qualcomm sites or third-party resources that may be referenced, accessible from, or linked to this site.

Jason works on the digital marketing team for Snapdragon, including the website, online advertising, and social media. Prior to working at Qualcomm, he led digital efforts for brands such as Bank of America and TaylorMade-adidas Golf.

Jason has a bachelor's degree in History from The George Washington University in Washington, DC, and has no intention of ever moving away from San Diego.

I love it when a plan comes together. For the past two years, I’ve been a big proponent of mobile virtual reality (VR), which has no wires, and in particular standalone VR HMDs, or head-mounted displays, which are purpose-built for VR.

Mobile VR is the future of VR. Users don’t want cables; they don’t want a complex setup; they don’t want expensive devices; but they do want advanced user experiences with positional tracking, rich graphics, and a wide variety of content.

The mobile industry is poised to bring VR to the masses given its scale to offer affordable solutions, its pace of innovation to enable year-over-year improvement, and its power efficiency to deliver low power and thermal budgets for sleek form factors.

Smartphone VR is already delighting consumers. Just about everyone has a smartphone, and users with premium smartphones can experience high-quality VR by simply sliding their phone into a low-cost HMD accessory. Standalone VR HMDs take the experience to the next level since they are made just for VR. For example, they may include multiple cameras for realistic tracking (head/eye/hand), provide an optimized thermal and power solution, and be designed for comfort (i.e., the weight is evenly distributed across the head). In addition, standalone VR offers the lowest friction to usage since it requires no setup — you simply put it on.

Qualcomm Technologies recently announced a HMD Accelerator Program (HAP) to help VR device manufacturers quickly develop premium standalone VR HMDs. At the core of this program is the standalone VR HMD reference design. It goes beyond a simple prototype device, offering a detailed reference design that allows manufacturers to apply their own customizations while utilizing our engineering, design, and experience in VR. The reference design is engineered to minimize software changes, hardware issues, and key component validation.

Believe me, sourcing the right cutting-edge components, from cameras and sensors to lenses and displays, to create an optimized and holistic solution, is no small task in these early days of VR. We’re excited to have recently added and validated several new hardware components to support more immersive VR experiences.

To interact with the virtual world, we worked with Ximmerse on controllers optimized for Qualcomm Snapdragon Mobile Platforms for high-precision drift-free tracking and low latency. The Ximmerse Flip is a 3 Degrees of Freedom (3 DoF) VR controller that can provide just about any interaction, such as pointing, selecting, grabbing, shooting, and much more. For precise 6 DoF positional tracking of your head, tight integration is required between the sensor fusion processing (Snapdragon) and the data from both the camera and inertial sensors.

We worked closely with Bosch Sensortec to integrate the BMX055 absolute orientation sensor, which includes the accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer, for precise and high-frequency inertial measurements.

We also worked closely with OmniVision to integrate the OV9282, a 1-megapixel high-speed global shutter image sensor, for precise feature tracking.

For successful product launches, we also provide best practices to meet key VR quality metrics, such as low motion-to-photon latency, precise 6 DoF head tracking, and optimized system-level power for sustained usage. As a result, VR device manufacturers can create a high-quality VR HMD product, with quick commercialization and low development costs.

To support the development of premium VR content, we also launched the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 VR Development Kit (VRDK). The VRDK gives developers early access to a Snapdragon 835 VR HMD and an upgraded Snapdragon VR Software Development Kit (SDK). The SDK is designed to provide developers with access to optimized, advanced VR features on Snapdragon VR devices, while abstracting the complexity to create immersive VR experiences. Ultimately, this simplifies development and allows developers to attain improved VR performance and power efficiency.

There’s been great VR industry traction and adoption. For example, we collaborated with Google and ODMs from the HAP — GoerTek in particular — on the Daydream standalone VR headset reference design, powered by the Snapdragon 835 VR platform. At Google IO 2017, Lenovo and HTC announced Daydream standalone VR HMDs based on this reference design.

In China, many different standalone VR HMDs powered by Snapdragon have already launched based on the Snapdragon 820 VR HMD reference design (the precursor of the HAP), including Pico Neo and Goblin, iQiYi Adventure, Baofeng Matrix, and Whaley VR. We expect the momentum to continue with the HAP as the benefits of purpose-built standalone VR HMDs show their merit.

VR isn’t the end of the story. We envision a HMD evolution path where VR and augmented reality (AR) converge into sleek, fashionable extended reality (XR) sunglasses. On the standalone AR front, we’ve seen progress with products like the ODG R8 and R9 that also use our reference design as a starting point.

It may take many years for our XR vision to come to fruition, but we are investing in fundamental XR technologies and continuing to collaborate with the ecosystem to accelerate the timeframe. In fact, we expect up to tens of millions of units (either AR, VR, or XR devices) to ship by early next decade.

XR has a promising future, and I look forward to working with the various players in the ecosystem to make our vision a reality. Stay tuned for more news on our products, ecosystem collaboration, and the evolution of the HMD Accelerator Program.

Qualcomm recently announced an HMD Accelerator Program (HAP) to help VR device manufacturers quickly develop premium standalone VR HMDs. At the core is the standalone VR HMD reference design. It goes beyond a simple prototype device, offering a detailed reference design that allows manufacturers to apply their own customizations while utilizing our engineering, design, and experience in VR.

Opinions expressed in the content posted here are the personal opinions of the original authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of Qualcomm Incorporated or its subsidiaries (\"Qualcomm\"). The content is provided for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement or representation by Qualcomm or any other party. This site may also provide links or references to non-Qualcomm sites and resources. Qualcomm makes no representations, warranties, or other commitments whatsoever about any non-Qualcomm sites or third-party resources that may be referenced, accessible from, or linked to this site.

We continue our conversation with camera engineer guru, William Mantzel. You’re bound to feel like a camera genius after learning how depth mapping provides a new piece of data to work with. And is it too late to implant a chip in our host PJ?

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• Catch up with the first camera tech episode: Seeing in stereo with computational photography
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Related Resources for both camera tech episodes:

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• Snapdragon camera features add DSLR effects to your mobile phone
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• Capturing the future: The evolving camera and its capabilities
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• Immersive experiences with Tango
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We continue our conversation with camera engineer guru, William Mantzel. You’re bound to feel like a camera genius after learning how depth mapping provides a new piece of data to work with. And is it too late to implant a chip in our host PJ?

Opinions expressed in the content posted here are the personal opinions of the original authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of Qualcomm Incorporated or its subsidiaries (\"Qualcomm\"). The content is provided for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement or representation by Qualcomm or any other party. This site may also provide links or references to non-Qualcomm sites and resources. Qualcomm makes no representations, warranties, or other commitments whatsoever about any non-Qualcomm sites or third-party resources that may be referenced, accessible from, or linked to this site.

In today’s fast paced world, tools and resources are not only integral to product development, but also critical for its success. Innovators equipped with the right development tools can build on their creativity and bring the next wave of smart products to life. Platforms like the DragonBoard 410c development board from Arrow Electronics play an important part in the innovation cycle as they are designed to allow developers to quickly realize proof of concepts and provide a realistic path to production. DragonBoard 410c is a 96Boards compliant development board based on a 64-bit capable Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 410E processor by Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., which features advanced processing power, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth connectivity and GPS. It is engineered to help reduce time to commercialization for various verticals by supporting open source hardware and software development in a variety of operating systems like Android, Debian, OpenEmbedded, Ubuntu Core and Windows 10 IoT Core.

The 96Boards Consumer Edition specification for single board computers standardizes the minimum functions that manufacturers can build upon to create mezzanine products that target their vertical markets. Mezzanine products are add-on boards that connect to the standard low speed and high speed peripheral connectors on the DragonBoard 410c, and provide a way for developers to interface with a wide variety of sensors.

One example of a mezzanine board is the recently launched DesignCore Camera Mezzanine Board from D3 Engineering Embedded Vision Solutions. Designed for rapid development of embedded vision applications, the board allows the developer to directly connect up to two MIPI CSI-2 cameras to the DragonBoard 410c. At the same time, expansion headers provide access to two UART’s, two SPI, one I2C, one PCM, and GPIO’s to interface with other sensors. The kit includes one OV5640 5MP CMOS image sensor with auto focus that supports 1080p video. To find out more about the camera mezzanine, join the 96Boards OpenHours session on June 22nd with the D3 Engineering team as the guest speakers. And in case you miss the live OpenHours session, it will be posted on 96Boards YouTube channel as OpenHours #59. Also, check out the Camera Kit GitHub and short unboxing video.

A variety of 96Boards mezzanine products enhance the DragonBoard 410c development experience by interfacing with a unique set of sensors and peripherals.

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• The Linker mezzanine card is a great way to get started with 96Boards, and it contains a lot of tools to help you make fun projects by following step-by-step tutorials. Starting from the basics of electronics modules, to more complex projects, the kit will help you control the physical world with sensor and actuators, and help you ramp up your programming using 96Boards. It has eight connectors supporting Analog, UART, I2C and GPIO, and two channels of analog input using the MCP3004 ADC chip. There are bidirectional voltage-level translators which allows for low-voltage bidirectional translation between any of the 1.2-V,1.5-V, 1.8-V, 2.5-V, 3.3-V, and 5-V voltage nodes. So, it is compatible with 3.3V or 5V modules and makes connecting peripherals easy. You just plug a jumper onto JP9 to select which input voltage you need.
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• The Sensors Mezzanine adapter is designed to make it easy to connect your favorite Grove modules and Arduino compatible shields. On the board, you will find sockets for 18 Grove modules, an Arduino-compatible shield socket, and two SPI headers. It also includes an ATMega328 microcontroller which can be programmed from the Arduino IDE and will run most Arduino UNO sketches unchanged. The shield connector and half of the Grove sockets are controlled by the microcontroller, while the remaining Grove sockets are controlled directly by the baseboard. This makes it a flexible prototyping platform which supports both direct control of devices from application software, and offload to a microcontroller. This board is ideal for developers who are familiar with the Arduino platform and are building applications that read from a whole bunch of sensors, but need the additional processing power of the Snapdragon 410E processor to crunch data and optimize their application. Home and industrial automation, robotics, IoT and healthcare are just few of the industries that come to mind.
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• The STM32 Sensor mezzanine board is based around the STM32F446 MCU. In addition to providing multiple expansion possibilities through the Arduino Uno Revision 3 and Grove connectivity, this board allows users to prototype systems that are aware of their environment thanks to the onboard sensors for movement, pressure and sound.
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• The Audio Mezzanine Board is a Grove interfaced board that provides one 3.5mm audio port and two independent MICs, which can be used for multimedia processing. This board also supports features like USB to Serial circuit, reset button, and ability to choose 3.3/5V as the output voltage for the GPIO’s.
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• The AeroCore 2 provides MAV control with the 9-axis IMU, altimeter, CAN bus, optional GPS and CSI2 camera connector. With additional support for NimbeLink Skywire LTE modems, the AeroCore 2 combined with the DragonBoard 410c makes a great platform for drone and swarm projects.
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And talking about projects, here are some cool projects using the various mezzanine boards that you can find here on QDN.

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• Alexa Voice Service using the Audio Mezzanine Board
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• Breakerball using both Sensors Mezzanine and Linker Mezzanine
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• Sensors demo for Android using the Sensors Mezzanine
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• DragonBoard 410c drone project using the Aerocore 2
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As of today, we have around five dozen inspiring projects posted on the QDN Projects page. With a mindset for creative development and equipped with the right development tools, we are looking forward to seeing what you create!

In today’s fast paced world, tools and resources are not only integral to product development, but also critical for its success...

Opinions expressed in the content posted here are the personal opinions of the original authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of Qualcomm Incorporated or its subsidiaries (\"Qualcomm\"). The content is provided for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement or representation by Qualcomm or any other party. This site may also provide links or references to non-Qualcomm sites and resources. Qualcomm makes no representations, warranties, or other commitments whatsoever about any non-Qualcomm sites or third-party resources that may be referenced, accessible from, or linked to this site.

We asked one of Qualcomm Technologies' camera gurus, William Mantzel, to join us for a conversation about cool mobile camera technology. In this episode we talk about who's driving the dual camera bandwagon, how to sound like a camera tech pro, and how we’re pushing the frontiers of both outdoor and lowlight photography.

Learn more about the tech and devices we talk about in this episode:

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• Take amazing photos with Qualcomm Clear Sight dual camera tech
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• Snapdragon camera features add DSLR effects to your mobile phone
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• Test driving the LG V20 camera
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• Capturing the future: The evolving camera and its capabilities
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In this episode of the Qualcomm Podcast we talk about who's driving the dual camera bandwagon, and learn how to sound like a camera tech pro with background on how we’re pushing the frontiers of both outdoor and lowlight photography.

Opinions expressed in the content posted here are the personal opinions of the original authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of Qualcomm Incorporated or its subsidiaries (\"Qualcomm\"). The content is provided for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement or representation by Qualcomm or any other party. This site may also provide links or references to non-Qualcomm sites and resources. Qualcomm makes no representations, warranties, or other commitments whatsoever about any non-Qualcomm sites or third-party resources that may be referenced, accessible from, or linked to this site.

Content is the lifeblood of a vibrant ecosystem, as history has shown on numerous occasions from smartphones to social media. Virtual Reality (VR) will be no different, with content in the form of video, games, and other applications driving adoption. In fact, the potential of VR video is clear based on existing premium video content, such as sports, concerts and nature. However, a thriving content ecosystem also needs long-tail video that resonates with individuals in a personal way, which is perfect for VR since it is such an immersive medium. As VR video content improves, VR consumption will go from snackable and sporadic usage to extended and daily usage. Increased consumer adoption will drive VR ecosystem investment and competition, leading to lighter, sleeker and more immersive VR headsets, which will lead to further investment in content. This is the virtuous cycle we want, but it needs to be kick started. User-Generated Content (UGC) is just the thing to provide that kick start.

Although premium VR video content has been captured primarily with expensive camera rigs, consumer VR cameras are essential for the mass creation of UGC. VR cameras differ from traditional cameras in that they require 360°/180° and/or stereoscopic capture, which introduces new challenges.

Consider 360° capture, which generally uses at least two fish eye lenses to capture the full 360° spherical view. Pixelation is one issue since the same number pixels is spread across a wider field-of-view lens—as a reference, a typical smartphone camera has an approximate field-of-view of 60°. Adding more cameras would help increase the number of pixels per degree, but complexity (and cost) also increases when adding each additional camera. The increase in complexity is primarily due to stitching the individual images together. To the stitch the images together properly, all the cameras need to be synchronized to take the images at the same time. The individual settings of each camera, such as 3A (auto-focus, auto-exposure, auto-white-balance) also needs to be synchronized otherwise the stitching boundaries will be visible and the colors will look inconsistent. Accurate pose estimation of each camera must also be synchronized with each individual image frame. And don’t forget audio. 3D audio also needs to be properly recorded and synchronized with the images and camera pose.

Stereoscopic capture, which requires at least two cameras to replicate the different viewpoints our two eyes will see, is used to create depth perception during video playback and provide more immersive VR experiences. Although the images from the two different cameras may not be stitched together, they still face all the synchronization, settings setup, color equalization, and pose calibration issues that were described for 360° video capture.

And what about sharing these experiences live through social media so others can join you for special moments like a wedding, a birthday party, or a sporting event? This requires doing all the processing above as well as encoding, packaging, and wirelessly transmitting the video in real time. That’s a lot of processing and connectivity to fit within the power and thermal constraints of a sleek mobile device, such as a standalone camera or a smartphone. It’s these types of challenges that Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. (QTI) is well positioned to solve.

QTI is enabling high quality on-device, real-time VR capture and streaming for the masses. Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs are engineered to provide an efficient heterogeneous computing solution that is optimized from end-to-end for VR capture and streaming. They include an integrated global high-frequency clock, which performs highly accurate, uniform time stamping of the camera and sensor data, which is critical for synchronized stitching. Plus, QTI develops intelligent stitching algorithms that attempt to stitch around objects rather than in a predefined straight line so the image boundaries are seamless. Snapdragon processors’ diverse processing engines, such as the CPU, GPU, DSP, and VPU, provide high throughput and efficient processing for stitching, image processing, and video encoding. Snapdragon processors also support a variety of connectivity solutions, such as LTE, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, for real-time streaming. At CES 2017, we demonstrated on-device real-time VR capture and sharing on a drone prototype based on Snapdragon Flight by stitching, encoding, and live streaming 4K 360° video at 30 frames per second to VR headsets.

Consumer-class VR cameras that capture VR images and video with the simplicity of a traditional camera are already becoming available. The form factors come in variety of shapes, ranging from a small candy bar and a sphere to smartphone attachments, and the trend is toward sleeker and more convenient. For example, the Essential 360 camera is a miniature magnetic attachment (powered by Snapdragon 625) to the Essential Phone (powered by Snapdragon 835) to capture 360° images and videos. One day, we could see smartphones or augmented reality glasses integrating multiple cameras for 360° and/or stereoscopic capture.

These same technologies that are enabling 360° stereoscopic capture are also being used for other industries like action cameras, drones, and security products. For example, a 360° security camera does not require mechanical parts since it can view the entire scene without turning. On-device processing also allows for real-time analytics through machine learning to provide alerts and send video to the cloud only when something important is happening, like a real security issue. Overall, we are excited about all the possibilities when affordable 360° stereoscopic cameras are made possible. It will not only kick start the VR video content ecosystem, but it will disrupt or enable other industries.

Content is the lifeblood of a vibrant ecosystem, as history has shown on numerous occasions from smartphones to social media. Virtual Reality (VR) will be no different...

Opinions expressed in the content posted here are the personal opinions of the original authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of Qualcomm Incorporated or its subsidiaries (\"Qualcomm\"). The content is provided for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement or representation by Qualcomm or any other party. This site may also provide links or references to non-Qualcomm sites and resources. Qualcomm makes no representations, warranties, or other commitments whatsoever about any non-Qualcomm sites or third-party resources that may be referenced, accessible from, or linked to this site.