Introducing the Reco Kit camera

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Hello,

Today @Lucian_K and I are happy to show you what we have been building for the past five months: the Reco Kit, now documented at reco.cam/hardware.

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The Reco Kit is a working camera that runs the whole Reco pipeline on the unit. Two sensors at 4032x3040 each, 30 fps, stitched and tracked locally, recording and streaming with no laptop at the side of the pitch. The capture is very optimised, which gives you room to build on top of it. The 3D models, the custom drivers and the code are all open. It is really meant for you to improve it. To modify the case, use better sensors, better lenses, more fps, etc… Build guides may take a little time to arrive.

I also rebuilt the site so it actually looks like what Reco is becoming. The rigs on the home page are real ones you built and posted: @Xnitro_HD’s dual-phone setup, @EboraOwu’s panoramic mount (which I assume is adapted from @cypher), @Christoffer_Bergkvis’s Hero 5 mount, @codebox’s phone holder design, @DuraS’s printed housing, and @Lucian_K’s dual GoPro assembly. I extracted some quotes too, from @DuraS, @Matias_Sanchez_brea, @mjgs17, @zzz. Thanks.

The website has moved to reco.cam (cam, as in camera). Old links still work for now. Go and have a look!

I still want to expand it with the Research section, and some Acknowledgments/Credits.

But the next priority is v0.6.0 and the Reco One, which we think will be a genuine alternative to what we all currently put up with to film and analyse our games.

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New Release: v0.5.3 is out
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Wow! Not sure what is more important to say first… Congratulations! Thank you!

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Looks great! Which countries is distribution planned for?

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Man this looks great, I’m kinda kicking myself for buying gopros and stuff just a few months ago. Any chance for something like a “reco kit lite” for those of us who don’t need the “live streaming” aspect of things?

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Not sure yet, will let you know once we have more info.

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It would probably be Reco One, which would fit it more.

A Reco Kit Lite could be built on a Raspberry Pi, but they go so expensive that they wouldn’t make more sense than Reco One.

I will think about it though it’s a great great idea.

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Spent a little time reading more about the Reco Kit. I’m assuming this describes the sequence of the pipeline “A Jetson and two cameras in a printed case. It stitches, tracks, records and streams on the unit.” You also said that there is plenty of processing power to change or add things. I haven’t done a super deep dive into the github readme files. While tracking is still being improved, and probably will always be a continuous iteration of improvement, just like the commercial products, will a non tracked 180 version of the video be saved in the chance tracking misses something and the tracking can be reprocessed? I’ve had to Pixellot reprocess some games due to goof ups.

Or, now that I think about, had some stitching issues that I needed Pixellot to fix as well, so maybe storing the recordings from both cameras to reprocess the whole pipeline if needed.

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Yes exact. With Jetson Orin Nano Super, the main bottleneck is the “video encoder”, which means that it has a hard time transforming processed pixels into a .mp4 video.

This is what limits output to 1080p 30fps. Storing the raw videos is possible and the feature for that exists, however you’ll likely store a downgraded version, maybe 2x720p.

If you use Jetson Orin NX though, then you do not have any of these issues. It has a dedicated video encoder. It can store high quality raw video along with high quality stitched/tracked result.

Now by Processing Power, I mean all the rest: AI inference, complex stitching, small LLM, handling multiple views, large inputs (2x8K should be fine), complex algorithms and code for analytics… all that has room to run.

Only video exporting is limited on the Orin Nano Super board.

Reco One uses a board that has a video encoder, and thus stores raw replay in case tracking was not accurate.

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Sorry … Iam confused about the road map. I intended to build the Reco kit and ordered the nano orin now im insecure whether the one would be the better choice. Maybe it would help to have a comparison.

Will be the reco one a complete solution without anything to build like xbotgo falcon e.g.. (just better ;,-))?

I intended to build the Reco kit for a basketball and considered to integrate the scoreboard that I have running (HTML based). Is it naive to assume that the nano has enough power to integrate in overlay in realtime?

I am working on a solution to feed my scoreboard with ocr of the installed scoreboard so after a setup meaning Team x versus Team y it is intended to update automatically.

AI Analys like heat map and tracking of the scores assists would be awesome but I do not need that in realtime but I would be important to have a copy of the whole court. Even if falcon would work as intended it would be bad for ai usage due to the changing camera

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Hello,

Reco One will be a complete solution. A mix between Veo and Falcon, in the sense that it has two cameras, but does everything locally, and streams to Youtube etc…

It should be cheaper than both. No subscription. It should have a nice video quality. Its sensors are >4K sensors, which we process in “3K”. The export is guaranteed to be at least 1080p30fps, though there are high chances that 1440p (2K) and/or 60fps get officially supported.

Reco One is also not meant for people to contribute. Not because we don’t want, but because the tech stack is different and the developer experience is not as good as Nvidia.

So for your need of adding your custom scoreboard, Reco Kit is definitely the right move.

We released Reco Kit because we still do not have good enough tracking to sell Reco One. We want to invite the community to take part of the innovation. Once we have tracking though, hopefully soon, then we’ll be able to release Reco One.

I am also convinced that analytics will land very quickly once tracking is sorted out.

Now for your question, Yes Reco Kit Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano Super 8GB has more than enough room for you to add your features such as scoreboard. It’s only limitation is that it can’t export more than 1080p30fps.

Nvidia Jetson Orin NX however can go up to 4k60fps export I believe.

I know that I have to do videos and tutorials and documentation. However, the load is high and I am prioritizing v0.6.0 and the tracking.

It will eventually come, but I am happy to answer any questions here.

Please let me know if anything is unclear, this also helps others that are trying to understand how Reco One and Reco Kit differ.

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I’d really like to build a reco kit, I’m using gopros right now, I REALLY like the idea of being able to livestream from it. I’m having a real hard time with getting the AI tracking to give me an output that is even worth me watching/showing players. Which is making me apprehensive about the cost of building it, especially if I need the Orin NX to livestream.

I have 3 games right now from this last weekends tournament I have recorded and I’ve just got back to stitching it with action stitch so at least I have something I can go over with a player or that I can rewatch myself. But its SO much slower then reco. Is there a way I can help to contribute to the AI tracking? I have and will have a ton of full field footage. I experimented with trying to train yolo26 on my own using AnyLabeling but got a little bit over my head.

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Next release v0.6.0 will be able to produce actionstitch-like output, at the speed of Reco.

For AI Tracking, best way is to share your data. Ideally you’d share the raw unstitched footage. But already stitch is useful too.

For your case, I recommend you wait for better tracking before commiting to Reco Kit. Also, Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano Super supports livestreaming at 1080p30fps.

Unfortunately, afaik, it’s hard to stitch live from GoPros. They can livestream, but do not provide enough tools to be able to sync left and right.

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Will the Reco Kit have access to the same ai Features as the Reco one? Iam not sure wether I should keep my Jetson Orin board or not.

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This is a complicated subject, because there are a few different aspects to consider.

The Jetson has become much more expensive in Europe since the release of Reco Kit. Here in Switzerland, its price has nearly doubled. This is actually one of the main reasons I started working on Reco One.

The Jetson is definitely more powerful than Reco One when it comes to AI compute. But that’s raw compute. Do we have the AI and algorithms today to really justify that extra power? Not yet. We’re all still working on reliable ball tracking.

Reco Kit is really made for people who want to explore, build new things and innovate. Reco One is much harder for the community to modify, mainly for hardware reasons.

I’ve seen your great contributions to the project, and for that kind of work, Reco Kit might actually suit you better, especially if you want to develop and experiment directly on the camera itself.

But if what you want is something that simply works for this season, you can of course keep developing and experimenting on your desktop while using Reco One for the actual recording. In that case, I think returning the Jetson and waiting for Reco One is a very reasonable choice.

I know that’s a somewhat disappointing answer. It’s also one of the reasons we’ve decided not to commercialize Reco Kit: at current Jetson prices, I don’t think it makes sense for us to sell it as the solution for everyone.

Reco Kit gives you more freedom to build and experiment directly on the device. Reco One is meant to be the product that simply works. It really depends on what matters more to you right now.

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Thanks for your swift reply … my first hardware draft was based on a raspberry with global shutter cams. Both Claude and ChatGPT said that this would be the way to do it and use the ai chips of my MacBook ( I have asked them for a solution and did not gave it to them) they both said that a rp5 with 8gb would be around 80 euro. Actually it is 180.

when you announced the Reco kit the Jetson was 360 when I looked again it was 449 and I ordered .. now it is even worth. I could live with a work of progress but it would make me sad if you develop some of the ai features I am dreaming of and they would be Reco one only e.g. better tracking models and all the other stuff.

If everything that comes would be available in the community edition I will build a Reco kit for sure