Video: Measuring Matterport with Insta 360 1X & How Much You Should Trust This Tech. on Insurance Claims! | Video courtesy of David Herring Large Loss Life YouTube Channel (16 March 2020)

Hi All,

This video is by Tallahassee, Florida-based WriteLoss Inc. (www.WriteLoss.com) CEO P. David Herring whom is also a Large Loss Consultant/Estimator/Appraiser.

Key Takeaways

✓ while the Insta360 One X camera is not always as accurate as the Matterport Pro2 3D Camera, for insurance adjusting, use a tape measure (laser measurer) to verify at least one key measurement to resize/adjust measurements, if necessary.
✓ adding lighting is essential
✓ Insta360 One X is much faster to shoot - velocity - than the Matterport Pro2 3D Camera

From the David Herring Large Loss Life YouTube Channel description:

"Today I am talking about the Insta 360 1X and it's ability to measure like Matterport cameras. I show example of how it does this and the limitations all should be award of in the Claims Tribe when using this alternative cheaper and faster unit. David Herring Large Loss Life - Season 3 - Episode 7"

Please see this related video by David Herring in this WGAN Forum discussion:

✓ Insurance Claim Documentation: Matterport Pro2 Camera versus Insta360 One X

Dan

Transcript

- Hey everybody. Hope you're doing great today.

Today, we're going to talk about this camera, the Insta360 One X, which is what I've talked a good bit about being a pretty good alternative to using the Matterport cameras for 3D photography, in our game of insurance claims and things of that nature. I'm also going to talk to you a little bit about how this 3D technology and what it does to augment what we're doing behind the desk and what it doesn't do. Let's get to it. Hey everybody, hope you're doing great today.

As I was telling you a minute ago, what I'm really trying to do today is address a question that came up to me from a colleague in the industry.

They were wondering specifically what the measuring capabilities were on the Insta360 One X when we use it as Matterport camera. Most of you that are watching this probably know that this camera and the Theta by Ricoh both were allowed to come on to the Matterport system and do pretty much everything it does.

Now Matterport says that this measuring on this is not as good as the Matterport camera. I think they're probably right but I think in the aggregate that's true but I don't think in most situations you would notice a credible difference. Now, let me explain, let's first just go ahead and get out of the way just a little field test to show you how this actually worked.

Now we went in the field and we measured this one wall and I'm going to show it to you corner to corner so you can see, we measured it at 11' 11". When when we go into the Matterport measuring tool, we can actually measure and it's 11' 11".

When we look on the estimate, it's 11' 11". Now this is a job that was scanned three days ago and two days ago was estimated. So in this case, we see that it's dead-on and the big thing you want to remember when you're doing this, I don't care whether you're using the camera made by Matterport or the camera that's not made by Matterport, it doesn't matter.

You see, if you're doing this work, what you should be doing is always pulling a tape measure out and always measuring one wall, that would tell you if, in the final analysis, if you were getting bad information. It would also let you modify it if you had that information and you did get a little bit out, but we've used this a lot and found that this isn't the case.

Now there is one case where we found that this camera does not do very well and that is in very, very big structures. Churches, arenas, ballrooms, you name it. My guess is that the IR ability, infrared ability of this smaller unit is not able to get those high ceilings as well as the larger camera made by Matterport.

Another thing I would tell you is that it's very necessary to light this camera just like when we use a Matterport camera, it's very necessary to light it in the world that we work because it's imperfect, it's not like doing a bunch of real estate stuff.

But all in all, the reason why I like this is really it really comes down to one thing, we say in my game that nothing we say, we bow at the altar of velocity because nothing that happens in the insurance industry doesn't benefit from velocity.

And this really gives us velocity. In your typical cut up structure, we can do about 2,500 square feet with this but with the regular Matterport camera, we can do about 1,500 square feet and that's for somebody who's pretty skilled but, like I say, there are lots of environments where we use the Matterport camera still and most of our guys have both of them but if they had their choice, most of 'em will use this on a day-to-day basis just because of the speed.

Think about it this way. If you could manage to do the crouch so the camera couldn't see you, you probably could move this about every six seconds.

Conversely, if you walked around the Matterport, you're still looking at somewhere around 14 seconds up to 22 seconds depending on the light. So just by default, this is just so substantially faster but is less tolerant of you getting away from it, like you can always spin the Matterport camera and walk away from the spin and get away from it so you won't be in the shot. This doesn't let you do it 'cause it's so quick with what it does.

We're also pretty impressed, I'm pretty impressed with the quality once this is lit up. I'm pretty impressed with the quality on this.

Now, when I say I'm pretty impressed with the quality on this, I want you to keep in mind I'm not saying that I'm pretty impressed with this over and above the Pro2 camera at Matterport. The Pro2 camera at Matterport produces an absolutely positively beautiful image, it collects light better, it brings it in as RAW, and as a RAW image, you can bring out all kinds of detail.

It is quite literally beautiful. It's what we use almost by default on any kind of large fire just because it pulls such good levels of detail but all that being said, for the garden-variety day-to-day thing we do, this camera works like a champ. Now, the other thing I wanted to cover with you and probably the most important thing is there is this idea or notion in the industry that I find cropping up that says that you can go out and get this Matterport scan, call a REALTOR for that matter and go get them to scan it, there's a bunch of people who think they can make a business out of just doing scans for PAs and whatnot, and IAs.

And I mean, you might be able to pull that off but I mean, honestly, if you could pull it off, we probably would have done it and we just never have done it for a reason.

You know, I could show you example of example where you could, people believe that you could take your dumbest employee and send them out in the field and I say dumbest, that's kind of not politically correct, your lowliest, most unreliable whatever employee and send them out in the field and do this and they could definitely do this. But let me talk to you about a place I was in recently where we did do a scan.

If I had not been there to see it or someone qualified hadn't been there to see it, I wouldn't have been able to notice that, to note I should say, that it was drywall and plaster and it kind of volleyed between the various areas.

We couldn't have seen where there was insulation behind them because we couldn't have thumped and felt and looked in ways that the camera just can't look.

And in this same structure, you know, it was a windstorm and we could not look to see the detail on the gasket on the window because the camera just can't get that level of detail to go in and see if it's been ingested, or removed, or whatever, and this is a pretty big piece but still the same is true, it just, this isn't something you would get.

So when this shows up in our office, we can use the tech at the desk to measure the cabinets, you don't have to measure cabinets anymore, you don't have to measure vanities because we can do that in the program and that's its most valuable thing is that measurement because it takes you out of that sketching mode that you do and put you more in the estimating mode where you belong.

But for example, we had a situation where we also had in a structure, there was actually a wood floor and if you just look quickly at that wood floor on the Matterport, you would think that's a wood floor and it got inundated with water so we would have certain treatments for it, we would sand it, we would stain it, seal it, dustless whatever, content manipulation, whatever.

But it's actually tile and if nobody had been there to actually thump that and see that and feel that, they wouldn't have known that. They also wouldn't have known that the structure had a smell in it that was a musty smell like mold.

This tech will never ever ever ever ever be able to do the things that you can do in the field. It makes us better. If you saw those cabinets and it was just scanned and you didn't tell us that those, or you didn't make a note that those cabinets were custom made, they were cheap Home Depot cabinets, whatever the case may be, we could see that there was pulls and we could see the number of them and we could measure them, but we might not know the quality of the countertop, we might not know the quality of the cabinet and that might just make it where the estimate created didn't deal with all the realities of the loss.

And if we do that, then we're no better than that insurance adjuster that is so overworked that he just is there for a few minutes and can't get all the details. I can't stand when carriers do that to guys because it just bends them in the ways they shouldn't have to be.

I can't imagine sitting my guys out to 10 jobs a day and expecting them to go to 10 residential houses in a day, I mean, I just don't see it. At any rate, enough said, I hope that gave you a good idea of one, that this is a decent measuring tool; and two, that this is not this entire technology is not a panacea, it's not going to do the entire job for you. It's going to make us better, you or us, it's going to make us better, whoever's writing that estimate, it's going to make 'em better but it's not going to make them magic.

This is also cheap enough by the way since this is less than, well all told with all the lights, everything to put it together, it's about $900 and that's a good bit cheaper than Matterport and one thing I like about this is because it's so cheap, you know, I'm not going to file an insurance claim and have to pay a deductible on this baby like I would on a Matterport camera if it got stolen.

And the other thing is if this were to fail two years down the road, it's not as big a deal as when the Matterport cameras get a few years old and have sensor failures, which is no fun. But I wanted to also talk to you about just briefly kind of the noise that's in our world right now.

And you know what? I wanted to encourage everyone in our game to just keep your powder dry and keep your game face. We're going to be responsible for being the ones that are to the tip of the spear in many ways in dealing with these problems.

From the potential of BNI claims which I fear are going to be very confusing because of some things that were written into policies when SARS came about, and I hope you smart PAs and smart attorneys are going to be able to handle these for people, to actually you know cleaning the structures that are affected by this peril.

We see in our shop today just probably the widest variety of scopes associated with treating the coronavirus or getting it out of a structure.

And I'm hoping that's going to come together with a good solid known structure, scope that people can use. I think we're going to get to a point where there's more knowing on this and I'm really, really, really hoping that that happens soon. Guys, have a great day. I appreciate you being here and I will talk to you soon.