Video: Matterport Shop Talk 34: All about Matterport Axis | Video courtesy of Matterport YouTube Channel | 3 March 2022


Video: Matterport Shop Talk 34: All about Matterport Axis


Presenters

1. Matterport Senior Evangelist Amir Frank
2. Matterport Sr. Director of Product Management Abhijit Limaye

Transcript (Video Above)

[00:00:03]
Amir Frank: -Welcome everybody. Thanks for joining us, Shop Talk 34. We are here to talk all about Axis. Joining me today is the Axis headmaster basically, the guy who knows everything there is to know about Axis and all. There has been deep dived into Axis for a long time, but he'll tell us all about Abhijit. The man with us Senior Director of Product Manager at Matterport.

We are very excited to have him here with us. Abhijit thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

[00:00:35]
Abhijit Limaye: -Thank you, Amir. Hi, everyone.

[00:00:38]
Amir Frank: -Basic housekeeping. If you've been on a Shop Talk, you already know this before, but I'm going to go ahead and say it anyway. We're going to have the Q&A at the end, but please go ahead and submit your questions throughout the webinar as they come to you. We'd like that you submit them to the Q&A panel. We also have the very familiar chat panel for Zoom.

Anybody who has been on a Zoom call has seen the chat panel. That's great for things like saying hi. I'd like to see these webinars as meet-up. We're all like-minded and interested in the same thing. Go ahead and talk amongst yourselves there and raise maybe what you're planning on doing with Axis. In fact, that's something that we'd love to hear. If you have an idea of how you would potentially use UserAccessor in your use case.

That's awesome. We'd love to hear from you. The session as I mentioned is being recorded. We'll have this for you to watch on-demand if you miss any information after step out for a quick coffee or anything like that. This will be recorded and that's about it. Let's dive right in. As I mentioned, Shop Talk 34, very excited to have you with us. We're going to be talking all about Axis.

Whatever questions, concerns, anything that you want to raise now is the time. Q&A is going to follow that conversation and we'll start with a short presentation about what it is, where it came from, and so on. At this point, I'm going to bring Abhijit in this conversation because again, he knows way more about this than I do. That's it. I'll let you take it from here Abhijit.

[00:02:18]
Abhijit Limaye: -Thank you. We're very excited about Axis and Axis is really a key part of multiple strategy to bring every space online, whether it's your home, a hotel, a retail location. We are bringing everything into a digital twin and Axis lets us do that. It's really a companion device to your smartphone gadget. Back in 2020, we launched iOS Smartphone Capture. Last year we introduced Android.

Now, what makes it even better is a device that helps you capture any space easily. Axis is really meant to simplify capture. Axis is meant to allow you to capture easily without getting any fatigue for this. Also, more importantly, it's a pretty affordable option for anyone to go out and start scanning their spaces and extract a lot more value from their digital twin. That's Axis for you.

As you can see here, it's a little motor mount, that market that can be mounted on any tripod. It does come with its own tripod, but you can also use your own tripod and it can be mounted on the tripod, load your iPhones or Android phones in the holder that you see here, and off you go. The Smartphone Capture app will guide you through it and you can capture your space relatively quickly.

[00:04:01]
Amir Frank: -Connection is really simple. Obviously have used it if you've seen the hot two videos. It's Bluetooth and there is no pairing. Is that right? I don't remember doing any pairing Abhijit. If your phone is on and Bluetooth is active and you're in capture, you turn on the little device, just press the button to turn on Axis and it connects and just sees in it. Instead of saying iPhone or Android at the bottom, it'll say iPhone plus Axis.

[00:04:34]
Abhijit Limaye: -It is designed for auto-connect. If anybody is having troubles with it, there is an option for doing a manual connect as well. But the primary mode is just auto-connect, not just for the device, but there's also a little remote control there and that also will connect automatically.

[00:04:52]
Amir Frank: -What is in the box? This is the case, you can see it there. That's basically it. It's not a huge case. This is it, it comes with the motor mount. It comes with a little arm to hold your phone. Comes with a little thread adapter to fit on the bottom and USB cable, QuickStart guide. Am I missing anything? The remote, of course, the remote I was stuck here.

[00:05:24]
Abhijit Limaye: -It's got a little neat magnetic connection to it. Once you're done scanning, just put it back on this thing, and that way you won't forget it.

[00:05:37]
Amir Frank: -Exactly. Really handy to have that magnetic remote so that you don't lose it because it is small. Remotes always get lost at least for me. What else do we have here, Abjit? Sneek peek on Axis. You want to tell us about the Standalone unit in the phone here and the phone?

[00:05:57]
Abhijit Limaye: -Absolutely. This gives you a little bit of an insight for folks obviously who don't have the Axis unit in their hands yet. This gives you a little bit of a picture. It's got a USB-C cable connection for charging. You can use your standard adapter, power adapter to take a cable put that in, and charge the device. It's got a pretty long battery life.

You don't have to worry about running out of battery for a day's work. Then it's got a couple of adjustments in it. It's got a horizontal adjustment for a commodity in different types of phones, different sizes of phones. It can go all the way up to, iPhone 13 Pro Max. Obviously, it can accommodate some of the smaller phones as well. On the top there you'll see a little knob on the third from the left picture.

You can loosen or tighten that knob to then adjust the angle. In the Smartphone Capture app, many folks may know that we can do simple scan, we can do complete scans. This knob can be then used to adjust the angle of the phone as such. Then most importantly, there are adjustments from a horizontal perspective and a vertical angular perspective.

[00:07:30]
Abhijit Limaye: For us to come up with Axis is to get rid of or eliminate or reduce the parallax error that one gets because of the way we capture things. What this allows a customer to do is to center the axis of rotation around the axis of the camera itself. As you can see in this picture, you've got three cameras. We use the ultra-wide camera for the iPhone, 12 pros and 13 pros.

For example, in that case, you want to line up that camera vertically with the axis of rotation and that helps you reduce or eliminate the parallax errors. Stitching errors are quite considerably. But not only that, for simple scans and complete scans, you can also adjust the angle so that horizontally you're also rotating around the axis of the camera.

These are a couple of simple tweaks that will help do get your models are really nicely aligned, nicely stitched, and really high fidelity and high-quality.

[00:08:39]
Amir Frank: -Sounds good. Basically, this ties into the whole idea behind camera ubiquity. Is that right basically. We came up with SBC and I would say probably three or four years ago, we only had the Pro 2 and from then we added 360 cameras on the phone. This is just like another iteration, I guess, is that right?

[00:09:08]
Abhijit Limaye: -Indeed. The best way to think about this is really using the right tool for the right job. There is no two spaces are alike, no requirements are alike. In some cases, we're looking for exceptional imagery. You can do that obviously with Pro2, you can use a 360 camera. But now with Axis, you can also use your smartphone in the pocket. We're solving problems of accessibility, affordability, for example, and scale.

What we imagined was in order for customers to capture digital twins. Everybody has a smartphone in their pocket. They can always start to use those devices. But as soon as they get Axis, you can start to create really high fidelity models with that as well. It's really, again right tool for the right job.

[00:10:08]
Amir Frank: -Absolutely. To your point, I don't know how many photographers we have attending with us today. But as you definitely well know, the best camera is the one you have with you. That's part of what we're doing here, is you have it, they're going to have this and that's obviously nothing new and nothing unique to Matterport.

Camera phones have pretty much taken over a point-shoot. I would think for the most part. Now you've got your phone and you've got higher-end DSLRs for photography. This is like that. If you don't have that Pro2 with you and you really need to scan this thing. This is a good tool, indeed. Let's talk about use cases. You mentioned the right tool for the right job.

What do you think? Obviously, right now, this thing is not really out there in the world and we haven't seen it. That's why I'd love to hear from some of our attendees and how they see themselves potentially using this. But this is what we've been seeing so far as far as use cases, there's a lot.

[00:11:21]
Abhijit Limaye: -Indeed. One of the biggest things we obviously see and have been in the field of is promoting your commercial real estate. We have photographers, brokers, real estate agents who can now easily create a digital twin of the property that they are listing online. This is a really easy way for that, so no question about that.
Some of the additional parts and use cases that we see is.

Imagine the retails stores, retail locations, educational institutes, essentially you've got a lot of different locations across the country. It's really hard to imagine having being able to scan 1,000 locations at the same time. But you do have a 1,000 store managers at a particular chain of retail stores, for example. They can all now scan at the same time if you want.

They can scan every week, they can scan every month. What this really unlocks is now the store managers and the corporates as well have the ability to operate their stores digitally, remotely. In the previous case when we talked about promoting your real estate we were saving time to go to the site and inspect the site and so on, so forth.

Similar conditions here, but now you can really operate your store. You can check for ADA compliance. You can check for some of the things that you want to see from a region merchandising perspective, how are products positioned in the store, do you have your stores laid out correctly and so on, so forth. As you're going through seasonal changes in the stores, you can check those out as well. You can do store designs.

This just unlocks a lot more possibilities of what you can actually do with your digital twins.

[00:13:25]
Amir Frank: - Yeah, absolutely. The one that it definitely speaks to me and I'm not sure why, because I don't work in retail, but the visual merchandising and e-commerce to me is absolutely huge. It doesn't really makes sense, I don't think for every store across the country, if you're talking about a chain or something like that, to have a Matterport Pro2 at the store all the time.

These stores are changing their layout constantly, freshening things up, seeing what works, what doesn't work. Visual merchandising is a very big deal into just have this device which is extremely reasonably priced and for the manager, like you said every story I was a manager for them to just stick their phone in there, do a scan so that corporate can have a look at it.

Or even for e-commerce, any store that has an e-commerce presence as well as brick and mortar really should be using their e-commerce visitors or online visitors to better layout their brick and mortar store. What I mean by that is with a Matterport model, not only can you provide more of an in-store experience for your online visitors, but they're providing you with information, with data about where they're going.

How they're walking through the space, what they're looking at, what they're not looking at. You can take that information, information that you wouldn't get from stores visiting your brick and mortar location. You can take that information and then go and redesign your brick and mortar store to make more sense. You should look at your online users as this massive focus group filled with information and able to present that to you.

You don't have to deal with surveys that don't really get filled out, or how accurate is that information so on and so. Sorry about the rant, but I think that's massive potential there. Let's talk bundles. Right now we haven't shipped anything yet, so we're pre that or we're on a waitlist. What are these options, can you tell us about this?

[00:15:40]
Abhijit Limaye: - Yeah, absolutely. We've got three options for our customers and users. One of the very basic option is the axis itself. For folks who have a tripod with them, they can just get the axis hardware and then start to use their smartphone in their pocket. The second option is the axis tripod. They're both hardware only options. Then you would have to go on matterport.com to subscribe to a plan of your choosing or liking.

Depending on the number of spaces that you plan to scan, you can go anywhere from one space to five spaces to 25 spaces and so on, so forth per month. You then select that plants separately. But for what we have also not introduced is actually an annual version, which is an amazing deal for this, especially for axis, is we currently have a monthly plan for starter which allows you for five spaces and two users.

We now are including an annual package along with axis for an incredible deal of $149. Right now we are inviting folks to join the waitlist and we will start shipping them in the month of April. At the moment if you join the waitlist until the end of March, people can get a $20 off on the hardware only. As you can see here on the slide and you can get it for as little as $59.

[00:17:23]
Amir Frank: - I haven't done a huge amount of research but little bit of research that I've done around pen heads available and trying to rig together systems that require this piece from that company in this other piece to get that, to align that nodal point, not only is it difficult and not nearly as precise, it ends up being considerably more than $59.

[00:17:48]
Abhijit Limaye: Absolutely. If you compare hardware only, then that's absolutely true. Matterport's mission is really to get people make it really easy for our customers to create digital twins of their properties. This is an effort that is very customer-centric from our perspective.

[00:18:10]
Amir Frank: That's cool, very cool. We did it, awesome. We're ready for Q&A. I'm seeing a lot of questions come in, so super happy about that. Got to see that we've got a lot of time. We do have a good amount of time, so if you're interested in me showing a comparison between a scan that I have with my iPhone 12 Pro Max on this axis versus something like a Rico Z1, just let me know.

If we are interested in that I'm happy to share that with you guys. That's it. Let's go ahead and check out some questions. I will just start at the top with Philip and he asks, is the new device quicker than the Matterport Pro2? I would say it depends on the phone you use. Depending on that phone are you using LiDAR, the iPhones have LiDAR, or not using lidar? What do you think Abhijit?

[00:19:16]
Abhijit Limaye: You can go faster if you're not using LiDAR and using an ultralight field of view lens. If you're using an Android phone, a number of those do not have an ultralight lens and hence you might be more inclined for doing complete scans. But if you're doing a simple scan with an ultra light lens, it can go faster than Pro2 in a sweep level.

But the other piece that I've say it's really you want to think about everything combined, not just the speed of a single sweep as well. It's not a replacement for Pro2. Pro2 is not a replacement for this one as we were talking about earlier, it's sometimes harder to lug around Pro2 and have 1,000 Pro2s in each store. That's where it gets a perfect situation for this or something that you want carry quickly into the more traditional stamp.

The accuracy is going to depend on the phone as well. Pro2 is obviously going to have a much higher degree of accuracy as well.

[00:20:28]
Amir Frank: For anybody asking themselves so I've got an iPhone with LiDAR and the Pro2 uses a LiDAR structured light., why would I bother with a Pro2? Let me just address that real quick. I'm not even sure if anybody asks that yet, but very simply, not all LiDAR are created equal. Just because your phone has LiDAR does not make it the same accuracy, level, and measurement as something like the Pro2.

Which is a tool that is really designed and honed for a very specific use that is measuring. I even heard somebody comparing the iPhone with LiDAR to a BLK 360. There we're even stretching it further and that's a whole another level of accuracy and a very different LiDAR system altogether. Like Abhijit is saying, this is absolutely not a replacement for any camera that we have. Every camera that we have is different in its own way.

Not that we have, but the one that we support 360s are blazing fast. But if you compare a 360, even something like the Z1, there are only dealing with 2D images. You compare that to the accuracy of an iPhone with LiDAR. The iPhone with LiDAR is going to be a little bit more accurate. There's a lot of things to take into consideration. I don't want to get into how many things.

Whatever your use case is and whatever is most important to you, if it's the speed of getting through the job, if all you're looking for is 2D, if you really need that measurement accuracy, all of those are going to require you to use a different device and we're trying to make it as easy as possible to pick that device. Just wanted to get that out there. Back to the questions.

[00:22:29]
Amir Frank: Does do simple scan as well as complete scan or just a simple scan? I think we addressed that. Abhijit just said that. With this thing right here, I don't know if you can see, I can loosen this up and this turns. I can have it pointing a little bit down, roughly 15 degrees down to do the initial 360 rotation to get the first scan. If you're only doing simple, that's all you need.

If you then you do complete, it'll pause you tilt it back up this way to do the top and then it'll spin again to do the other top 360. You can do both complete and simple using this axis. Let's see what else we have here. Anything that you see in the questions Abhijit that you want to take on, by all means go for it.

[00:23:19]
Amir Frank: Let's see here. So Maxine says, "I'm new to Matterport products super excited about this. Is there a need for certain spec of Android phone to use this?" Really good question. Abhijit, go ahead.

[00:23:33]
Abhijit Limaye: We do support multiple Android phones. The only trouble that we typically have is some of the older Android phones that don't have a gyroscope. That way if it doesn't, then the phone doesn't have the capability to take the information that we need. This happens to be used on mostly the older Android phones, but the newer ones, the past 2-3 years should be fine.

[00:24:01]
Amir Frank: Nice. I mean, we have a good selection of Android phones that we support as far as SPC is concerned and from those not others like the older ones, I think it's the A12. I don't know is it Galaxy A12?

[00:24:16]
Abhijit Limaye: Galaxy A12.

[00:24:16]
Amir Frank: Galaxy A12 that don't have that gyroscope that you mentioned.

[00:24:22]
Abhijit Limaye: Absolutely. There's a question here about quality and white balanced comparing to Theta z1. If you want to bring up some comparison in the meantime.

[00:24:31]
Amir Frank: For sure. Let's do that. Let's go ahead and check out. I'm going to start sharing the screen again. This is the Z1. Let me make it full screen so you can see the spaces around. I'll try not to pin too fast. Let me get over here to a window.

[00:25:03]
Amir Frank: Not bad. Really actually it's good. In comparison, this is the same space with my iPhone 12 Pro Max. I don't remember if I was using lidar. It wouldn't matter. I mean, obviously, for the 2D image quality won't make a difference.

[00:25:32]
Amir Frank: Let's go to the same spot here. That's not quite the same spot but depending on what you like better. I think as far as stitching is concerned I think it did a really good job keeping that parallax issue down to a real minimum. I mean, impressive to see.

[00:26:08]
Amir Frank: Let's look at Sean's question here. I'll bring this over here real quick actually. Have just one question that has, in my opinion not been sufficiently answered in recent e-mails. That is, how to illustrate 3D VR to yet to meet new customers from both hospitality, real estate, and industry sectors.

[00:26:34]
Amir Frank: VR is something that is currently half supported I guess I can say. We supported via web VR and to get to web VR, you need a device that, I don't know back in a very long time ago, I suppose we had an app for Oculus, like a dedicated actual VR app. It didn't do very much. You were able to just load your models into it and then through that app, you'd be able to see your models. I don't think it's any better than what you have now with web VR.

But basically with web VR, you just use the web browser in your Oculus set. You find your models and you get into there and you hit full screen or you have little VR goggle icon there. You click on that and it brings it up in VR, and that's it. You do need Wi-Fi access. It's not a model that you can load into your phone and have available if Wi-Fi is not available if you're meeting clients or something like that at a location where there's no Wi-Fi.

These are obviously, I believe now, tethered devices. They're not tethered, some of them are not tethered. Oculus Go is not tethered. So you can have devices that are not tethered. You can bring it with you. But you do have to have Wi-Fi because it is through their web browser that you're going to find your model and just hit the little VR icon and then there you go. That's it, done.

Hopefully, that answers your question, Sean, if you do have a follow-up question, please go ahead and ask. A little not so much about Axis per se, but let's go ahead and tackle this anyway. Norman asks, what is the turnaround time for floor plans once it's kind of job site when doing water damage, emergency things like that. Floor plans, we do have varying timeframes.

You can actually order it. I think the fastest is six hours. I want to say in express. If you go into your account, you can see the different I guess SLAs available at times that are available to you there and you can choose, I think 24 hours, 48 hours is the typical one is the most common one is within 48 hours. Then there are the faster versions, 24 I think in six if I'm not mistaken, I could be wrong.

Don't quote me on the exact times, but you have three options and you can choose between those. If you need it in a really rushed job, then you can go with the express option, but the otherwise 48 is the slowest that you'll get it back.

[00:29:14]
Abhijit Limaye: Let me take a question from Melissa here in terms of the axis costing $59 as an early bird it will go to 79 in April when we open this up. But regardless, I think the question is valid. There's Pro2 cameras at 3395. So obviously, the big difference, of course, there's obviously a difference between the two cameras and the capture methods. Accuracy, Pro2, the support plus or minus 1 percent as well as the image resolution.

You're going to get a beautiful imagery for Pro2s who had Axis. Keep in mind that Axis is a companion device, so it can only do as good as your smartphone can do. But when compared to a smartphone capture, for example, what this will help you do is a couple of three things. One is because you can now align it with the center of rotation or axis of rotation, if you will.

You can now have a lot less to minimal to none stitching errors. Your model will look even more beautiful with Axis and using a smartphone. The second part is, especially with remote control, becomes hands-free for you. That way, you can just keep taking scans and sweeps without getting tired or fatigued with it. So that's how Axis helps this smartphone capture. For use cases which require a greater resolution, great accuracy continue using Pro2s as well for sure.

[00:30:55]
Amir Frank: Also, one thing that we didn't bring up is the size of the job itself. So if you're doing like, I don't know, maybe a construction or a full shopping center go to like a 50,000 square feet take that into consideration. Access and using a smartphone may not be the best option. You're probably going to want to go with the Pro2. It's complete workhorse and can go eight hours on a battery charge and not run into any problems.

[00:31:27]
Abhijit Limaye: Christopher has stitch is it going to prevent stitching issues. That's what it's designed for in the mobile app. If we eliminate absolutely every single one of them probably not, but it will eliminate most errors that you're currently getting with the mobile app. By the way, the other difference as well is that when it comes to scanning with smartphones, your field of view is obviously limited with Pro2s you can get the full from origin there as well.

[00:32:04]
Amir Frank: Especially with a simple scan, even with a wide-angle, I think you're looking at maybe 140 degrees, let's say I think it's closer to 170ish with the Pro2.

[00:32:13]
Abhijit Limaye: Exactly.

[00:32:14]
Amir Frank: It is wider and a smaller blurred area at the top. We got a question here from Stewart. Does the iPhone self register when you change setup locations? Would you need a minimum of say, five setups scan positions to record a full short statue?

[00:32:41]
Amir Frank: It sounds stored like you're looking to scan more like a well, in this case, you mentioned a statute. So going around a piece of hardware or something in making that 3D. It's certainly doable. This is really no different as far as you're scanning technique, that shouldn't change. You're using the phone that's in your pocket to create a 360, just like you can use a 360 camera to create a 360 or the Matterport Pro2 and then that's taken..

Capture and it's processed and done whatever it needs to do in order to align with the next position. It's not like this is going to require more or less of those individuals can positions than you would normally do with any other camera. But generally speaking, for me personally, I like to go maybe every five feet.

If you are doing a statue that's going to be roughly five to six feet, maybe two meters away from me. I'll just do a circle and move the camera around that statue roughly every five feet. It's going to have a good number of scan positions. You can't really have too many, of course, at some point it just becomes redundant and unnecessary. But if you do run into any problems,

By the way, for anyone who has run into issues with, potential misalignment or not aligning, you get a message since it can align. More scan positions, higher scan density, what we call is the answer basically to pretty much every kind of issue that you might run into as a Scan Tech.

[00:34:22]
Abhijit Limaye: Good question from Tom, do you have to use ultra-wide lens? No. You can use the ultra-wide lens or the normal lens as well. But I've kept it up as not designed for use with fish eye lenses. When you want to capture a entire field of view then we've build the complete scan mode, which you can use a normal lens for.

[00:34:47]
Amir Frank: Brian asked regarding what we were just talking about, simple scan versus complete scan. There has been an update a little while back, Brian, that you no longer need to do it in three rotations. Now it's just two rotations, so pointing down at roughly 15 degrees and then pointing up at again roughly 15 degrees. So it's just a two times around.

You can do that whether you have a ultra-wide angle lens or not, the Capture app will choose the lens automatically for you whether the lens that recognizes an ultra-wide, that's what it's going to use. You don't have the option of switching lenses. You will be able to see, especially if you take a scan and then look at the preview. That's a really good way of getting just a kind of a rough estimate of what you're going to be able to see top and bottom. If you need more, maybe complete scan is the answer for you.

[00:35:40]
Abhijit Limaye: One from the end. You have some Pro2s and definitely get some more access so that you can use them as a good backup. Perhaps when Pro2 is not available. What you can do there in that case is certainly use a five users and a more number of spaces plan. Do check out our website, matterport.com.

For the higher levels of subscriptions that will allow you to get to more scans, more spaces at a time. There's a question here about availability, we'll be shipping from April and everybody who is on the waitlist will get access.


[00:36:28]
Abhijit Limaye: This is why we are doing the waitlist, it's for establishing priority for people. Definitely do sign up for, for the waitlist and we will process all orders in the waitlist first. Which model of iPhone is lidar technology? Iphone 12 Pro and iPhone 13 Pros have the Lidar. What would you do if they're better said are you don't eat, don't want to be seen. This is where the remote comes in pretty handy.

So you can use the remote control and I will fold that in my hand here. There's a little remote control about the size. That goes back on the unit right here. It's a magnetic clip. You can use that when you want to hide. Duration of the full scan, it depends on your phone and you're doing Simple Scan or complete scans or if you're using lidar or not.

Typically, we recommend that you stay within about 5,000 square feet somewhere between 3,000- 5,000 square feet for spaces. When you're using Access and a smartphone, beyond which you want to consider something different.

[00:37:47]
Amir Frank: This is a question from Lianne. How can this be added to a current package that already has a Pro2. I use it for real estate and this is a good backup when Pro2s and use on another location. Absolutely a 100% good use case and what are the pricing options for under five uses but space for a 100 scans? As far as the pricing option for under five users, the space for 100 scans or a hundred scan positions,

I'm not quite clear on that. Lianne if you can clarify. As far as the use case, a couple of things, yes. As a backup for when your Pro2 is on a job and you've got another one to do at the same time, perfect use case. Another one would be some properties have multiple structures, but you want to include that in a single model. It's really cool. We'll have a detached garage that's actually turned into an ADU and you want to include that or a mother-in-law unit, whatever it is.

With the access, you can actually have that connection because you have a Pro2 and it's a really bright sunny day, that's probably not going to work well. It's not ideal for outdoor situations when there's too much light. Instead of waiting until the sun is at the horizon when we recommend doing that outdoor scan from inside the door of one structure, start your access scan with your phone and lead your way into the next structure.

From there you can continue going on with your Pro2 to have really nice high-def measurement accurate indoors. That's another use case. Let's ask, do you have a comparison chart that shows the different phones and whereas available with each, such as the ultra wide lens, what resolution is recommended, things like that as far as the resolution. I mean, again, it's it's whatever the phone has.

Most of them have resolution is not so much a concern because they all have a nice high resolution. Keep in mind their resolution is just for one single image. If you're using an ultra wide angle lens, you've got six of those that are stitched together to make the complete 360. Your 360 is going to be very high-res, as we mentioned, not as high res as something like the Pro2, but nevertheless, very good image quality, no question.

Unless you're planning on extracting an asset like a 2D image from the model data and printing it, which I'm not even sure how many people print anymore, then resolution is not really a concern. Maybe if you want to zoom in a lot, but that's about it. We don't, I apologize, I don't believe is that right? We don't have a chart that lays out all the specs for the different phones. I am sorry.

[00:40:57]
Abhijit Limaye: The Android world definitely makes it much harder there to do.

[00:41:02]
Amir Frank: People don't realize how many Android phones and variations of Android's. It's very, very complicated to create anything that works well on Android so this is.

[00:41:13]
Abhijit Limaye: There is a quick question from Asher. Can you order 2D plan or BIM files with iPhone and access? 2D floor plans, yes. For BIM file, stay tuned on that. Certainly, looking at that as an option on our roadmap and we will keep you posted.

[00:41:37]
Amir Frank: Okay. What else do we have here?

[00:41:42]
Amir Frank: Understand that we're shipping from April, but will the people on the waitlist be able to confirm a purchase prior to that?

[00:41:51]
Abhijit Limaye: Unfortunately not. When we go live you will be at the at the front of the list for sure. You will absolutely get priority over anybody who's ordering after. Not only do you get the $20 discount, but you also get the priority if you joined the wait list now before March 31st.

[00:42:16]
Amir Frank: Will everyone on the waitlist get an access? I mean, essentially, yes.

[00:42:19]
Abhijit Limaye: Yes.

[00:42:22]
Amir Frank: Okay. What is the duration of a single full scan? If we're talking about a simple scan, so it's just a single one rotation. It does depend on the phone that you're using and of course, whether you're using lidar or not. With that said, I think can range, we've tested anywhere between, I want to say 20 seconds to like 45- ish, some something like that.

Between 20 and 40 seconds is the range of how fast a single or a simple scan is going to be. Can I take images outside of my cottage, i.e. patio, backyard access? -Yes. Yes, you can, but not just anywhere.

[00:43:13]
Amir Frank: There isn't really a good rule of thumb. First of all, if you have an iPhone with lidar, yes, you can because we are using lidar more actively to do alignment and work with that data, and that lidar on your iPhone works outside. It can be seen outside, so that's great and another one of those differences between the lidar on your phone and something like a Pro2, but still using Cortex to convert that.

Once you have that 360 stitched together, convert that into 3D data. If you're in an area that is not very well understood by Cortex and Cortex understands very, very well structures, buildings, walls, ceilings, floors, things like that, furniture, mostly indoors. If you're outdoors, on a patio, no problem because you're within range of those exterior walls, and that's pretty much what I would recommend, is try to stay close to those exterior walls.

Not right up against them, but 5-10 feet from those exterior walls, so it has those angles and corners and edges and whatnot to pick up on and identify and convert to 3D and makes alignment a lot easier. If you're in the middle of the woods, probably, it's not going to work, if that makes sense.

[00:44:38]
Abhijit Limaye: -I see we've got a question from Mike. "Will the Axis scans work outdoors in 3D scan mode when attached to the model as opposed to just a 360 scan?" Especially if you use a lidar, 3D scan mode is definitely possible, outdoor as well.

[00:45:04]
Amir Frank: -Joe has a good question. "How sturdy is the tripod?"

[00:45:11]
Amir Frank: It's good when lighting is not too dark. If you're in a low-lit situation, your shutter speed is obviously going to slow down, like the cameras just does it automatically to make up, and we are dealing with HDR, and so you could run into some blurriness. This does have a battery and adds a little bit of weight to this, camera spinning around. If you have your own tripod, by all means, go for it.

Take advantage of that, and if you need a sturdier tripod for your use case, go for it. I have found that with the tripod that we do ship with it, I have the bottom two sections extended all the way, and the very top section, I don't extend at all. I just don't even bother opening it up. This third section, I've actually suggested to open it up also all the way. It just depends on your use case.

If you're doing something more for documenting, like we talked about retail for visual merchandising, you don't even have to have this top one open all the way, so I have it about halfway. With the motor mount and the phone on top, you're looking at about 4.5 feet at lens height, which is more than enough to be over countertop height, so you can see that great for maybe under the upper cabinets if you want to get a visual of what's going on underneath them.

Great for a lot of different use cases, and if you've got enough light, that's going to be great. You really don't need anymore than that, but again, in those low-light situations or if you do need something to be much taller, then just use whatever tripod you have or get something that's going to suit your needs. If you are using your own tripod, be cautious of the pan, tilt head that you probably have on it. If you've got a ball head.

it's not great, but okay, we're not dealing with a 6.5 pound camera like the Pro2, where we absolutely don't recommend ball heads. But with this one, that should be strong enough without a problem, but if you've got a pan-tilt head, you've got this long arms sticking out the back of it, you're going to want to take that off because as this thing turns around, it's going to see it, and it's going to put it in every single scan position, so just keep that in mind.

[00:47:30]
Abhijit Limaye: -Again, question from Phyllis. "Do you recommend using the highest resolution on the phone?" Yes. The resolution on the phone, use the best maximum you can so that you can get the best quality models at the end of the day.

[00:47:45]
Amir Frank: -We do that automatic. You don't really have to think about it. It's fully-automated. Like with everything else, everything that we could possibly automate, we've gone ahead and done everything we can to automate it to make this as easy to set up as possible and capture. There's no resolution option that you choose, it just does it for you.

[00:48:07]
Abhijit Limaye: -Joseph. "What's the maximum width of the device it can accommodate?" If you think about iPhone 13 Pro Max, it will accommodate that screen size.

[00:48:21]
Amir Frank: -Tom asked a question. I've actually gotten this, I don't remember where else. "Can you create a 360 panel without going through Matterport app and run Axis?" Unfortunately, I don't believe so. Is there a way, Abhijit? I don't think so.

[00:48:37]
Abhijit Limaye: -No.

[00:48:37]
Amir Frank: -It's just that it's designed to work with Capture, basically.

[00:48:43]
Abhijit Limaye: -Indeed.

[00:48:43]
Amir Frank: -That's what communicates with it, so there's no other way.

[00:48:46]
Abhijit Limaye: -That is correct, yeah.

[00:48:52]
Amir Frank: -This is a total hack. Don't turn it on, and manually turn it.

[00:48:57]
Abhijit Limaye: -That's right.

[00:48:59]
Amir Frank: -For the price, it still meets those needs as some other pan-tilt heads or pano heads.

[00:49:09]
Abhijit Limaye: -A question from Daniel, "Since lidar takes longer, does that mean Axis would recognize if I'm using the lidar option or not?

[00:49:19]
Abhijit Limaye: Definitely, pick the 3D scanning mode if you want to use lidar, and then the Capture app will recognize that and start using lidar for that.

[00:49:33]
Amir Frank: -There is an option. That's the one thing, unlike resolution where you don't have an option; lidar, you do have the option. It happens to be in the little options button right there to the left of the scan button, and you just tap on that. By default, like Abhijit said, it's chosen for you, but if you want, you can turn it off, and that will increase the speed. You'll get a faster 360 out of it.

[00:50:01]
Abhijit Limaye: -Josh, here's a question. "How many Axis can we order during the pre-order?" Typically, for most individuals, we're limiting this to a single order during pre-order. If you are interested in more than one Axis, please do reach out to us and our support team, and they will help you out.

[00:50:27]
Amir Frank: - Caleb asked a good question. "How is the 2D floor plan from an iPhone with Axis?" Pretty much the same as a 2D floor plan from something like a 360 camera like a Z1. Most phones with Axis are going to have that level of dimensional accuracy, roughly 4-8 percent, which is significantly better than unknown, which is what you have when you're just hand-holding it because massive human variable.

But still, the dimensional accuracy is still not as good as something like the Pro2, which is within one percent. So 4-8 percent, you've got to keep that in mind, and that is significant if your use case depends on dimensional accuracy. Just keep that in mind.

[00:51:20]
Abhijit Limaye: -Another question. "What is the range of the remote control?" Very typical of Bluetooth, the range is going to be a bit more limited than your Wi-Fi communication protocols. This is a Bluetooth remote control, so it's definitely limited. Well, if you're used to using the Capture app for controlling a Pro2, for example, it wouldn't be as far.

[00:51:52]
Amir Frank: -Donald asked the question that I feel obligated to answer. It's a little bit off topic, but we'll go ahead and tackle this one real quickly before we take off. Maybe we'll do another question that is Axis-focused. "How to scan a 900-seat music venue?" The key is that's a big space. Like I've said before, scan density pretty much resolves all issues, and a lot of it is redundant.

You've got this structure that when you move 10 feet forward, the seats in that area are going to look identical to the seats 10 feet back, so you got to be mindful of that and one you might want to use AprilTags. You can put them on the floor, even that will help, but make sure that you don't move the camera very much. It's not so much about the total number of scan positions.

If you use a good, strong device, it should handle it just fine, but it's more about the overall amount of surface area that you're scanning, and so don't worry about trying to minimize the number of scan positions. Increase the number of scan positions, that will be much better. Let's go Axis, and then I think we're at the end of the hour.

[00:53:12]
Abhijit Limaye: -I'll think about that question. Somebody asked if he can use it with an iPad. Frank, so unfortunately, not. Axis is designed for iPhones and other smartphones only, not iPads or tablets.

[00:53:30]
Amir Frank: -It works with the widest iPhone. I'm pretty sure that the 12 Pro Max and 13 Pro Max are the widest iPhones that I've seen. I've compared the specs to the largest Galaxies or Samsung phones that I've come across. I even have a case on mine that fits just fine, and there's even more room on that thread to go a little bit bigger, but not tablet size. That's it. I apologize. We couldn't get to all the questions.

Great, great questions. I really appreciate your attendance and awesome to see all the excitement around Axis. Thank you, Abhijit, so much for taking the time to be with us and help us answer all these questions.

[00:54:14]
Abhijit Limaye: -Thank you. Guys, great participation.

[00:54:18]
Amir Frank: -Everybody, take care and hope to see you in the next Shop Talk webinar, which will be at beginning of April. See you then. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.