Enlaps Tikee 3 - Installation & Configuration (Part 2)
After my previous article giving an overview of the product, I have now created a second video on the Installation & Configuration of the solution, which you can watch below - however, it’s in German, so either use Youtube’s built in translate function for the subtitles, or you can continue reading to get an idea!
In its essence, the Tikee is a time-lapse camera, but it's really an ecosystem for all kinds of long-term projects, monitoring, and analytics. So if you want to document, for example, a construction site, or the set-up and dismantling of an event, or snow conditions in the mountains over longer periods, the Tikee is the right choice. It should be briefly mentioned that I use a Tikee 3 Pro Plus, there is also the normal Tikee, and I have a myTikee unlimited account. There are also the Storytelling or Reporting or a free account on mytikee.io. The differences are particularly evident in the configuration options for recording and editing; the commissioning remains basically the same. So let's take a closer look at it all.
Configuration
The configuration of the Tikee can basically be divided into three steps:
1) Preparing the Tikee:
First of all the Tikee itself, which you have to charge via Micro USB with a standard USB charger. Then you usually insert the micro SD card, which can be up to 512GB in the Tikee 3 Pro Plus. How much space you need obviously depends on the project you want to configure. There is a table from Enlaps to give a rough estimate. Even if you only send the images to the cloud, you still need a micro SD card, in this case of course with minimal space requirements.
The next step is to insert the Micro SIM. Of course, this doesn't apply if there is sufficient WiFi at the location that you can use, or if you only want to save the images locally. However, even if you only want to save the images locally, it can be a good idea to establish a data connection, for example to be able to call up the status of the Tikee on the cloud platform and to know whether the recording sequence is working ideally or there are problems. Two small points about the SIM: First of all, the data volume you need depends on how you configure the camera. Enlaps also has a calculator to estimate this, and it can really do anything from one gigabyte to 50 GB per month, depending on the configuration. The second point: It is advisable to insert a SIM card with your own telephone number; there are also micro SIM cards that only offer data volume, for example as an extension of your primary smartphone SIM card, but myTikee has a function that relies on the SIM card having its own phone number. The function is not necessarily critical but can be an advantage, more on that later, and that is why you should make sure that you have your own phone number when buying the micro SIM card.
2) myTikee Account and Connection
The second step in configuring the Tikee involves creating an account on myTikee. As already mentioned, there are different types of accounts with different costs and different functions, but you can of course also start with the free version. Then you need the myTikee Remote app for iOS or Android, where you can then log in with the same account.
Next, the Tikee has to be nearby and switched on and is then recognized via Bluetooth, and you can see various information about your Tikee in the menu and also format the SD card. You should then set the data connection, as already mentioned, this can be done via WLAN, but also via the SIM card. With the SIM card you usually only need the PIN number and the APN server. You can often find this online and it varies from provider to provider. I haven't had any problems here with T-Mobile. Next you should also test the data connection, you can do this directly in the app and it is of course possible to do the same on site - we know, especially in Germany, that the mobile data network is not always the best and of course it would be very annoying when the Tikee is installed and cannot always reliably send images to the cloud.
I would like to make a few points about connecting the Tikee with the myTikee Cloud platform that might be useful. Normally, the Tikee sends a current status (battery, connection quality, etc.) at least every 24 hours, and at the same time also gets the configuration from the cloud platform, for example if you have configured a new recording frequency for your timelapse. However, this 24h interval also depends on some other parameters. For example, you can configure how often the Tikee sends the images to the cloud, every single image that is taken, or only after (for instance) 25 images have accumulated - the latter is of course much more efficient for battery life. The Tikee has some intelligence built in here: You can then also set that below a certain battery percentage, this interval is automatically increased in order to preserve battery until the battery is sufficiently charged again by sunlight.
Another exciting feature is the ability to bypass this interval. If you want to immediately force a new configuration from the cloud platform without waiting, you can also do this, but you need a SIM card with a phone number as I mentioned before, since this phone number is used internally to wake up the Tikee and upload the configuration, query the status, get a picture, etc. without having to wait for the interval that has been configured to elapse. It is therefore a good idea to familiarize yourself with these small functions in order to find the best compromise for your setup.
3) Setting up an Image Sequence
So, now that we have the whole connection issue out of the way, let's move on to the third part of the configuration, which in my opinion is also the most exciting, namely entering a recording sequence. The Tikee offers 3 different options here:
a) First of all, there is a so-called burst mode; That's 200 images maximum, at short intervals, in JPEG format saved, either to the SD card or sent to the cloud.
b) The second option is event mode, which is a maximum of 24 hours with a flexible interval. The images are only saved on myTikee, and only in JPG format.
c) The third mode is the most exciting and probably the one you will use most often, namely the long-term mode. You have a lot of flexibility here, you can set intervals from 30 seconds to 24 hours, you can configure endless recording sequences and the images are saved either as JPG or as a raw file in DNG format or both, whereby you can send the JPG files to the cloud and the raw format files can be saved on the memory card.
You can also set that, for example, you only take pictures on certain days of the week, for example working days, and only between certain times, for example working hours on a construction site, or you don't need any pictures at night. So you have a lot of flexibility here, but I would still like there to be even more flexibility. For example, you can combine a long-term recording with a burst recording, for example for a day or a few hours where there is a lot going on at a construction site and you would like to have an extra short sequence in addition to the long-term recording. But, for example, you can't configure two long-term recordings at the same time and that can be exciting. For example, you want a long-term recording with quite short ones intervals but low image quality that is sent to the cloud, and also wants one image per day in high quality that is saved to the memory card as a DNG file. This is currently not possible, hopefully such functions will be available in the future.
Installation
With that we have actually completed the configuration part of the Tikee and we come to the installation. In my case, I installed the Tikee on a construction site for two single-family homes and I'll now briefly show you how I did it and what needs to be taken into account.
The Tikee is quite easy to install, it has a quarter inch screw thread at the bottom that can be combined with a ball head or other tripod products to install it. However, for a solid and long-lasting installation, I would recommend the stainless steel arm from Enlaps, which is very flexible and can be installed both horizontally and vertically, and also has a built-in ball head so that the camera position can be adjusted. My Tikee was attached to the wooden slats of the roof terrace of the adjacent house using the stainless steel arm, of course with permission. I simply used four stainless steel screws to fix it horizontally via the recesses on the stainless steel arm, and then adjust the ball head, so that you can place the Tikee on top and then rotate and tilt it so that it captures the construction site perfectly.
I noticed that the wide perspective of 220 degrees can really cover the entire property, even though the Tikee is positioned directly on the property boundary and not slightly set back. This is actually impossible with a normal wide-angle camera, but it would only be possible with a fisheye lens at best.
The next thing you should do is align the solar panel, of course towards the south. This can actually be determined quite easily using the compass app on your smartphone, but of course you don't know what the angle of inclination should be, as the compass app obviously doesn't show the position of the sun exactly, but only the azimuth. To get the altitude, as a photographer I am using an app like Photopills, which uses the augmented reality functions to see exactly how the sun moves across the sky and thus allows me to optimally adjust the angle of inclination. After you've done that, you can simply use the included Allen key to fix the solar panel and ensure that the battery is being charged efficiently.
When aligning the Tikee in a situation like this, it is advisable to mount the camera approximately halfway up the composition to be filmed, this avoids having to tilt the camera up or down. This can be done quite easily with the ball head on the stainless steel arm, but it has the disadvantage that buildings etc. with straight lines will then appear to be angled in the footage. This can be compensated for somewhat in post-processing, but it is time-consuming and should therefore be avoided. Of course, if you're filming landscapes or events from above, this whole aspect isn't really a problem.
For long-term outdoor use, I would also recommend installing an anti-theft device. The Tikee does have GPS, but I would still prefer to avoid running after the thieves - Enlaps has a solution for this, but you can also use any standard theft chain, such as for laptops etc use. One last note about the positioning of the camera - if it is possible, you should avoid important parts of the image section being more than five meters away in front of the tikee in the middle - why - because due to the parallax effect of the two lenses, this part of the image The most difficult part for the algorithm is when combining the final panoramic image. In my experience, the Tikee algorithm does this pretty well, but if you can avoid it, it can of course be an advantage.
A second point about the panoramic image algorithm: It uses the first 100 images that are taken to zero in on the composition and what is happening in this scenery - this means you should make sure that the sequence only begins when the camera is installed in the final position, and ideally start the sequence in good weather and not at night so that the algorithm can work best. After everything has been considered, you can take your first test image. You can do this directly using the preview function of the app, but you have to keep in mind that it can take a few minutes for the image to arrive on the app, so bring some patience. Personally, I would recommend that you try to have a laptop on site where you can check the whole thing on the myTikee platform as well. You can then not only view the test image on a larger screen, but also ensure that all other functions and communication of the Tikee are working before you leave the site.
Finally, make sure that you have entered a sequence or, if a sequence has already been entered, make sure that you press the start button. One more point about this: If you enter a sequence on the app, it may of course take a while, as already explained before, until the sequence is displayed on the cloud platform, so be patient and don't try to enter a sequence on the cloud platform right away, otherwise it can happen that conflicts may arise.
I already have several hundred photos of my construction site sequence on the myTikee platform and can create the first time lapses here. Next time we'll take a look at what functions there are and what you can do with your material. For this article, I can conclude that the installation and configuration are quite well thought out, the whole process is relatively simple. There are a few things to consider, such as the size of the SD card, depending on what you want to achieve with your sequence and what settings you use. It can also be an advantage to familiarize yourself with the instructions that are available online, for example to find the best compromise between battery life and the optimal result.
All in all, it worked well and if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments or contact me. If you plan to buy a Tikee, you can use FLOENLAPS50 on www.enlaps.com to save 50 EUR at checkout!