GeraldWhen Creative first passed us their Project Watcher unit, we knew what was the immediate use case application. After having done many live streams of us building LEGO on our Twitch channel, we finally have a “lightweight” hardware camera solution that isn’t finicky.
Project Watcher is plug-and-play, all you need is to connect to your PC and you’re ready to go. One can switch between either camera on the fly, have them side by side (or picture by picture), or combine both to have picture-in-picture.
Both cameras house a Sony Starvis IMX415 1/2.8″ 8.4MP CMOS sensor and can support up to 4K resolution on a single camera. But that’s not how the camera should be used. With one camera being able to provide 52°, 66°, 72°, and 88° field of view while the other comes with a 2.75X optical zoom and is able to shoot macro shots from 5cm away, the use is clear.
In a real-world application, this could mean we could have one camera focused on a host’s face, while we are able to use the camera to focus on his hands. This would be perfect for folks who enjoy building LEGO, or Gundam models, and even trading card games which we have done in our stream.
The best part about Project Watcher is that it all runs natively and no software is required. When we had connected it to OBS, the camera instantly pops up as a source and we were ready to go. While this might be a boon to some, the lack of any software tweaks might be a concern for some especially if you’d like to toggle to exposure and zoom to detail.
Instead, we have a hardware remote where users will be able to toggle around to get their framing perfectly right. While it goes provide quite a few options, it can get restrictive if you’re unable to find the exact framing you want.
One highlight of Project Watcher was the stands we were provided with for the prototypes, these were great in having to get the perfect angles as we opened up our Flesh and Blood cards but Creative is not certain if it would be included in the final package.
Project Watcher is currently running a crowdfunding project on Indiegogo so we’ll see if the market has any demand to see it come to life.
Gerald currently straddles between his love of video games and board gaming. There’s nothing that interests him more than trying out the newest and fanciest gadget in town as well. He dreams of publishing a board game sometime in the future!
Si Jia
