Twitter’s Periscope application has seen some wild success since it’s launch on iOS and Android devices, and with good reason as livestreaming content has been growing in popularity the last couple of years. While Periscope certainly enjoys all of the content that users post and share, they want to make it easy for some users (not Android yet, unfortunately) to stream their adventures without taking a huge risk of damaging their device. Periscope states that they’ve seen people do some pretty crazy albeit inventive things to allow streaming of all kinds of situations, from strapping phones to drones and even tieing them to balloons, and to make things simpler they’re introducing livestreaming to Periscope from GoPro’s HERO4 cameras for iOS users.
Yes, it’s unfortunate that there’s no Android integration just yet, but chances are that the Periscope team will eventually add this function to the Android app in the future, it’s just a matter of when and given the number of different Android devices out there it isn’t surprising to see them pilot the feature on iOS first. Having said that, there may not be support for GoPro through the Android version of Periscope, but one comment on the blog post conveniently points out that the ‘Stream’ app has Android support for GoPro, so if this is something you want there is always that option as an alternative to waiting for Periscope to come around.
For the iOS users, and presumably Android once this feature is hopefully added, all users have to do to get streaming straight from their GoPro is make sure that the HERO4 camera has WiFi enabled and that the phone is connected to it, then open up the Periscope application and simply tap to broadcast which will end up revealing a GoPro button on-screen. From there all users have to do is title their broadcast and let it rip. Once you’re done doing a more strenuous activity, you can easily double tap to swap back to your smartphone camera and stream from there, and switch back again with just as much ease if you need to. Periscope has even ensured that users can’t accidentally swap to their smartphone camera if it’s in their pocket by integrating a new lock button that keeps this from happening.