Got my projector
Just got the projector I ordered off ebay. I still have to verify that it's working with my PC, but I was able to power it on and bring up the menu, which is a good sign. I'm still waiting for my LED's but they should be here tomorrow or saturday. I'm also still debating about the best way to polish the edges of my acrylic sheet (whether it's wise to use a flame torch or not) and trying to find some 400 and 600 grit sandpaper. Hopefully I will solve that problem today.
10 Comments:
hey dude, pretty sweet work your doing . one thing i have noticed with playing around with LEDs and perspex is changing the angles so the are not at right angles and getting the light refracting as much as posible. would be keen to see some pic's of your progress
interesting idea - I am hoping to be able to do some experimenting with the LED's soon. I'm guessing they'll be arriving monday. Right now I've just been shining my remote thru the edge but it hasn't been doing very much (I guess one LED is not enough to get any reflections going on in there - my piece of acrylic is pretty big 24 x 18). Are you working on a screen too? Looks like a small handful of people are attempting it.
yeh , i am a bit nervious about the software side , but played around with red leds to understand the concept. check out my site mrknow.info i and trawling around getting videos of this stuff and simular technolgy
Cool, well I'd be happy to collaborate. I know there is one other guy working on a screen too (see the makezine.com link below) who I wrote a message about collaborating on the software and sharing info about the construction but he hasn't emailed me back. Here are some other links you may find interesting:
http://videosift.com/story.php?id=7517 - minority report style - basically you wear gloves that have IR led's in them and track the glowing points. Technically this could be done without a rear-projection screen which could make it good for desktop applications but it relies more on gestures than actually clicking on things.
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/03/the_future_of_interfaces_is_mu.html (features a nice comments thread)
http://www.sport4minus.de/blog/?cat=13 - another dude making a screen. Scroll back for some more info but it looks like he hasn't worked on it for a while.
http://www.edmstudio.com/experimental/multitouch.html - the guy from the makezine thread's page
I'll be re-organizing my page o' links with these soon.
David, apologies for not answering earlier - I got tied up this week in other things. I'd really like to continue reading/contributing to these discussions. My only reservation with collaborating on code is that we're hoping to use the results commercially - our company intends to install one of these systems for profit (read: feed our families).
Perhaps it would just be a matter of keeping the low-level stuff (capture, segmentation, identification, tracking) separate and LGPL (like Ogre) licensed.
Alternatively, maybe just keep talking about hardware and algorithms.
Either way is fine with me ...
Cheers,
Darran (futnuh).
Yeah, I totally agree Futnuh - I was thinking about the possibility of setting up some installations for $$ as well. We could keep the low level stuff open and LGPL that way we have the benefits of collaboration but also the possibility of commercial use. Any apps written wouldn't have to be shared.
BTW, have you used Irrlicht? It might be another option for the graphics end - it has it's own GUI elements built in (that we could customize for touchscreen apps) and is much simpler to use. Also it has 2d functionality which I'm not sure how well Ogre supports (I've only used it for 3d stuff so far). The only drawbacks are that it is not as graphically advanced as Ogre.
That sounds like a plan. I've got a subversion repository for such community projects. It is authenticated write but anonymous read. If you're interested, I can add a branch for this project and give you an account? BTW, what platform are you running on (I'm currently developing on XP with VC 2005 Express)?
I'll look at Irrlicht - I've been attracted to Ogre because of the strong user community and the excellent python bindings. I'm also hoping to do something in Touch Designer but this depends on getting access to their SDK.
Yeah, I started out using Irrlicht but I switched to Ogre because Ogre has a larger/better community and Irrlicht is a little less graphically advanced (for instance, you can't do Normal Mapping and animation together on the same model..). I will say that Irrlicht is much easier to understand (it has a nice easy object model) and get up and running. Plus it includes a lot of things that Ogre has as separate addons which end up taking a lot of time to get incorporated. And it's still being developed pretty heavily now.
I wrote Claymod in Irrlicht which I plan on making a touchscreen friendly version of. Basically it's a modelling program where you can deform the model by clicking on it - it'll be awesome when you can actually touch the model with your hands and mush it around :)
Oh and my develpoment environment is pretty much the same. I'm using Win2k and VC2005. The SVN sounds good - feel free to set me up an account and I'd be happy to upload what I have done so far.
My goal is to keep the low level detection stuff (blob detection/tracking/gui event generation) separate from the graphics engine that way people could use whatever presentation layer they want.
Okay David, I've set up a subversion folder for the code. I'll email you privately with username/password. Others though should be able to check out the code anonymously.
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