MarcPelland.com

About a month ago I decided that it was time to do something geeky, so I looked at a couple different projects that I could do and picked a multi-touch system. I didn’t want to do the standard FTIR system because it seemed like a lot of people were building them so I decided to do it with lasers. I stumbled across this http://arbi.trario.us/2008/11/02/diy-laser-multi-touch-table/ tutorial and set on my way.

The first step was to do a lot of planning. How big should it be? What do I need to build it? How am I going to do something like this when I don’t know anything about the technology? Well, I decided to go ahead with it based on the list of parts that were in that tutorial plus a couple things of my own.

Once all of the parts were ordered, I decided to spec out and start building the box to house the screen and eventually the projector. Here are a couple pictures of the construction process.

Once that was built enough for me to start on the electrical aspects of the screen (and once all the parts arrived), I started on that. Cut out the corners of my acrylic and struggled with my first ever electrical circuit. Mounted the lasers in some air-drying clay and plugged it in. It worked on the first test (with a lot of little adjustments) and I have the following video to show you my first test.

There is still a lot to do with the setup, including adding the projector and a screen to touch, but it is on its way and I am very happy with it thus far. Stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks.

thanks, marc

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Hey all,
I have found in the past that I learn a lot when writing tutorials. And based on the comments that I receive, they tend to help others as well.

I am in the mood to write a couple more tutorials but I would like to take suggestions as to what to write about. A couple of ideas that I have had are the following:

Box2d Physics - a thorough introduction
Something more advanced with Papervision
How to write Pure AS, no more need for Document classes
Intro to Away 3D
something else?

let me know what you think and what you want to see?

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

In late January I started a project called PaperFace, it is a giant project that is an attempt to build a web-based front end for Papervision. It would allow designer to start harnessing more of the 3d power on the web, plus it could make creation of Papervision 3d scenes much quicker for developers as well.

I quickly realized that I don’t have enough time to make this thing on my own, but being stubborn, I tried anyways. Well, I haven’t had time to even really think about it for over a month now but would like to get back at it.

What I have decided to do is to try and create a team of 3 or 4 developers to try and get this this off the ground and working, because I really feel that it would be a benefit to the Flash community. If you would like to help out, I am looking for a couple people that have experience in both Flex and Papervision.

Here are some of the areas that we need some specific help with :
Interface Design
Flex Development
Papervision Development

If you are interested, you can check out www.paper-face.com to see the app and email me at marc@marcpelland.com and we can get going on this. One thing to note is that there is no compensation for the work done on this project but I would like all involved to take it seriously. It will be a good learning experience and hopefully a helpful tool for the industry.

thanks,
Marc Pelland

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Setup
• Create Your First Project with Augmented Reality
• Optimize and Customize the Settings
• Tutorial Files
• Finished Scene

Overview

What is Augmented Reality?

Augmented Reality is a technology that allows you to superimpose images into real-time environments. For the purposes of this tutorial, you just need to know that it reads a marker (shape/symbol), interprets the angle and size of that marker and then allows you to place objects at that size and position on the screen (or whatever your medium is).

Here are a couple example videos:

Mini Video and the GE Site

What is FLARToolKit?

To start with ARToolKit is the development package that has allowed developers to tap into the power of Augmented Reality. FLARToolKit is an Actionscript 3 port of the Java version of the toolkit.

What do I need for this tutorial?

In this tutorial, we are going to use FLAR Manager, which is a framework setup to make the combination of Papervision 3D and FLARToolKit easy and quick to setup/use.

If you would like to simply use FLARToolKit (or just get a little more information about it) clik on the following link: http://www.libspark.org/wiki/saqoosha/FLARToolKit/en

Otherwise, download FLARManager (using v0.1 in this tutorial) from http://words.transmote.com/wp/20090309/flarmanager-v01/ . FLARManager actually comes with a build of FLARToolKit in it and you can get it for AS3/FP9 or AS3/FP10 (we are using FP10).

You will also need FlashDevelop or another Actionscript editing tool. In this tutorial I am going to be compiling my code directly from FlashDevelop, but feel free to use the compiler/method of your choice.

You should also get a pattern generator so that you can create your own patterns (markers). Go here for more details: http://www.squidder.com/2009/03/05/for-nerds-only-custom-flar-markers-explained/

What else should I know?

You should be aware of the fact that there is a licensing fee to use check here: http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/license.html for more details.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Hey folks,

In March 2008, I decided that I needed to actually start my own blog, it was something that I had thought about for a while but I never really pictured myself writing anything.  It ended up being a great idea because it has pushed me to try new things so that I have something to post about.  I have tried to use my blog as a place to share code and thoughts about the industry.  So far, I would say that it has been a success and I thank all of you for staying with me through the year.

I thought that today I would mix things up a little bit by switching up my theme for my site.  I wanted something with more room for the side columns now that I have my tweets feeding in to my site as well.  So I hope this doesn’t screw anything up!

anyways, have a good one.  Marc

Bookmark It

Hide Sites