MarcPelland.com » experiment http://www.marcpelland.com blog and portfolio Sun, 17 Jul 2011 22:42:56 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Multi-Touch System with Lasers http://www.marcpelland.com/2009/05/22/multi-touch-system-with-lasers/ http://www.marcpelland.com/2009/05/22/multi-touch-system-with-lasers/#comments Fri, 22 May 2009 17:55:27 +0000 MarcPelland http://www.marcpelland.com/?p=264 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.

01 02 03 04 05 06

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

]]> http://www.marcpelland.com/2009/05/22/multi-touch-system-with-lasers/feed/ 1 Getting Started with Augmented Reality / FLARToolKit http://www.marcpelland.com/2009/03/26/getting-started-with-augmented-reality-flartoolkit/ http://www.marcpelland.com/2009/03/26/getting-started-with-augmented-reality-flartoolkit/#comments Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:17:22 +0000 MarcPelland http://www.marcpelland.com/?p=235 Table of Contents

Overview

Hello FlarToolKitWhat 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.

]]> http://www.marcpelland.com/2009/03/26/getting-started-with-augmented-reality-flartoolkit/feed/ 16 Playing with Color Picker and Threshold http://www.marcpelland.com/2008/05/08/playing-with-color-picker-and-threshold/ http://www.marcpelland.com/2008/05/08/playing-with-color-picker-and-threshold/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 19:38:32 +0000 MarcPelland http://www.marcpelland.com/2008/05/08/playing-with-color-picker-and-threshold/ Color Picker Experiment ExampleIn light of the fact that I know my motion tracking needs a lot of work, I decided to start trying different methods for getting and working with information from my webcam.

Last night (and a little over lunch today) I threw a couple quick experiments together to see what it would look like, and I think that I might try this out with the video when I got home tonight.

The first example comes in the form of a basic color picker that lets you select the color of a pixel from within the image (on the top left). Once you have selected a color, use the slider on the right to control the threshold.

The second example is very similar to the first, it just uses a different sampling method for the color that it is going to use with the threshold. To try this tool, draw a box (from top left to bottom right) over the region of the image where you would like to get your sampling from.

This was a very quick and dirty experiment to see what I could get out of a bitmap with some basic functions, so please forgive my source. I will post more once I get it cleaned up tonight and start trying to work it into my motion detection application.

]]> http://www.marcpelland.com/2008/05/08/playing-with-color-picker-and-threshold/feed/ 1 My first Papervision test http://www.marcpelland.com/2008/03/04/my-first-papervision-test/ http://www.marcpelland.com/2008/03/04/my-first-papervision-test/#comments Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:50:17 +0000 MarcPelland http://www.marcpelland.com/2008/03/04/my-first-papervision-test/ Well, I have been talking about it with friends and co-workers for the longest time but have never had the time to play with it. The other day I found a couple of hours to see what I could come up with. I decided to create a snowboard in 3ds max and see what I could do with it in Papervision, just going through a couple of tutorials.

http://www.marcpelland.com/snowboard/

I plan on improving on this as I find more time to get into both AS3 and Papervision. I am hopefully going to create a little flyout in max to automate and customize the creation of the board and then add a little bit more interactivity to the board once it is in flash.

]]> http://www.marcpelland.com/2008/03/04/my-first-papervision-test/feed/ 4