Table improvements

Recently I purchased a new projector as part of the plan to make a clean, professional and ultimately marketable product. The new projector has a ridiculously short throw distance for a forward facing projector (traditional lenses in front type).

The purchase of the projector is exciting because, in the end, I'm a technophile. But in all project related seriousness. This new kit is vastly reducing the required height of my table design. While not the slim line concept we'll be seeing in the not so distant future. it is small enough in depth from surface that the large screen can be placed easily inside of most table top type setups; i.e. coffee table, work desk, formal table.

Anyway, as I finalize my design, as always, I'll post more data!

Images!

To go along with my recent video post. Here are some diagrams I whipped up in Lightwave.  The only thing not listed in these diagrams are mirror angles (these are mock-ups) and camera placements.  I'm currently running two PS3Eye cams on either side of the bottom mirror.  This configuration is pending more work on the object recognition side of the table.

 Enjoy.

Videos!

Some new developments

I've been quite for a while due to spending my time working on running the game this table was conceived of to support.  Now that we're moving along and I'm planned far enough ahead that I have some down time, I've returned to the table design work and began the process of looking for a housing.

Recently, I attended PAXE.  While at this wondrous if not line ridden event, I encountered a company which specializes in making furniture for gamers.  I've since begun a dialog with them to create a housing for my large format MT table.  Due to this recent development I'm going to be mum for a bit as I work out the legal details of what might be a business deal for making more of these toys.

So enough about that for now.  Here's the tech developments from the last 24 hours of work. 

1. Reconfigured my mirror array using a front surface mirror acquired from an old projection TV.  This new configuration resolves a fair amount of the screen "blur" (ghosting) which was there with the plexi-rear faced mirror.
2. Adjusted placement of the mirror and projector slightly to maximize the total display dimension.  I've not got a solid 46" diagonal 16:9 screen showing 100% horizontally and 98% vertically.  This means there is some cut off of the desktop environment in the vertical direction.
3. Tested fiducial with CCV 1.2 (fiducial) using two PS3 Eye cams and 3.6 mm lenses.  This worked out quite well.  I was able to track positive images (white background with black lines) but not negative images.  Interesting.  The downside to this test was the loss of a fair amount of screen real-estate.  The 3.6m lenses lead to loss of approx. 4" from the perimeter of the screen.  For a taller build this wouldn't be a problem as the cameras could be lower, but with my coffee table and projector choose it is not possible to diminish the screen size any more then I have.  
4. Swapping the 3.6mm lenses for my 2.1mm lenses without moving the camera bodies actually resolved my stitching problem!  With the new placement I now have full screen touch from corner to shiny corner!
5. Shot some video of RPTools and Fiducials in action.  I'll be posting this video as soon as I get a chance to compress it into a reasonable size for sharing (from an HD camera).

Fiducials work -- sort of.

The good news is that fiducials work.  Every method of CCV with fiducial support that I tried worked like a champ.  With some caveats.

The bad news is that the dimensions of the table I've built and the surface area to camera resolution are not going to support fiducials.  This isn't to say that I won't get it working for the table properly, but it does mean that I'll have to run a second instance of CCV or reactivision to handle fiducials using a second set of cameras.

Fortunately I have a couple of HD cams sitting around from an earlier venture into the realm of moding auto focus cameras.  I'll do more testing with these this weekend and hopefully take some photos for those visually minded readers (out of the three of you).

Back in action!

I recently recovered from taking an evening class.  Grabbed the new cameras and dug into the table again.

Success if pretty much how I'd describe it.  Very quickly I was able to get nearly full screen width coverage of touch which was previously unattainable with the lesser camera.  I have two ps3Eye cams now, but only one of them is in use for touch.  My plan is to try to use the second camera for object and shape recognition. 

Using CCV 1.2 with the fiducial tracker I was able to see the shape but the software failed to detect it. 

Will have to tweak this more when I get a moment.  For now?  Sleep!

Camera's abound and vacation

Last month I acquired a second camera and purchased some housings from Peau.  Good stuff but I also picked up about 3 different horrid illnesses (the last of which was the Noro virus) and have done little to advance the project.

I did build up the table surface by roughly an inch and half.  This has resolved some of my focus issues as I have a bit more play room for the InFocus XS1.  Additionally, I started crafting the actual box.  Currently the surface support, i.e. Top, is made of Poplar arranged using lap joints.

I'm still trying to find just the right mirror arrangement to maximize the view on the screen while still maintaining good blobs.  Currently my blobs are quite weak and I'm just not satisfied with that.

I'll post some pictures when I've got the time to scale them for posting.