New search-cam proto

Nice, small and most importantly wireless cam for the rotating camera proto. With wireless cam in this prototype solves most importantly the free rotation without any delicate connectors. Naturally with RF communication for the motor, this could be an independent module, which I don't need at this point.

Breadboard, my skateboard

Dear me. Two weeks from last entry. Time flies when you're busy apparently.

I have been working intensively with Dan on our tile-project. Since this is quite time consuming and not very visible work I have some trouble of documenting the process in this blog. I will publish more detailed demonstration when we have the first prototypes working.

Basically what we've been working with is simple wireless multinode serial communication with basic stamps and a pc. After some frustrated debugging due to a half-working rf-chip we finally have a working communication prototype where id-coded message comes from pc, gets transmitted to stamp, is recognized and the id-coded reply message is transmitted back and recognized in pc.

Once again I found myself questioning how deep in certain protocols should I be digging in. Now I stare the RS-232 specifications with my mouth full open, pondering what a hell I'm reading. I'm turning to a nerd. Yikes. Save me.

Perhaps breadboards will be totally cool in few years. I see trendsetters carrying hydrogen fuel-cell soldering irons and lighter sized pulse probes for instant hacking to public hardware. "Dude, where's my opto isolator?".

The Revenge of the Circuit Class.

Great outdoors

Chilly winter day in Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It was snowing the previous night and all high hills were just white. So beautiful that it hurts my head. I need ugliness.

Searching for head

I was hoping to detect the head based on the shoulder line and the shape of the head. So far best success was calculating the size and postion of the head based on natural proportions of body when I know the center of the body and mass of it. I think I'm approaching the limit where I shoul seek for professional help. On computer vision that is.

Head track

Tracking & layering

Detecting boundaries of a shape from one camera feed. In 640*480 resolution the bounding box with data visualisation and one extra quicktime layer gives still nice 20fps framerate. The binary edge in same res drops it significantly below 10. Several layer live motion graphics on top of tracked image still quite possible.

layer-scan-jesus-aerobics clip

Following cam & screen

Technical prototype for turning/panning video screen panel(s), following moving people around them. Either based on video tracking, which would require computer / screen, but would enable video layering and manipulation of the image or compact closed circuit cam with recognition with, pressure / light / ultrasound sensors.