Home made Track IR

[tl8]

http://n.camil.chez-alice.fr/index.php

this is the software i'm going to try when i've assembled the led array. It looks pretty well featured and you can see how it responds in the videos he's posted with the system running.

You can find full instructions on the site for how to construct and use the hardware, if you look at it, you might be surprised at how simple this is... the trick to it is positioning everything precisely but essentially straightforward

I've decided i'm going to try and make this entirely out of recycled parts, tomorrow hopefully i'll be able to get up to see my folks and get some of my stuff thats in storage there, soldering iron, and i might have a couple of old remote controls (i hoard old junk just for this type of scenario) up there that i can take apart for their precious LED's i've also got a box of components and old circuit boards so i can hopefully scrounge the resistors and cabling i need.

for the framework to seat the LED's i'm actually going to see if my old Lego technic is up there, seems like it would be a simple build, strong enough and easily adjustable. also wouldn't be as prone to bending as the wire solution offered on that page. If it works properly - and i might have problems with differing strength LEDs so may relent and order a set from somewhere - then i'll fabricate a better frame to hold the LED's from sheet acrylic, which should look a lot better than wire, or lego technic hanging off my head.

I could do that, I fact I just might, Though I will probably use new IR LED's.

Just got to find a Webcam cheap. Off too Ebay

 

[Coolhand]

http://www.free-track.net/english/

check out that, its a the new site for it apparently

it can work with 1 led apparently.. I have one here so i'm going to download and quickly try and rig it up to emit constant light - it's still attached to the old digital setop box remote i took apart earlier... it'll only give me rotation but thats better than nothing for now.

personally, with this available for free, i think you guys who spent 200 dollars or whatever on TrackIR are mental Though i don't know if its compatible with orbiter for 6DOF (though if trackIR does then presumably this does) it should certainly work with orbiter via the POV hat switch emulation it employs.

Also, if you check out the forum, there's a guy who sells pre modified caps that look pretty neat for 30dollars a peice plus postage. I might get one of those rather than build my own, but i was looking forward to some tinkering with my soldering iron.

 

[Coolhand]

I could do that, I fact I just might, Though I will probably use new IR LED's.

Just got to find a Webcam cheap. Off too Ebay

Make sure its the right type of webcam, some apparently have IR filters on them which might be difficult to remove. I have an old logitech one that sees light from a tv remote just fine.

The software does seem to work just fine with visible light, i've had it tracking a string of fairy lights clearly and strongly.. in fact for the purposes of testing i've considered attaching those to my head, but thats probably not a great idea since they're running off 240volts dont want to turn this into coolhands homemade electric chair, safety first, kids:rofl:

visible light leds would work then, but give you problems with conflicting lightsources. and IR compatible webcam and a filter - apparenltly made from the end of a photographic negative - taped to the end is seemingly the best solution since it should work just fine in a brightly lit room.

 

[zerofay32]

You may have givin' me the drive to try this after all. I would be nice to be able to just look around, if I can get it to work. Good luck.

Zerofay32

 

[silent_protagonist]

Well I decided to finally give Freetrack a try and see what I could come up with using stuff I had lying around.

After tinkering for a while I managed to rig up a three point cap with some single LED flashlights (one white and two red), some paper clips, and a wire coat hanger. For a camera I'm using the LEGO Mindstorms Camera (http://www.active-robots.com/products/lego/legospares.shtml), which the computer recognizes as a Logitech Quickcam Web. And to cut out ambient light I'm using a piece of completely exposed film negative, which seems to make a pretty good IR filter. (Looking through it I'd say it only lets in 5% or so of visible light near the red end of the spectrum--which is enough for the LEDs to still shine through--and leaves IR pretty much alone, if I ever decide to go that rout.) Total price of the whole kit: $0 (I'll try to resist making a Master Card joke .)

After fiddling with the settings for a bit (Setting the dimensions of your cap wrong can have some interesting effects.:crazy I got it working in Orbiter, and I have to say it works (almost) perfectly. I still need to tweak the settings a bit, and it would probably benefit from a more refined LED setup, but overall it runs very smoothly and, with a little practice, very intuitively. The only real problem I have is with my camera's fps, which seems to degrade more and more the longer I have Freetrack running. (I've also encountered a weird bug where when you start Orbiter with TrackIR enabled for the first time, it'll just spin your head round and round at even the slightest input; simply restarting Orbiter seems to solve the problem, however, after which it works fine.) And the results are just amazing. Flying Greg Burch's Swift around a lvl14 KSC with 5 DOF head tracking is absolutely stunning. If you have the parts readily available you really must try this.:speakcool:



Here are two pics of my cap setup, w/ and w/o the flashlights turned on, taken with the aforementioned webcam. They're a bit grainy but at least you can get the idea. As you can see you really don't need anything very fancy (although as I mentioned before a more refined setup it would probably help smooth things out a bit), and a single LED setup (which was the first thing I tried) is even easier and still gives good results.

 

[Coolhand]

Excellent bit of bodging there, fellow tinkerer, you've achieved more than i've been able to so far. I tip my hat to thee.

If you had all red LED's then you might want to try using a red filter, thats meant to help if you're using it in the day or with other light sources in the room - if thats giving you problems at all? i know one thing that hits the webcam fps a lot are options for auto exposure control or low light level boosting... anything thats toggled on in the driver settings, particularly if it looks fancy, it should be switched off.

 

[silent_protagonist]

I'm afraid that if I tried to tip my hat to anyone something would fall off. :lol:

I tried some red filters using the one red LED, but they didn't seem to make a huge difference. The only problem I've had so far with ambient light is objects in direct sunlight; I figure they're probably shining brighter than an LED in any spectrum you care to try, so there's really no chance of filtering them out (although a polarizing filter might help). I also downloaded Logitech's driver for the webcam--as opposed to the windows default one--which has gone a long way towards smoothing things out. (Although now for some FreeTrack is only showing 10 fps, even though the actual movement is much smoother than that.)

I can't wait to try this in that beautiful cockpit of your's, Coolhand.:speakcool:

 

[galionmolt]

3 point track hat clip

I just made a hat clip for free using some old infrared lights from some old remotes. I posted a short video on youtube, if u wanna see it than here's the link:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-1HrHOiN5w"]YouTube - Homemade Free Track 3-Point Hat Clip.[/ame]

 

[RisingFury]

There's freeware software that can handle the motion capture and i have a webcam that can see infrared LEDs so i'm halfway there already.

For a future reference, just about all commercial CCD's see near infra red. Keep that in mind when making night spy cameras

 

[TSPenguin]

For a future reference, just about all commercial CCD's see near infra red. Keep that in mind when making night spy cameras

Indeed, but the question is rather how easy you can remove the filter that blocks most of the IR light. With some cameras this is a layer directly on the CCD and in those cases you are in for quite some work, destructive work.

 

[zerofay32]

Great work on the clip.

(I'm ignoring the Blackhawks hat . CBJ)

 

[Vanguard]

Is there a reason the LEDs need to be mounted to the hat?

The TrackIR system projects IR light out from the device, and simply has some reflective material on the hat, which from the cameras point of view would look the same as the LEDs. It's just less weight and no wires leading up to your head

 

[Coolhand]

yes that would work just as well - and might be easier as you mention. In full track IR style, you would put a bunch of infrared LEDS around the webcam, to bounce IR off the reflectors that you've strategically attached to your head. As for why it seems to be used less often, I think its perhaps just that you need more LED's if you do it that way so the caps with lights are more common as they're cheaper to build - last time i looked there was a thriving garage industry of LED cap production.

Never did get my setup working, but i'll come back to it sometime. Sadly a lot of support for freetrack has apparently ended for many new simulations (such as ARMA2), some complex technical and legal issues about freetrack 'plugging into' code provided by trackIR

 

[tblaxland]

I think it is more difficult to get sufficient contrast between the background (hat) and the reference points (reflective patches) for the software to work reliably. The use of retroreflective material would help with that, maybe cut some small patches from an old bicycle reflector.

 

[Coolhand]

theres an adhesive tape made by 3M that i recall being recommended... one example had the tape applied to ping pong balls. but if you can recycle something then all the better. the reflective material thats used on some roadworker and police / emergency services uniforms is essentially the same thing as the reflective side of the tape

 

[TSPenguin]

The real problem is to get an even light response from the reflective material when moving around. That is not such a problem if you can afford to use a real IR only filter.

Using LEDs directly has several advantages. It is much easier to tune your cam and LEDs so that you pick up very small points over the whole range of movement.
And you need fewer LEDs. Which can be a huge cost saver depending on how readily available suited LEDs are for you.

I recently finished my own setup. It is more of a testbed than a real setup but works nicely. And as I mounted it to my headset, the additional cable does not hinder me more than the headset alone would.
I will post detailed pics of my demon hat soon.

 

[Donamy]

I had one of the TRACKIR setups, 100 sum odd dollars, but the thing was so poorly made, it fell apart in about two weeks and I haven't used it since. Too bad too, because it worked very well. :thumbsdown:

 

[TSPenguin]

I had one of the TRACKIR setups, 100 sum odd dollars, but the thing was so poorly made, it fell apart in about two weeks and I haven't used it since. Too bad too, because it worked very well. :thumbsdown:

The valuable thing really is the camera and the software. So if you build your own tracking gear, which is repairable, it should work just as well.

 

[Hielor]

I had one of the TRACKIR setups, 100 sum odd dollars, but the thing was so poorly made, it fell apart in about two weeks and I haven't used it since. Too bad too, because it worked very well. :thumbsdown:

I've had mine for months and haven't had a single problem with it.

 

[JamesG]

These have a limited utility in that you are limited to the POV of the screen. And "collie hatting" left and right disrupts the emersive quality you are trying to obtain.

You can buy stereoscopic head mounted displays for around $200 that have motion trackers built into them that work much better an allow you to do everything a head tracker does (and you don't have to look out of the corner of your eyes to see the screen).

The displays resolution and color aren't as good as regular flat panels (yet) but for emmersion, they are much better.

Just thought I would throw that out there in case someone wanted an option other than a screen that would wiggle around a little. :tiphat: