I’ve been thinking about how best to go about building the frame for my FTIR project.  Does anybody have any experience building a solid frame (i.e. to hold the screen and all); or suggestions for material to use (I dont want to limit myself to a table top interaction style).  I’m a software kind of guy and don’t really have much experience building ‘real’ things.  I made some sketches using Google’s sketchUp (which is super cool is I must say). 

sketches:
http://cs.uiowa.edu/~tehansen/mtmedia.html

If anyone has any building experience, I would love some feedback...I’m not even sure it would work/be strong enough the way I sketched it up.

nice concepts there.  i’m kind of like you—more of a software guy.  kind of handy, but not a lot of practical buildling experience.  i’ve found that just trying to build frames and seeing the pitfalls and problems has been the best teacher.  i’m on frame #2 now, but will probably begin working on rev. 3 before too long.

seems like your doing FTIR.  Look at my frame in my showcase on this site if that will help you.  My frame is very sturdy and will give your FTIR a professional look.  I haven’t been working on it lately cause of finals but my table top can look exactly like your stand up version (the table top frame that is).

Nice sketches, I like the science fiction look of the first one, but I guess the 4th sketch will be more practical. If you’re using FTIR, where are you planning to place the IR webcam then? You use mirrors in all your concepts, but it looks like they are in the spot where the webcam should be in most cases.

Keep up the good work

I added a webcam to the sketches.  I’m thinking I should really try and work out the exact math for camera and projector placement.  I was thinking if I could just fix the frame in any position I would always be abel to set the rest up somehow...but I should probably make sure I have room in enough in my lab.

I think I might wait a couple of more days and think about this.  An Engineering Prof. I showed this to was very worried about the stability.  I also really like the frame estengineer built!  It seems very versatile and stable (I doubt I could build something like that as nicely though).

estengineer - 11 December 2007 11:52 AM

seems like your doing FTIR.  Look at my frame in my showcase on this site if that will help you.  My frame is very sturdy and will give your FTIR a professional look.  I haven’t been working on it lately cause of finals but my table top can look exactly like your stand up version (the table top frame that is).

where’s your link? I’d like to see your setup..

here’s my showcase:  http://nuigroup.com/forums/viewthread/724/
Stability is always an issue.  In fact, on mine I have to reinforce the acrylic and the table legs (though I knew about the legs needing bracing I was surprised about the acrylic needing reinforcing).  Since I have a large piece of acrylic it bows down the middle on it’s width sides.  When I get to my next vacation day I am going to have to skrew the acrylic to the frame from the underside or something.  I have seen tables built with thick sheets of acrylic (large like 1/2 inch and bigger).  I see that you have 2 drawings of one being one you could sit at and the other being one you could stand at.  I personally like the one you can stand at or at least sit in front on a stool (kind of like what i intended with mine you could stand in front of it or sit on a stool since having the person sit on a chair would reduce my projector throw and have me keep the projector possibly out of the table “box” enclosure which i didn’t want).  What application / environment will your FTIR be in?

I like your ideas thomas.hansen. It’ll be interesting to seem them come to life. I think camera and projector positioning is not very fun and if it’s something that would be changing a lot (daily or something), it could be come a problem. I think any of those setups would be nice, although personally I like the look of fully housed acrylic (not just two sides).

Estengineer did a great job building his frame. I’m not a builder so mine doesn’t look anywhere near as good, but it’s somewhat similar to estengineers. Using two pieces of wood with the center cut out, the acrylic is sandwiched in between with LEDs inside (no metal sides/profiles). It’s a pretty easy build for just a frame.

More on it here: http://ssandler.wordpress.com/2007/11/05/building-the-top-frame/

Mines meant for a table setup, but once the frame for the acrylic is built, I don’t see why it couldn’t be used for something else.

cerupcat - 12 December 2007 01:18 PM

I think any of those setups would be nice, although personally I like the look of fully housed acrylic (not just two sides).

I think I will probably enclose the acrlic on all sides eventually, since I am not sure I can get enough light into the sheet from just the short sides.

I’m going to tlk to some engineers today and get more feedback from them.  I’m also interested what other materials I can use.  I’ll report back with (hopefully) some more insight.

thomas, doing the projection shouldn’t be that difficult—i added projection geometries to my sketchup models and they helped immensely when calculating angles (and angles of reflection—mirrors!).  you can calculate the projections for your projector by getting values from a projection throw calculator (search online).  it shouldn’t be that hard to do some calculations to determine the camera’s throw (is it still called throw for a camera?) distance as well.

I talked to a mechanical engineer today and he suggested these things called t-slots.  There aluminum extrusions, and look pretty interesting.  I’m sure they are more expensive than wood...but it might be worth it given both the strength of the material and arguably a more aesthetically pleasing result than a bunch of 2x4’s.

I’ll look at them closer tomorrow, but I thought I’d share a link already:

http://www.tslots.com

This company also has some free software to sketch out your project and then you can just order the pieces you used.  Kind of like legos for grown ups (not that legos aren’t for grown ups )

Cool thomas. Yeah, I was looking at those t-slots a while back from another company. You can actually find them on ebay for way cheaper, but you just have to find the sizes you need. It ended up being too expensive and not the aesthetic I was going for, but for your purpose, something like that might work perfect. I’ll see if I can find the info I had on them and also the ebay store.

Wow looks interesting, and there’s a lot of variety in em too. I guess you’ll need to pick one which will hold the leds (with or without circuit). Good find Although I still like the look of a wooden frame I bet this will look just as nice.

hey thomas… seems like u’re upto builidng your table eh?? .. nice going. m posting the section i made on CAD (for my documentaion of the project...sob..sob.. hate doin documents).. the approach i took was tryin to make it little portable ..so i seperated the heavy hardware that can take rough handling (mainly the table) and made slot (boxes) to fit in the camera / projector / frame for mirror… and the panel is a complete lift top. so just dissconnect the wires for Ir and take the panel off. the pics will explain better… and ofcourse addin castor wheels to help move the whole thing around!!!

hope it gives you some ideas…

pic 01 : the table as it looks now

pic 02 : the cad sections showing details of top panel

pic 03 : three parts of the top panel

pic 04 : closeup of the top panel (dismantled)

pic 05 : dismantled table top

pic 06 : placeholder for sony handycam...after palcing the cam in, i just strap it in place with a velcro band.

pic 07 : box to hold the projector… i placed it at the side to project down and use mirror to reflect it back at the surface.

cheers

Woah nice table deej. I’ve seen some different setups in the past few days but this one really look handy, especially with the camera and projector slots. Good concept, great imagination

Those “t-slots” are VERY strong. I used a similar product in high school for building robots for competition in F.I.R.S.T. Robotics. When you connect pieces with the t-slots it doesn’t work it’s way loose and our robots took quite some abuse. The best thing is there’s no welding necessary! It’s a great product if you can afford it!