Today I got the Firefly MV B/W camera from PGR. I also added second IR laser to my original setup. This eliminates finger occlusions that were present in my previous single laser setup.
I took some videos of this setup running demo apps, so I thought I showcase it here.

The TouchLib was modified (for fast blob processing) so that now runs synchronously to the camera capture rate. It also outputs current blob processing frame rate.

Here is the OSC app:

Here is the Fire demo:

Here is the Photo app:

Here is the Wall Pong app:

Here is the Puzzle app:

Here is the Ripples app:

Here is the Smoke app:

*** UPDATED ***

Dual IR laser blobs (camera view):

Calibration process (here I use ROI feature of the Firefly MV camera @ 320x240 frame size):

Many of you asked about my version of TouchLib with speed/CPU fix shown above. You can get it below and test it for yourself. Please note that I am using DSVideoLib as the input capture filter. The library was tested and it functions properly with this filter only. With other filters (such as VideoWrapper) the CPU usage may be very high, so please use it at your own risk.

Enjoy!

~Alex

Great work Alex , your laser setup is really fast and precise.Smoke app was just incredible , you can really tell the diference of tracking and processing.
Any chance you’d release your modified version of touchlib?

nice work, thanks for sharing, can you tell us what kind of laser you used? and how did you set it up?

I was wondering how did you spread the beam over the surface? and where can I get a IR laser? I can only find lasers that burn stuff online....

thanks

Oh just saw that it was running at .
Alex could you post your config.xml here.I’ve seen there are alot of people using MTMini with 320x240 asking for a config calibrated for that resolution.
Could you please post yours here so i can respond to their threads.

Very impressive, Alex.

What are you using to connect Touchlib to the FireflyMV? VideoWrapper, CMU or DirectShow?

Alex, nice work. If the changes are confirmed to be needed, would you be willing to commit them to the touchlib svn if we can get you access? Touchlib has gone unoptimized for a while now, with little changes, so any updates I would think are welcome and needed.

On a side not, Why does the smoke application looks like the video is sped up a lot?

AlexP, you must either have a good amount of money or are doing this for a company, because you’ve got some high dollar fancy stuff! First those lasers, now a Firefly MV. I’m envious! As I understand it the Firefly costs <$200, but you have to order at least 5 at once.

Amazing results man, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a homebrew MT set up that runs that well. I think you’ve helped this community immensely with your work, there is no question at least in my mind about using IR lasers (LLP) vs. other methods.

Excellent work Alex!

Very nice to see that it can actually get this fast.

Did you ever run into problems with the limitations of the Flash XMLsocket connection when sending so many frames per second? When we speed up our setup this can be a problem when we reach more than 15 fingers at the same time.

Anyway, great effort, really inspiring! Keep it up!

@Erik2003, a few of us including myself are working on a tcp binary socket implementation that you might be interested in. We’re still testing things out but so far I have had great results. I think the limit for me now is about 40 blobs, and I think this was down to touchlib not being able to cope rather than flash. Anyway the thread is http://nuigroup.com/forums/viewthread/1987

That’s really impressive! How much CPU usage does it require? Have you tried 640x480 @ 60 fps? And how much did you pay for the camera?

Wish I had your budget.

This is amazing, but like cerupcat said, did you modify smoke, in some way because it seems to have been sped up

great work btw

Taha

h4t - 14 June 2008 02:42 PM

AlexP, you must either have a good amount of money or are doing this for a company, because you’ve got some high dollar fancy stuff! First those lasers, now a Firefly MV. I’m envious! As I understand it the Firefly costs <$200, but you have to order at least 5 at once.

Amazing results man, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a homebrew MT set up that runs that well. I think you’ve helped this community immensely with your work, there is no question at least in my mind about using IR lasers (LLP) vs. other methods.

Thank you h4t…
I don’t have high budget or a lot of money, I am just passionate about this MT stuff. I also realize that sometimes in order to get great results, modifying and tweaking the code will only get you so far. That said TouchLib has a lot of space for improvements and I will create a list of the top five things that could be fixed and the performance gains. Regarding the Firefly MV camera, it is not true that you have to buy 5 minimum. I called them and they sold me only one.

~Alex

@cerupcat
@Taha

I would be willing to help out and commit my fixes if I get the svn access, sure. Currently I’m using DSVideoLib in my config file and changes that I made pertain to this input method.
Regarding the smoke app, I didn’t make any changes there, but being a native windows app that links the touchlib, I think that the faster blob processing somehow affects the smoke app speed. Maybe the fact that I removed the SLEEP(32) from the touchlib resulted in smoke rendering speedup, I’d have to look into this.
But one thing is sure, the touch response if definitely way faster than before.

~Alex

ohh ok… in anycase great work.

Taha

WOW! Adding the extra laser was a definite must, and the results of the combination of both laser and camera are fantastic. Well done Alex.

Looking forward to more

hi,

issit possible you can show a video of the calibration process? as i’m doing a setup of a similar scale.

thanks