Concept art: (blender3d)

Rear DI reactiVision Linux Project:

Greetings. I thought I would take a little time introduce my MT project to the NUI group and show the progress that has been made thus far.
First I would like to thank everyone here. I could not have gotten this far without this fantastic community. I’ve been working at this for a few months off and on. The hard part was waiting for parts to arrive from distant lands. 

The goal is to create a MT tabletop using reactiVision that can provide an interactive surface for D&D style gaming. Fiducials will be used to interact with the surface and environments. The surface will need to be able to recognize fingers, fiducials, and possibly miniature figurines. Seating should be available for up to 6 players and 1 DM. The main goal is to display interactive overhead maps that can be used by the players. We have bunch of ideas floating around for coding the actual application but for now the focus is to get the basics working.

Parts:
BenQ MP512ST projector
PS3 eye camera (converted to 850nm IR bandpass with wide angle lens)
NIR Optical Filter, 850DF20, 11.5mm painted edge
2.1mm 160-Degree Wide Angle Lens
Walmart mirror (will be made FS soon)
Computer:
---Debian 5.01
---AMD Athalon 64 4000+ (clocked @ 2.4 GHZ presently)
---2 GB Ram
---Nvidia GTX 7800 (256 MB ram)
4x 48 IR LED arrays 850nm

I used my 3D model as a guide to create the plans for the frame and built the frame from 2x4 studs. I wanted it to be solid because there would be up to 7 people at the table. The interactive surface area is 3 feet square. There will be about a 12 inch shelf around the entire outside edge for the players to place books/dice etc. on.

Frame:



I used vellum for the surface. I was unable to find a 3 foot roll at the begining so I used a 2 foot roll and just make sections for testing. The final surface will be one single sheet.

Parts arriving:

The small gray rectangle is a sample of the 7D006 Plexiglas from Ancalagon. After I sell my children (its expensive) I will order some of this great material to replace my current surface.

I then went thought the process of converting my PS3eye to add the IR pass filter and the wide angle lens. Again, without the great information form this community, this part would have been folly. I bought the cheap webcam from Hong Kong that was suggested to replace the lens housing and the filter was purchased from omegabob off ebay. The whole process took only an hour or so after I read all the information provided here and had all the parts.

The IR arrays took awhile to arrive. While I waited I tested a few different screen materials and poured through he forums some more. I settled on vellum for now.

A few nights ago I finally got all the parts working, drivers installed, and reactiVision up and running. There is still a lot of fine tuning that need to be done but here are my test results.

To do list: Not complete I am sure.
Convert the mirror to a front surface mirror.
Install cooling fans.
Calibrate reactiVision to compensate for the wide angle lens.
Install cable/wire management.
Maybe try rosco gray surface.
Work on permanent fiducials.

Welcome , Dude !
very nice job ! i am sure the final result will be even better than the nice blender sketches .

Did you already started your D&D like game ?

I noticed you are going to do a DI setup but talk about creating a silicone layer. The silicone layers is only needed for ftir setups - not for DI. For DI you only need a good diffuser for the infra red spotlights and a projection screen (can be the same layer).

@jimihertz - Thanks. We have just started looking at the application side. I am not the best programmer so I am going to lean heavily on a friend who has much more experience in that area.
@TherioN - I must have misunderstood. I was hoping to get some more defined blobs by adding silicone. I guess I will order some Rosco gray and see how that does. I have removed the silicone comments from the post as to not misdirect any others. 

Finally got a little time to work on testing the table a bit. Here are the initial results.
Tested using tbeta.

Really fantastic build SpynalTom!

The video looks great and the table seems to be very responsive. What fps is the camera running at?

Thanks Seth(cerupcat)! I’m doing it all for the t-shirt of course. 
The camera is running 320x240 @ 100FPS using the very fine PS3 v1.1 of tbeta. I had to switch over to my Windows partition for testing but I have faith there will be a Linux/tbeta/PS3eye at some point. I want to use fiducials for this project so I might end up using tbeta down the line if fiducials become supported.

Really smooth setup you got there. You must have a really well cleaned up installation of your OS because I have seen people with other computers choke with this stuff. Either they run their cameras at really low frame rates or they have really really junky computers because I can all the Tbeta and programs I need with my computer in power saving mode (IN VISTA) at 1.6 ghz on my core 2 duo and 8600m gt. So, I am kind of hijacking your thread but, as general memo to all people who have systems with tracking that isn’t all that smooth; it’s not just your computer’s fault and it may lie in your camera but most likely in your calibration settings. I know that on my LLP setup I have a hard time getting smooth tracking but most of the time it is due to the calibration settings not being perfect.

Even if it takes you a long time, get your calibration settings perfect.

I went on a real tangent there, got tired of replying with single sentence posts so I decided to say something here.

Thanks fuz3. I agree that taking the time to calibrate makes the experience much more enjoyable. I am still not happy with my settings completely but they are getting better every time.
I did some testing today of the Google Earth multi-touch application. See http://nuigroup.com/forums/viewthread/5422/ for more info.
So fun. 

Quick update:
I finally mounted my PC hardware in the table, and installed my fan system. I also started replacing my duct tape with real cable management . I am using 2x120mm fans on either side of the projector to cool the table. They claim to be temperature sensitive and will be slower/quieter when the table is cooler. We will see. One pulls the air into the table and one pushes air out. I will add filters later.

Fan stats:
Fan speed: 1300 - 2200 RPM
Air Delivery: 54.3 - 92 CFM
Noise: 29 - 39 dB

Hi SpynalTom,

nice clean setup you have there...well done
pictures of everyones setups does help everyone to visualize what we are all doing
and thanks for sharing yours

regards

That looks very nice and clean, keep on!

Hi SpynalTom

Is that “2.1mm 160-Degree Wide Angle Lens” easy to replace Ps3 eye original len?

and why you replace to wide angle lens instead of buying couple PS3 eye to make large screen Table?

thanks in advance

Vossler

@Vossler - Yes the lens was very easy to replace. I bought a very cheap camera that had the same lens housing to replace the stock one. I think this thread was were I started for info on the cam. It’s really easy to find on ebay.
http://nuigroup.com/forums/viewthread/4837/ Multi-cam support is not available for everything that I am working with so I thought I would try one cam to start with. Also I may move to a multi-cam solution in the future if it becomes more supported. I am still very much experimenting.

Update:

I just received my fiducial pucks from a local plastic fabricator. I am very pleased with them. I also was able to get the wooden tabletop boarder built and installed on the main frame. I am happy with how it turned out. I hope to have couple test pictures next week of the table up and running. I also was able to use pantyhose for my fan filters and it seems to be working well so far. I will spend this long weekend sanding and adding some polyurethane to the tabletop. More to come.

My table has finally been installed in it’s permanent home. It’s functional enough to replace my existing “top-down” projected tabletop setup. Also, I wanted to get it up and running to get some feedback from the gaming group. I have started testing some basic reacTIVision stuff with a simple client written in C++. We have a long way to go on the application side but the hardware is finished and in good working order. Here is a video of some of the first live tests. I have also attached a few pics of it installed. Pay no attention to the ugly fellow mucking up the shot.

P.S. The new working title for the table is now Dragon’s Eye View Game Table, or DEV Game Table. The application will be called Dragon’s Eye View, or DEView.

Great stuff SpynalTom! Love the work you’ve done so far… Looking forward to seeing the D&D game too

wow, that is impressive workmanship! you really put a lot of work into it and it’s showing professionally. what are the pucks for? how do they work?

@Fairlane: Thank you sir. I will keep the community updated as the application develops. I plan to release it under the GPL when I have something that functions.
@qryptiq: Thanks very much. The pucks have fiducial markers (symbols) on the bottom that are identified by the software. Each symbol corresponds to a different function/action within the program (i.e. Symbol#1 = Map loading menus, Symbol#2=Grid sizing and alignment , etc.) If you watch the video in my last post you will see them in action. As each puck is placed on the table the software identifies it and displays a colored circle that corresponds to that fiducial’s program.

Very nice setup SpynalTom!
You - and the other experienced community members - are guides to us newbies still not able complete our basic setup due to hardware shipping times…

SpynalTom - 22 May 2009 03:19 PM

Update:

I just received my fiducial pucks from a local plastic fabricator..

Your plastic disks look very nice and also working very well as fiducials in your video.

How did you actually put fiducials symbols on the disks?
did you engraved them? did you print with IR or normal inks?

thanks,
blackdir

@blackdir: Thanks I could not have ever gotten this far without the NUI Group community. I hope my post will help someone with their project. My fiducials symbols were printed with a standard ink-jet printer. I am planning on experimenting with some other inks and printing styles, but for now this basic approach is working. I then cut the fiducial out with scissors and attached it to the bottom of the puck with a disk cut from a laminating sheet. It works great. I do have some issues with camera focus the further I get from the center of my table. I am hoping to fix that with some better printed fiducials. I will post here if I figure anything out that works better. One idea is to go over the fiducial symbol with a black sharpie but I haven’t had time or patience to try that yet.