Further Camera Research

Searching for the right camera proved slightly disheartening, especially when knowing that the cameras that will give the best performance carrys a double zero price tag...

ouch....

At the moment I am just waving fiducial markers in front of my built in isight on my laptop, but when I finally build my table I will need something that is;

1. Cheap to Buy
2. Robust
3. Works with ReacTIVision
4. Easy to assemble
5. Captures the entire glass tabletop

Ruling out the AVT and faster frame rate cameras, I have come up with two possibilities 

The apple isight

The eye sight costs about £80 and was build for apple computers before they started building them into the framework of the computer.  They have been discontinued since but are available to buy on Ebay.co.uk they go from £40.

Test 1, does ReacTIVision see this camera?

 

Test 1 complete 

Yes this camera works through my computer via a fire wire, and ReacTIVision responds reasonably well.

Things to consider at this point,

1. Will The camera capture the entire table?
2. Will the camera work quickly enough in real time to track the markers?

The eye sight roughly works at 25-30 frames per second.

As I aim to have a 80cm diameter table top, and because the eye sight do

es not have a wide eye lens, I predict that the camera will not capture the whole of the glass. Which will mean I will have to experiment with mirrors.

The second camera is the Sony PS3 eye toy.

The eye toy has a frequency of 640*480 at 60Hz and 320*240 at 120Hz, according to the spec on the ReacTIVision website it may work quite nicely.

I bought this little camera from Game and it cost me £25. I do not know if my computer will respond to the PS3 eye because it is USB and not firewire. I will run some tests to find out.

Test 2, does the PS3 eye toy work with ReacTivision?

My computer recognises the USB camera, yet this camera does not respond at all with applications on my laptop such as quicktime, ichat and reacTIVision.

The eye sight roughly works at 25-30 frames per second.

The ReacTIVision website states "A very affordable and relatively good camera for this purpose is the Sony PS3eye, which is also working well under Windows,Linux and Mac OSX."

This sounds promising, if my computer detects it and if the ReacTIVision website says that it works well under OSX then there must be a way of it working. I found and downloaded a driver from http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/. This driver allows my computer to use the USB eye toy as a webcam.

Test 2.2, After downloading Macam does the PS3 eye with ReacTIVision?

No, after I downloaded Macam my computer responds to the PS3 eye like a webcam, yet still does not respond at all with ReacTIVision.

Now I can use my PS3 eye toy with my computer but ReacTIVision still refuses to recognize the eye toy as a camera. I must have missed something....

Below is a picture of the PS3 eye toy working as a web cam on my computer.

Looking back at my method of installation in regards to the Macam driver I discovered one simple rule that i didn't follow. When installing Macam you must copy it's component into your /library/quicktime folder for it to work with other applications such as ichat and hopefully ReacTIVision.

Test 2.3, after copying a componant into /library/quicktime folder, does the PS3 eye toy work with ReacTIVision?

Yes, I simply need to follow the following rules;

1. Open Macam (working)
2. Close Macam
3. Open ReacTIVision (defalt built in isight appears)
4. Press (H) = ReacTIVision option mode
5. Press (O) = ReacTIVision camera settings
6. Select Macam Sony HD Eye for PS3 

Test 2 Complete, 

Status: 

1. PS3 working with ReacTIVision
2. Fiducial markers are recognised from a close distance.

Thing to consider at this point...

Will the camera cover the entire range of the glass table top and successfully tract the fiducial markers?

How will the camera behave when considering optics and the projection side of things?