BarCamp is, “an international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols.“
The Puppet was created in Flash and I wrote some code to let it talk to the sensor. I have just finished a second version of the code which works on all models of the Apple laptops and is much less fiddly to use - see my page where you can download it.
The technology behind it is surprisingly simple - a modified webcam and Infra Red LEDs internally reflected into a sheet of acrylic. When you touch the acrylic the internal reflection is broken and the webcam detects your fingers as bright blobs of IR light.
I am building a working prototype of this (which some of you have seen), but I really need someone with C++ experience to help with the software side of things.
Other multitouch hobbyists have created some source code that handles the configuration and blob tracking (apart from being a bit CPU intensive it seems to work very well), but it would be extremely useful if someone could add the ability to send the touch information (blob id, x, y) out via a server socket to other programs such as Processing or Flash so we can actually create some useful applications/games for it.
Take a look at this Make story; apparently all you need is a BASIC Stamp - which we have. It strikes me that you could retrofit this on to anything with LEDs in it!
I’ve been having fun with the ageing image transformer from St. Andrews. You can start with an original clean front facing portrait, and then turn it into an aged or younger version.
Combine this with the Hybrid Portraits approach and I think we might be able to have the real-time creation of Hybrid portraits, composed of two versions of yourself, one younger one older. This portrait will age, Dorian Grey style as you walk towards it.
Below are some simple example images with slightly different compositions (transparency etc). Click on the thumbnails to see them larger. When you are at a distance Katya should look younger. When you are close up she should look older.
This is of course a work in progress. I need to do it with much higher resolution images to really get it to work like the Dave/Adriana picture. If you want to mess with the source it is here
Hello - the One Pixel Webcam is a project I’ve been working on for quite a while now and I’d now like to see what you think.
It’s an application that samples a single pixel from a webcam you select and creates a image for your desktop, so that your desktop can be the same colour as the sky outside.
The desktop images also show how this pixel has changed over time, for example this is how the skys in Boston changed at dusk last weekend:
I’m really interested in the natural cycles of different areas of these images. The sky changes minute-by-minute and keeps a daily cycle, the cycle of the leaves of a tree are follow the seasons on a yearly cycle.
Please let me know what you think - you can download it and give it a go from my page. I’ll be showing this at the Curious Christmas event this evening.
