Progress update

This week I've mostly been working on the business plan part of my project, which is going quite well. I've also found an interesting article on BBC News about humans and computers becoming closer together. It says; "The keyboard, mouse and monitor will increasingly be replaced by more intuitive forms of interaction and display, including tablet computers, speech recognition systems and fingertip-operated surfaces." This is exactly what my project is setting out to achieve, blurring the boundaries between physical and digital.

I've also been working on getting Wiimote input working, along with some general refactoring of the code to make it a bit nicer. I'm using the WiiremoteJ library along with Bluecove and my Macbook (as it has bluetooth built in). Bluetooth is a massive pain and took me ages to get it working nicely.

However, the Wiimote input now works; it picks up the IR light and pressing the button "clicks" on things. I'm not quite sure yet how it will work with finding the angle of point since both the IR light position and the accelerometer are affected by the pointing direction of the controller. I'm going to get some IR LEDs hooked up later this week so hopefully will be able to get a better understanding of how it will work then.

Next tasks are to get the shelves cut and get the internal lighting sorted in the bookcase as this will really allow me to see how everything works together.

I've also knocked up a quick webpage at http://duality.benorgan.co.uk

Some more screenshots should be posted later this week as I've made a few more tweaks to the GUI.

More projection...

I spent a bit more time this week experimenting with the projection onto the screen. I managed to find a mirror (which was actually part of a table mat set from a very cheap shop in Wales for £5) which I could use to reflect the projection off. This not only gives me control over where the image goes but also increases the throw of the projector, making the image on the Holoscreen larger.

Hi-tech mirror setup for reflecting the projected image

Image after being reflected off the mirror, with some keystoning this will be about the right size. However, it's only really visible with the lights off due to the low power of the projector

As you can see the mirror makes the image much bigger although it's not very bright. I'm still waiting for another projector (either a standard one or a fancy short-throw one) so in the mean time I bought in my personal projector to see how much difference a bright projector made (although the bulb is past-due to be replaced). I forgot to bring the DVI adapter I needed so unfortunately the image is just of the projector logo, but you get the idea.

As you can see this projector is much brighter, even with the lights on. Certainly bright enough for what I need.

And a close up shot, ignore the lines on the screen; they are due to the DLP projector and you can't see them in real-life

The next thing I wanted to find out was how deep the shelves could be before they restricted the image. Obviously this depends on a number of factors; mostly the angle of projection (determined by the mirror), the depth of the shelves and the height of the lowest shelf. I stuck a bit of card hanging off a shelf at the top of the bookcase at the depth where I want the shelves to be (I'm planning on cutting them). This would then provide an object to obstruct the projection so I could see how big of a problem it would be. If you look closely at the image (apart from my reflection) you can see the cardboard inside dangling down, and then you can see a black area where the card is causing a shadow right at the top of the projected image. As you can see this shouldn't present too much of a problem as the shelves can be fairly low down before interfering with the image.

Pic showing how the shelves might cause problems for the projected image (ignore the reflection of me taking a photo!)

Holoscreen is attached!

Yes I know it's Friday night and I should be at the pub but my colleagues are growing anxious at my lack of blogging so I thought I better post something to pacify them.

This week I finally got the DNP Holoscreen attached to the bookcase. It's a temporary bodge at the moment just so I can figure out if / how everything is going to work. I'm hoping to neaten things up and adjust the positioning of the screen so it fits onto the front of the bookcase a bit better next week, but this will do for now. Below are a few pics;

DNP logo and felt covered hinge which attaches the glass to the bookcase

Dodgy cardboard washer and bolt arrangement (this will be sorted out soon!)


View of the bookcase with the glass screen closed (notice the overlap on the right, that will be fixed soon too!)

View of the bookcase with the door open. Only one shelf at the moment. Eventually the shelves will be a bit shallower.

Also this week I've been playing round with OpenCV and managed to detect coloured bits of card which I stuck to my finger (yes I looked crazy when testing it, waving my cardboard covered finger around in mid-air). Using this I can find out the position of my finger in front of a webcam and also the angle (by doing some maths on the two known points). The angle part isn't working very well yet (need to add some Kalman filtering or similar) but the position seems to work pretty well. Managed to knock up a simple Java app which let me move the pointer around the screen using my finger and select boxes by hovering over them for a second. I'm still not sure whether to use this or the Wiimote (or something else), but hopefully testing next week should sort that out.

Picture of my hand with the bits of card on. My OpenCV program looks for the green and blue coloured parts of the image and uses backprojection, thresholding and blob detection to work out the positions of the finger tip and joint. This information is then sent over the network to my Java app.

Finally I've also been finalising the business plan competition entry this week, which is due in on Tuesday.

I'm still looking for a better name than Touchpacity, suggestions would be most welcome.

Anyway, time to stop working and head to the pub!