Developing a multitouch specific camera

[egosgame]

Hello everyone,

My name is Justin Ireland. I am new to the forums here but I have known Jim for some time. We started talking a few months back about developing a multi touch specific camera. Point Grey Research cameras are currently a popular choice among the community because of their flexibility. The drawback is price. I think NaturalPoint has a great opportunity to take on this new market because the cameras are capable of doing much of the image processing on-board AND the cameras are slightly less expensive so theoretically you should get much better performance for about the same cost.

Camera based MT systems are essentially the same as a mocap system except you are only tracking 2D instead of 3D so in most cases you only need a single camera. In some cases it would be good to have multiple cameras such as for tracking a large area but 90% of the time one camera would suffice.

The major issues as I see it are: Adjusting for lighting conditions and data stream format for maximum compatibility. Touchlib seems to be the most promising open source solution but it needs some tweaking to work with different types of hardware. It was designed to work with typical usb or firewire webcams. My hope is that we could develop a solution based on the SLIM camera platform. Also, data output uses the TUIO protocol.

I'm getting some interest from the NUI community but I think it would work best to get some support from Natural Point. Together we can figure out both sides of the equation and meet somewhere in the middle.

If anyone is interested in helping with this let me know.

[Jim]

FYI:

We will be releasing an much improved DirectShow filter for our cameras in the coming month or so, which should make using a SLIM the same as any USB or Firewire camera today. Additionally, users could write programs that tap directly into the data stream from our cameras, via the free SDK, to get pre-processed video data, at much lower data rates than standard gray scale.

[egosgame]

Jim, I would be curious to see if that new Directshow filter allows the camera to be recognized by Touchlib.

Ideally, we still want something optimized specifically for the SLIM device but 3rd party compatibility is always a plus.

[egosgame]

I forgot to ask... any idea what the performance will be with the Directshow filters?

[alexandre_fs]

Hello Jim.

Will this be compatible with C120 camera?

Using my C120 cams like a regular USB camera would be great!! When do you expect to release the upgrade?

Also, is it possible to control IR lights? (and other parameters...)

Thank you.

[VincentG]

I'm currently not aware of any plans to include C120 support, but the development team is aware of your interest.

[Birch]

We saw the following post over at the NUI Group multi-touch forums announcing a support layer for OptiTrack cameras. Maybe it will be of use to some of you.

http://nuigroup.com/forums/viewthread/2178/P30/#23640

[egosgame]

This is perfect!

I knew Optitrack cameras were a good platform for this type of application. Glad to see someone with the know-how is developing this.

[reml]

This is an old thread, but has there been a release of the new DirectShow filter mentioned above? The NUI Group thread linked to above only deals with an LLP solution for multitouch. I am trying to set up a rear diffuse illumination solution and I happen to have 3 SLIM V100 cameras from previous experimental projects. I'd love to repurpose them and get the performance from them for multitouch.

Rob

[Seth Steiling]

Hi Rob,

Our newest DirectShow Filter release, from July, can be found here:

http://www.naturalpoint.com/optitrack/s ... ml#add-ons