Topic: From the maker of the Wiimote projects (Page 1 of 1)

Remember those Wiimote projects done by Johnny Lee of Carnegie Mellon Univeristy? Such cool things are real-time headtracking using the Wiimote's IR camera, a DIY electronic whiteboard that can be used on any surface you can project onto, and a couple of others that slip my mind right now.

Well, he, and a couple of collaborators from other Universities are working on this project now:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/04/automatic_projector_calib.html

Although the first couple of examples appear simplistic, keep watching, because he demonstrates some really cool applications for it.


Justice 4 Pat Richard

very cool ... only works with small screens tho = poor resolution ...
I understand he doesn't actually calibrate the projector ... just crops the image ... (and then aligns a new image into the cropped area) ...

As someone mentioned ... industrial uses are unlimited ... home users won't benefit much. Until all consumer projectors can be calibrated on the fly, from a computer and have much wider range of calibration - I mean until the whole 800x600 (or bigger) picture can be projected onto a random rectangle.

Neat.

very cool.

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Arthurio said:

only works with small screens tho = poor resolution ...

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I didn't get that. Don't see why this wouldn't be able to be projected onto larger screens.

Later,

C:\

the bigger the screen the less you can move it around ... (the more pointless it becomes) ... because it has to stay in the boundaries of the projection ... the consumer projectors aren't very calibratable by default ... each corner can move maybe 20% and not in the kind of fashion that he demonstrates ... + mostly they aren't calibratable by a computer - only from the remote control ... which means that for this application you'd just have to make the projection angle as big as possible ... and then the small movable screen will cover maybe 1/100 - 1/10 of the whole projection area meaning that you'll have 100 to 10 times less pixels on the screen compared to what the projector is capable of projecting ... + the pixels maybe distorted and divided unevenly across the surface

edit: all this doesn't make for a great home consumer product ....

(Edited by Arthurio on 04-23-2008 14:07)

42" screen works for me .. this could transfer to TV technology!


.::. cEll .::. 513

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all this doesn't make for a great home consumer product ....

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Right now, maybe not, but this kind of technology is exactly the kind of thing that leads to advances in the accompanying technologies. Right now, consumer home projectors might not have the kind of technology necessary to make this work perfectly, but how long do you think it will take someone to license it and couple it with their projectors. The ability to be able to dot these sensors around the perimeter of home projection screen, and then have it dynamically detect and follow the angle your screen is on would be a huge selling point.

Look at computers for a prime example. The development of the mouse lead to games and programs to use them. The limitations proved by this technology lead to the development of a multi-touch or multi-cursor display and interface technologies that in turn lead to the development of software which allows a more natural and human interface to computers...


Justice 4 Pat Richard

(Edited by Skaarjj on 04-25-2008 12:35)

The optimal solution would be to make a projector that can project from 2 degrees up to 45 and turn towards the screen physically. This is not difficult to do at all but it's still different technology and requires a tracking system that's different as well.

All this means that you cannot achieve the optimal result using a regular off the shelf projector.

Not yet, anyway. As I said, I don't think it will take a terribly long time for this kind of technology to be licensed and incorporated into off-the-shelf projectors.


Justice 4 Pat Richard

Many of the projectors my company uses have an automatic or (more usually) manual feature to adjust for angle or tilt (referred to as trapezoid/keystone adjustment) which leads to a minor compromise in quality barely noticeable in the majority of applications, as pixels are discarded. The majority of full-size professional projectors (not your average boardroom/home unit) have moveable lenses, allowing for the projection to be adjusted without losing pixels - but the process of manually adjusting and aligning the images for two overlayed images (allowing for fail-safe redundancy) is time-consuming.

Somewhere between these two, I can see very wide-spread uses for automatic calibration technology. There are plenty of companies/events for which install and setup time would be dramatically reduced by the use of this.

Okay, so the domestic market might be slow on the up-take of this technology as the uses would be limited in the average home with a static, one-time-only installation, but there really is no limit to the money to be made from selling this technology to AV companies who regularly supply and install the same projector kit in a multitude of varied environments with diverse requirements and configurations.

Forget the home user - many of my clients are AV/event services that would snap this up for any price.

Personally, I'm impressed.