Hi guys, I’d like to create a 300m2 interactive floor in a museum. The room is 17x18x4m. My question is, are there any problems by tracking the visitors by IR cam’s and connecting them? I came out with a few ideas to create such a screen but my concern is about the interactivity.
Do you have any experiences of such installation? Are there products you can suggest?
Hey! I’m just starting similar project in a theatre (14x8), and next week I’ll try some IR and kinect. I’ll let you know!
I’m using some thermal cameras at the moment, that are very low res but pretty wide angle and obviously don’t suffer from lighting issues so much and mainly see your head rather than your body.
Laser tracking might work too, can’t remember the name of the company, but Zepi has worked with them, they do a floor level 180º laser field and return positions for all feet, think they do multiple for occlusion too.
Biggest issue I can see for floor tracking with cameras is the fairly low ceiling means wide angle lenses which knocks on to view frustrums, are you tracking a persons head or their feet, I guess it depends how accurate you need it…
Hey, we made interactive projection software, it uses the IR sensor to track motion and it will cover an area 16 feet wide by 9 feet high with the sensor about 14-15 feet up. It can cover an area 20 x 15 feet with the sensor about 20 feet up but it will not track feet or legs it will only track the tops of people’s heads. Anyways, here’s the site: http://www.po-motion.com/ software costs $40 and you can make your own content using templates http://www.po-motion.com/MotionMakerHope this helps!
I am interested about that laser tracking thing …
Hey people,
we at THIS.PLAY developed a technology using laser devices (class A) to track very big areas.
Check out http://this-play.com and drop me an email to ar (at) this-play.com, if you need more info.
They’re the guys :D
@catweasel thanks for your contribution. Currently I just need to track a the man. The accuracy is not important and I don’t need to track feet, arms or heads. Even the motions are not important just the body.
I have heard about termal cams but my first reaction was “this should be scam.”. Can it still be the case for such large areas, even if I don’t need to track a part of the body?
Another case is the price of course. The technology is probably a price differentiator and for this project cheap > accurate.
The cheapest option is IR then, you’ll need several, work out how many by using the lens angle and room size, and bare in mind they’ll need to overlap a bit, to get many cameras into 1 pc, see if you can get a cctv multiplexor which puts several video feeds into 1 image and then capture that, I’ve seen some that can do 8 or 16 cameras into 1 image and output that over hdmi which you can then capture with a blackmagic intensity or equivalent.
A good option would be projectors connected via daisy chain. NEC has projectors but they connect up to 4 and InFocus has projectors which can connect via daisy chain but they do not provide the max number.
Video multiplexer is also a good idea but the edge blending will be a problem, I think it has to be done manually.
Is there a good online marketplace for such product? For example the IR sensors? Is there a brand you can suggest?
Multiplexor is for the cameras not projectors, its so you can have multiple cameras captured into 1 capture card.
I use standard IR cctv cameras, as I have a load that I got from a cctv company when they were getting rid of them, look on ebay, bigger the sensor the better the noise ratio. You may have to remove the IR block filter if they have them, if they’ve been used for IR then that will be gone already.
You then need IR illuminators, which can be parcans with red and blue lighting gel on, or LED ones, but you need quite a spread not spot light ones.
hey catweasel what thermal cameras you using? never think of using it, but I guess its very expensive right?
They’ve been custom made for a job, these ones are 8x8 pixels! But the guys has found higher res sensors upto 64x64, the 8x8’s are about £400 the high res, over 1000 I’d guess…
hey I found out an useful resource, perhaps you already know it: http://www.creativeapplications.net/tutorials/guide-to-camera-types-for-interactive-installations/
BTW what kind of gear would you buy to prepare something like this: https://vimeo.com/34036075 ?
Thanks this review is helpful.
Are there also good tutorials for beginners? I couldn’t find any tutorials for creating multi-displays. There are quite a lot videos at youtube for 3-4 LCD displays but no resources for 30 projectors.
How can someone learn how to connect 30 projectors with 1 source?
30 projectors? this means your video’s resolution is something like 10240x2304 pixel? Good luck with that.
And you gonna need lots of graphic cards (http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/connect_multiple_gxms/)
or just lots of computer connected in boygrouping basics
I did it with six PCs (and six monitors XD) I don’t know if there’s some limit to that!
I’m wondering how to do the IR-Lighting, by means of where to position lights to get an accurate countour tracking. I can’t imagine a solution, how to light all body, but not the floor, or vice versa.
Look the Images, Here no Image… Hope you like the Interactive Floor -
For accurate contour tracking you need to place IR light possibly close to camera/ on the same axis. So you avoid that the camera starts to see shadow of IR lighting and in worse case (wide angle- short throw) silhouette gets 4 arms or so