Due to some disbelief on the NUI Group forums about how my Logitech QuickCam™ Ultra Vision SE was stacking up to the Firefly/Dragonfly from Point Grey Research, I decided to make a little video showing the speed of the camera. Now, the lag of the trails that follow your fingers is the computer. If you move too fast and the camera loses your trails, then that's the camera.

I use the coins to show that I've reached a zero-force blob detection with the camera in normal room lighting down to the diameter of a dime. Unfortunately, my front surface mirror broke in a moment of sheer ecstasy and I haven't replaced it yet, so my projected screen area is cut in half. But that's trivial as the Logitech can fit the whole screen in it's view from less than 3 feet away and doesn't need to use the mirror.

I monkeyed around with the mouseDriver.exe thingy for a minute on the internet web browsing and such. Not much fun when you're itching to write code. So I'm off to go do that now.

I broke my mirror (and I'm not superstitious), so I have been testing at half the screen size and it's making me frustrated because it is reducing the clarity of my blobs while increasing their size. Zooming and cropping with my camera sucks. I can't wait for a Dragonfly Express or a Firefly MV from Point Grey Research. Having a smaller screen is not always a good thing. I might as well be testing on an iPhone or an iPod Touch.

Did you click on the Dragonfly link? 200fps at 640x480!!! That kicks ass! If I had problems tracking moving blobs, then this solution would fix it in 1/200th of a second. Simply awesome. Plus, it looks like Jeff Han is using a Dragonfly in this photo from the 2006 TED conference.

It's really out of my budget, so I have been looking for some contract jobs to make up the difference. *sigh* It's so painful to resume manual labor after a very long break. Not that I'm physically strained, but doing other people's coding is manual labor to me. Maybe I'll just make a Facebook plugin and retire.

There is no human reason why a child should not admire and emulate his teacher's ability to do sums, rather than the village bum's ability to whittle sticks and smoke cigarettes. The reason why the child does not is plain enough - the bum has put himself on an equality with him and the teacher has not. --Floyd Dell

Here I am testing the smoke app. My camera is not calibrated. The brightness, contrast, etc are all wacky, which is why I'm in the dark. I keep telling people I need absolute dark for my work and that's why the windows are covered in aluminum foil. I think they believe me. The voices say I can trust them.

The lag is bad for many, many reasons. I should be able to eliminate the lag with little effort. I'll post again when the silicone layer is dry enough to test.

To do anything truly worth doing, I must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in with gusto and scramble through as well as I can. --Og Mandino (1923 - 1996)

I've been tortuously waiting for my sleek Samsung SP-P310ME Digital Light Projector (DLP). It felt like the UPS guy was waterboarding me by making me sign for it. Just hand it over, brownie! Now that it's here, I've been tweaking this and that to align it with my acrylic. The wooden frame holding it up is weak and wobbly. Not a final product, but hey, I've been focusing more on the software.

Tomorrow I suppose I'll head down to the local hardware store to pick up some silicone caulk and toluene to make a compliant surface. After the compliant surface, maybe I'll order some Rosco Grey. After that, designing the table frame and internal structure to hold mirror, fans, and other secured components. I plan on making it as portable as possible. I'm going to need a sturdier front surface mirror. The one I have has already cracked a bit in the corner. Lame.

Yawn. It's late. There's always tomorrow.