webcams

BashLogic

hello

who has webcams and what models exactly?
when was the last time you used it and for what?
what do you want to use it for next?

samer

who has webcams and what models exactly?

I have the built in iSight that came with my iMac.

when was the last time you used it and for what?

Skype
Making stupid faces on Photo Booth
Reading bar codes to quickly find items on amazon

what do you want to use it for next?

Intrusion alert (experimental) using motion.

mir

well, i don't own own
not tempted to get one for myself, but someone asked me to get her one and a good headset
i wonder what you guys recommend ?

i read about intrusion alerts a long long time ago, but never was that intrested to actually do it

battikh

when i need one (which is very rarely), i use my playstation cam. use it mainly for video chatting with my sister. and nope, i don't use it for any geeky purpouse :P

BashLogic

hmm..

so few have cams... too bad.. you would have enjoyed what was to follow. the thing is you need a cam that you can move arround and not the integrated stuff.

as for good hardware, well personally i preffer the logitech top range series. but if im up to something that is not image quality dependent, then i would use the
cheapest crap with decent drivers...

mir

you would have enjoyed what was to follow.

what was to follow
don't be such a tease

BashLogic

lets reffer to it as a summer project ;)
more fun to have a group of people do it together. but still there is a requirement for a usb cam..

lets see how far your imagination will take you as to what is in question ;)

mir

lets see how far your imagination will take you as to what is in question

yeah.. let us see about my immagination

it has something to do with shooting pics under water.. doesn't :P

BashLogic

nice try but for underwater photography you want long cable and usb has limitations, collor filters to refine as much as possible, and remember that you cant get perfect pictures without extreme lighting system and max distance of 1m.

learned this the hardway a few months ago when i was taking pictures under water in the red sea....

battikh

at school in terminale my final year project for the BAC was building a rocket. we were planing on putting a cam on it to take pics from up there, but we ran out of time and money :P should be cool.... but again, a webcam wont do much, u need a cam that can store the pictures and you collect them back when the rocket lands.

mir

Battikh :
Nice project
how did it turn out.. have any pics ? what technology and such
and u missed a keyword... when the rocket lands Safely
the safely is the hardest part.. trust me :P

Bashlogic :
Underwater can be the inside of the Fish Aquarium :P
and u were in vacation.. and thinking about geekish webcam and technology !

How about face/image/shape/writing recognition ?

battikh

was going to say about recognition stuff, mainly face and shape. but you can push the face recognition to make it expression recognition. other nice stuff that can be done are autonomous robots, or a robot that moves around and draws u a map with the location of certain objects that he recognize, or you can make it search for a specific object (defined by its shape and color), or you give him the picture of something/someone and he'll search for it.
another thing that can be done is motion detection, and actually using the movements to give commands to the computer, a little bit like the playstation camera.

and Mir:
for the rocket, it's quiet simple, nothing high tech, it's all a matter of applying few formulas to know what size of parachute you need, have an idea of where it will land, and find out the proper dimensions for the different parts. you can even find very cheap kits.
and it lands safely, it has a parachute... "safely" is easy, model rockets are VERY light, its just a cartoon tube (in our case) or a plastic tube (in commercial models), and the rockets engines are designed to throw a charge at the front when they finished burning to pop out the noise of the rocket which pushes the parachute out. so the parachute opens when the rockets stops gaining height, which is soon enough to have a safe landing.
i should still have 3 or 4 unused rocket engines somewhere, but they're probably unusable by now, 5 years in lebanon's humidity...if anyone will use them, i don't want to be anywhere close :P
just as an example of how cheap and easy these are: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0007U7I08?smid=A1KQ8Q5LL5HU6M&tag=priceg14-20&linkCode=asn
it's just 25$ and it has a built-in cam. and add to it 3 or 4$ per engine.

battikh

oh, and a cool experiment to do (it's more an experiment than a project :P) would be to write a small software that would show a pic to the user and directly take a pic of his reaction, and you would show pics that the user wouldn't be expecting, something scary, something cute, naked women, ... and see the different reactions :P enno heik, leaving the program running in the background without telling the user that it is there, and at a random time, pops up a screen with a pic, and bte2erto soura :P
and then akid, you blackmail him and ask for money or you'll be printing the pics and putting them in uni/workplace/spread them by mail/...

samer

I saw something about expression recognition yesterday on EuroNews (hi-tech edition)
The camera detects your gender and has aligned bars like this :

[====] Happy
[.........] Sad
[.........] Surprised
[.........] Angry

Meaning it could detect if you have mixed emotions as well (e.g, surprised and happy / angry and sad )

I think it would be nice to see the effect of advertisement on people, or how they react in a movie..

BashLogic

battikh:
ever heard of kite photography? here is some tips on it:
http://www.arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite_aerial_photography
another way to do it without having to invest in relays, get a supported canon camera (2nd hand works better ;) )
install chdk on your sd memory card and write a script to take pictures every 2 seconds. after this, just attach the
digital camera to your remote controlled airplane/chopper or a traditional kite and enjoy.
http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

the issue that you would have with the rocket photography is that it would take blurred pictures at high speeds. so
you have a better chance of getting decent pictures as it parachutes down.

and no, nothing to do with robots but then again you gave me an idea ;) thou none of what you guessed/suggested.
you got close but not that close ;)

as for taking a picture of the users as they interact, the concept has been allready implemented on some appliances.

Mir: got two aquariums a 120l and a 35l one in both cases swinging arround a cumbersome usb webcam in an aquarium
is a hastle and you still would have issues with focusing.

what you proposed as suggestions is based on old conventional thinking that has been spoken of for decades and bores to death.
what im relating to is something different, new usage. but regardless that you are unaware of whats in question, you did get close.

Samer: nope not related to expresion recognition.

anyone else who wants to guess or run to the shop and get a webcam to find out what this fun thing is all about?

mir

anyone else who wants to guess or run to the shop and get a webcam to find out what this fun thing is all about?

I am getting another webcam for a frnd on monday
it is till the weekend till i get to give it
so i have one week to play with it
post already what that fun thing is about !
or should everyone kneel and beg first ?

BashLogic

for those who have a usb-webcam, spend a weekend checking this out ...

http://nuigroup.com/wiki/

samer

Note: Topic cleaned. Battikh and BL, settle this via PM.

battikh

samer wroteReading bar codes to quickly find items on amazon

finally got back my cellphone from repair and i was playing with it... you have barcode readers for cellphone (i think the n93 comes with one pre-installed). the interesting part is qrcodes. you can encode data, phone numbers, sms, url, ... in a barcode. so when your cellphone reads the barcode, if it's a url it automatically asks you if you want to browse to it, if it's an sms, it fills all the sms info (phone number and text) and you just have to press on send, phone number will dial it and you just have to press yes to call, and data is just plain text.

for java enabled phones you can try one of these:
http://www.quickmark.com.tw/English/download.html
http://reader.kaywa.com/

the 1st one (quickmark) has a PPC version (which is the one i'm using, haven't tried the other one).

for barcode generators, you can try one of these:
http://qrcode.kaywa.com/
http://www.tec-it.com/online-demos/tbarcode/barcode-generator.aspx

here's one for testing:

BashLogic

bar code reading from/to mobile phones development began sometime arround 2000, first drafts/protos were out sometime arround 2001 after wap protocol was more readily available. personally ive had the barcode reader on my phone for about two years now, i use it every now and then. here its usage is starting to take off as advertisements are including them, eticketing works with it, show galleries as well. there is an endless list of usage that has been arround for several years but has not spread that much globally.

its quiet easy to setup, you can find the specifications and libraries publically. the bigger issue is that there are several standards/version which is causing an incompatibility in the industry as what barcode format to use. 3d barcode alone doesnt state much from that perspective. other than that the downside to 3dbarcodes are that if they get tarnished, its useless in comparison to 2d barcodes that can still function.
for more info on this part check: http://www.adams1.com/pub/russadam/spec.html