Augmented Reality with the Kinect v2 and an ASUS B1M

Checking in for a moment while researching and experimenting in the lab with the new Kinect v2.

There is now a great library for the Mac OSX that leverages the full features of the Kinect v2 inside of the Processing IDE.

Pair that with the great ASUS B1M and you have a nice and compact combo for augmented reality projects.

These pictures show what kind of field of view one can attain using the two in concert.

Smeenk.com created a truly excellent Field of View (FOV) viewer for the Kinect v2 AND the Kinect v1.

Look for some more action in our augmented reality terrarium, "The Sandbox of Life" this summer!

CUBIX, Plants, and Artifact Art Gallery in Seattle

Found a good place to exhibit some pieces of our CUBIX Modular Stage System as an installation art piece in Seattle via the Artifact Art Gallery.

Always fun to splash it up and remix the CUBIX in new ways and for different uses.

Made of acrylic, aluminum, the structure can be stood on, leaned against, and has clearly audible birds and waves crashing in the distance as one walks by.

Check out more info on Artifact Art Gallery's event down in Pioneer Square here: Power Clash!

AOK LED Projector Vs Reality

KED projectors are really great. They are low power, nice and bright, and have a reputable image quality. They are getting cheaper by the day. Soon they will outpace conventional arc lamp based projector. That day may not have happened yet...

On Amazon there is a listing for a $400 4,200 lumen LED projector from the AOK brand.

A great benchmark for comparison is the Epson 1960 Powerlite. A great projector that ruthfully outputs 5,000 lumens.

After pulling the AOK projector put of the box it was clear to see the claim of 4,200 lumens was extremely exaggerated if not false. The Epson should only be a little bit brighter. However there was no comparison....

One step further, there was an ASUS B1M LED projector to compare it to. The ASUS runs at 700 lumens. Even at 700 lumens it was still much brighter than the AOK, rated at 4,200 lumens.

PS3 Eye Camera Infrared Diffuser

Following from the previous post, there is much love for the PS3 Eye Camera. Not only is it USB, super cheap, and sports nice open source software - it can do infrared (IR) video really easily.

So, after testing some lights it was time to make a few diffusers for the favorite model and conduct further testing.

Both the Diffuse 3mm PLA & the Transparent 3mm PLA from Cubicity were used in the testing. There was noticeably more light diffusion in the Diffuse filament - almost too much. The transparent kept it nice and bright. Thicknesses of 1mm, 2mm, and 3mm were used. Same camera settings for each shot.

PS3 Eye Infrared Flood

A favorite camera is by far the PS3 Eye. It is USB, can be found for super cheap online, and sports a host of features - variable resolution and frame rate, CCTV m12 mounts and lenses, IR & UV capabilities, plus a great open source app we helped develop hosted here: https://github.com/fred-dev/ps3EyeSyphon_2

To use for infrared (IR) camera tracking a suitable LED IR flood light is needed.

After trying many different lights online it was time to test out the top 4 and see how they stacked up in a more systematic manner.

96 LED     6 LED     4 LED     48 LED

As can be seen, the lights featured different diffusion patterns and strengths. Each picture was taken using the same camera settings.
Each light uses 12v DC and can be fairly easily operated on.

Focal Lengths and Geodesic Dome Buzz

Trying out some new lenses and cameras for documenting this summer's action and good times. Strolled downtown Seattle near South lake Union and found the new Amazon "spheres".

Here is a nice shot from the journey.

Arduino and Raspberry Pi Collaborate with a Little 3D Printing

Getting handy with the printing for an upcoming collaboration between a Arduino and a Raspberry Pi electronic platform.

End objective is to grab sensor data from the Arduino. The Arduino can handle 5v logic out of the box whereas the Raspberry Pi requires 3.3v logic out of the box. So we'll send it via USB as serial data. MIDI is also a handy method. Just hack a MIDI interface like this. To make use of this data we'll use Processing 3 (now available on the Raspberry Pi) to read the data, write to a file in a comma-separated-value format (CSV). We'll use Processing to then display this data while reading it from the file.

This can be used on many different projects.
Here are some files for the mounting brackets:

Raspberry Pi TFT 7" Touchscreen Mounting Bracket

Wireless Keyboard Mounts

Mounting Bracket for Arduino Uno & Breadboard Acrylic Plate via Adafruit 

Painting on the Bellingham Skyline

Last Friday was the Commercial Street Night Market put on by The Downtown Bellingham Partnership. It was the first gathering of the season where anyone in town can come show their crafts, share their food, perform music, and engage in all things merry and community.

Sensebellum was sought to provide some really engaging interactive art installations for the occasion. We had one up our sleeve and it was the right time!

The installation, yet to be officially named, lets anyone jump up and paint on massive buildings from the ground!

We thought this would tie in the space and playfulness of the occasion nicely. We took careful measurements of the building and then 3D printed a scaled down replica. From there we used a video feed of the model and projected the video, in real time, onto the building.

All you needed was a brush, some paint, and badda boom badda bing you were painting on 4 stories of architecture. Each stroke on the model matched ink for ink on the building. What you painted was what you saw. Kids, grandparents, and everyone in between lit up as they saw the dynamics of the interactions taking place.

Look for this installation and many other this summer around Bellingham, Washington, The Pacific Northwest, and abroad!

Compact CUBIX Stage Designs

Exploring many styles within the CUBIX Modular Stage System over the past few events.

Incredibly Handy Terminal Commands for a Raspberry Pi

Here are some commands that make life easier getting the Raspberry Pi ready for creative coding.

Arduino IDE 1.01:

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install arduino

$ wget https://github.com/wyolum/alamode/blob/master/bundles/alamode-setup.tar.gz?raw=true -O alamode-setup.tar.gz

$ tar -xvzf alamode-setup.tar.gz

$ cd alamode-setup

$ sudo ./setup

* ./setup might not work. It also might not matter.

Processing 3.0 IDE:

curl https://processing.org/download/install-arm.sh | sudo sh