Tuesday 31 May 2011

First test running

Ok, now everything's in place, with no - or almost - IR light pollution from the backlight. I've placed only one laser at a corner, the backlight on, and after a short calibration, I've been able to start the first test... And here's the result :



I've got to say that was really neat and accurate : there are 3 difusers + a 4mm thick acrylic sheet + a 4mm tempered glass pane between the fingers and the PS3 Eye camera.


After having put the LCD matrix ontop that set up, I started another test, but the result was really far from the first one... I almost couldn't see the blobs. I'm afraid the LCD matrix is blocking IR light around 780nm... !!

If this is correct, I'll have to switch for some 850nm as I'm sure they'll be ok from another post on nuigroup.com, using the same Samsung LCD TV.

We have this 4-day-long weekend in France this week, I'll try to give it a shot and see if I can manage to improve the lighting, in order to keep this lasers : four 850nm 10mw lasers are worth ~100€ + 20€ for the 850nm IR filter...!

A couple of modifications

Since my last post, I've encountered quite a lot of issues, and I'm afraid my project has been a bit delayed...

The acrylic I've ordered is fine, and everything is properly set up. But I still can't really see any blobs when I add the LCD display ontop of the set up. As I thought this was due to IR light pollution from the Samsung TV backlight (as said on several posts), I've removed it and replaced it with one taken from 17" LG screen I knew suitable. As it's far less birght, I've add with a friend some reflective panels in order to maximize the defused light.

Here are some pictures of the set up :



And here's the set up :




With the difusers the result isn't perfectly even, but i'll see that issue later : I frist need to get everything working properly !

Tuesday 3 May 2011

Acrylic ordered...!

I've been a bit quiet this last month, as I was waiting for the acrylic.

A colleague from work was supposed to help me with some "great friend who works as a machining technician" . I've been asking him every week for a month and a half, after having given him all the sizes and specs, "so when will I have my two acrylic sheets :D ?" but the only answers I had were "I'm on it, don't worry", "My friend's quite busy but I'll have'em by the end of the week"...

As we say in French, "on n'est jamais mieux servi que par soi même" ("if you want something doing, do it yourself"). I eventually ordered from Evonik Acrylics my two sheets : one to support the LCD screen and the difusers, the other one for the main display.

I can't properly test right now as because as the difusers aren't supported, they are dangling down and the blobs are like massively blurry.

The other issue I have is that the backlight is emiting two much IR : I'll try using the backlight from the 17" LCD screen with a lot of reflective areas in order not to loose too much lighting power !


I'll post some pictures of the project soon enough !