FreeTrack Forum

Been browsing the forums for a while and finally decided to actually try putting it all together. I got my hands on a PS 2 Eyetoy and hooked it up to my computer and got it working in Free track. However, there were a few problems:

1). I could not get the camera to go over 12 FPS. People say that Eyetoys should easily be able to reach that. I tried all the stuff in the hardware FAQ and had no luck, the FPS stayed the same regardless of exposure settings, resolution, or compression changes.
2). The camera stock seemed to pick up IR light from a VCR remote just fine (I haven't actually built my head rig yet, was just playing around with the Eyetoy). It did pick up a lot of background light so I figured I'd remove the IR filter and do the photo negative/Floppy Disk trick to see if that helped alleviate the parasitic light problem. I heard the filter on the Eyetoy is easily removeable, maybe I'm a dumbass but I can't find it. I heard it was directly on the sensor but I saw nothing with the reddish tint that signified an IR filter on the sensor. There is a piece with a reddish tint in the actual lens itself but I can't figure out how to remove it without needing to saw the lens in half.
and finally
3). I managed to break the Eyetoy sensor while trying to figure all this out. Since I had nothing to lose at this point, I decided to try to saw the eyetoy lens in half and see if I could get that reddish piece out. I can't see to do it.

So in short I have 3 questiosn:

How do you get the eyetoy into the acceptable 30 fps range?
Do you need to remove the IR filter if the camera seems to be picking up IR fine?
If so, how do you remove said filter?

Thanks a lot guys.

I was playing around with my broken Eyetoy and found the filter and removed it, so I know how to do that now for when I get a new Eyetoy.

If you are using visible LEDs instead of infrared ones do you need to remove the IR filter?

Sorry to hear about your broken Eyetoy

You don't NEED to remove the IR filter if it seems to be picking up IR fine, but it does help if you're going to be using IR LEDs.  If you tape film negatives over the webcam it will serve to eliminate all light except for IR light, which is a step you'd probably want to do regardless of if you find the webcam's IR filter or not.

I don't know how to increase the Eyetoy's frame rate.  The key setting you need to change is to turn off autoexposure, and perhaps manually change the exposure setting to maximum.  I couldn't do this with my webcam, but playing at 15fps tracking is fine for me.

If you did remove the IR filter, I think it would actually make it tougher to work with visible-light LEDs since the Eyetoy would now see IR light and visible light, making it that much tougher to detect your light sources.  That being said, any LED will be a fair bit brighter than other light sources around you, and that's what is needed for FreeTrack to pick them up.  Additionally, there probably aren't any significant IR light sources near you to contribute significant light, unless you're near a sunny window, a stove or a curling iron

However, IR LEDs are much nicer because you can work in a spectrum where there is so little other light getting to your webcam.  Instead of tweaking your webcam's brightness and contrast settings so that it picks up the three dots created by visible-light LEDs, working in IR with film negative taped over your webcam reveals *only* three dots with everything else black.

So in short, I recommend not removing the IR filter if you're going to be using visible-light LEDs.  For infrared LEDs, remove the filter if you can do so easily, or leave it in if it's too tough -- either way it'll likely work.  Plus, you can remove the IR filter later if you find you're having problems, you can test your setup first and modify as needed as you go.

Alternatively, a Wii controller works as an excellent webcam with no hardware modifications required, and you get 100fps tracking.  I use both a wii controller and a webcam, flipping between them depending on battery charge, where I am, etc.

Thanks for the reply. I have access to IR LEDs but I'm going to build a rig with the visible ones first just in case I screw up and break them (since IR LEDs are more expensive).

Was seriously considering using a Wiimote (I have several already) but bluetooth dongles are more expensive than the average webcam.