FreeTrack Forum

Ok,  so i'm fairly new to this whole thing...  good with computers,   never really had to mess with "electronics" much...   first thing I try?  To make a infrared battery powered LED setup without really doing much research...  didn't work too well.  Just found ben Meijers build guide, and now I think I finally get that part of it.

Now,  on the other hand I figured out how to set up the camera with freetrack pretty easy (also tried facetracknoir, which has definate potential but still too jiggly for me to deal with)  So I took apart my webcam's lense and found the IR filter on the inside...  it was a small circular piece of glass that was SUPER thin,  so thin that it just shattered when I tried to pry it off from the side.   On the plus side,  the webcam detects IR lights a lot better,  on the negative side it is SUPER blurry...  every light I use now makes a giant blob on freetrack.   I've tried a couple things...  pried a DVD apart,  cut a section of one of the layers into a circle and put it in there but it didn't make much of the difference (seemed to have filtered out a little bit of visible light... )

Any tricks i'm missing on getting this thing to focus?

nevermind,   moot point.  figured it out,  but ended up breaking the webcam.  Oh well it was a cheapo no-name one anyways,   think i'm going to try to shop around for a playstation Eye (have a couple wii-motes,  but i'll have to get a bluetooth dongle and that setup seems to be rather sketchy)

Hi,

You could also get this camera, it's very cheap and the IR filter is easy to remove (look for a guide on the web). It also has 60 fps, although at a lower resolution.

Damn its getting hard to find either of those cameras in america.

Cool side note:  Anyone have an old xbox?  did you buy that stupid DVD player attachment where you had the IR reciever that you plugged into the xbox and a remote control to be able to play movies on the xbox?  I took them apart, got one IR led out of the remote, and the receiver has a filter over it that is a nice lense shaped circle that looks like it'll affix over a webcam lense nicely...  might make a good visible light filter.

one of the difficulties i've been having is finding light filters... both floppy disks and roll film are two outmoded technologies I'm having problems finding these days...