FreeTrack Forum

FreeTrack Hardware Tutorial

3 Point Clip Model
By: Brandt

Disclaimer:  I do not take any credit for the work done by others that I've used in calculating parts specifications.  I want to thank Benmeijer for his post that I got almost all of my specifications from.  The rest was pulled from the freetrack manuals.

Short Introduction

I was looking into trackIR for a bit in December.  Like many other users on this site, I was really interested but I just didn’t have the money to shell out - especially after hearing about FreeTrack, which I can personally vouch for now.  There’s no need to go spend so much on buying trackIR when you can build a perfectly functional unit on your own for a fifth of the cost.

I got into FreeTrack with no experience in soldering or building anything electric in general.  I’ve worked a bit with wiring in the past but nothing important or anything I really cared about.  I found a few limited tutorials on the forums but I really wish I could have had a little more explanations here and there, and I feel like some of the people responding on the forums felt the same way.

The tutorial is based off of my 3 Point Clip model that is completely functional and working.  I spent about a total of 2 hours between building it and configuring it on my computer.  My model is very simple and based on the idea that you shouldn’t need to go out and buy everything.  Many of the required parts are easily found around the house - by the end of the project I had spent about $15 on all of the parts and I found a cheap webcam on eBay for $15, so that’s a $30 total.  The battery life is around 20-25 hours for this setup.

Relevant Links:

FreeTrack Website
General website for freetrack.  Check out the links there.

Benmeijer's Post
This is where my specifications came from.  Very good topic but in my opinion could use a little more elaboration.  Thanks to benmeijer for the great calculations and explanation, but I'd like to dumb it down even further for some of the people who want a bit more of a walkthrough.  I wish I had one when I was building mine.

Compatible Webcams
List of webcams that work.  Try to choose one that has a tutorial for removing the filter.


What You’ll Need: (Prices I paid included)

Tools:
Wirecutters
Electrical Tape
Knife
Soldering Iron

Construction:
Wire clothes hangar
22 Gauge Wire www.ebay.com $3
Solder Wire www.ebay.com $3
30 ohm .25 (1/4) Watt resistors (3 of them at least) www.ebay.com $1
SFH485P Infrared LEDs (3 of them, buy 10 for cheaper) www.digikey.com $6
Floppy Disk www.ebay.com $1
AA Battery Case (with switch preferred) www.ebay.com $1

Webcam:
My model uses the Microsoft VX-2000.  Many models are available for  use.  Please check with the link provided in the links section for a list of good cams. www.ebay.com $15


Procedure:

Take your clothes hangar and cut out the bottom of it.  Bend the hangar in a way you like so that the LEDs will be positioned to the specifications below. EDIT: measurements in mm, not cm.


Cut out a short piece of wire from the hangar and secure it with tape to the center of the system.


Take your 22g wiring and wire pieces like so: (red is positive, black negative)


Make sure you connect the short end of the LED to the negative wire (black in this diagram).  See the link section (benmeijer's post) for the explanation.


Attach the battery box by soldering the terminals and tape over all of the internals.


From here, simply tape your battery box to the side (or in my case, to the headset) and attach to your headset how you see fit.  At the moment, mine is just taped on since I have a strange headset (Logi. G930) but I plan on actually clipping it in the future.

As you can tell, this tutorial is a very basic way to create a WORKING freetrack system.  It's not pretty and it's very bare-bones but for someone like myself, I feel that it will be useful.  I actually created this for a friend and decided to upload it.

I'll keep this updated in the future and any questions can be PMed to me or asked here on the thread.  I'll try to check in frequently.  Sorry about the small pictures too!

First Setup

Revised Setup

As you can see, my clothes hangar wire is bent differently than in my tutorial.  The important aspect here is that the LEDs roughly shape out to be that 60-60-80-80 shape.  From there, you can make the wire bend any way you want, as long as the LEDs fit on that spec.

Nice!

And I agree with you. Although you can find all informations about Freetrack in the forum, it missed an ultimate, concentrated, easy build, Freetrack mount tutorial to spend less time for reading.

(PS: First picture: You probably mean "All measurements in mm"

Great catch, thanks.  I couldn't sleep so I wrote this at like 5AM my time.  I'm sure there are more mistakes haha.

Yeah, thanks for the compliment.  I just wanted a simple easy walkthrough when I built mine and while this one isn't perfect, I hope it can help out for some people looking for more help.