FreeTrack Forum

Hi Guys,

This is not a tutorial or something like this but I'd like to tell you my story about a misfit PS3 Eye IR removal which I could fix relative quickly. Maybe it gives you some idea and hope

So I ordered my PS3 Eye to use it for head tracking. Although it was a SLEH-00448 when I disassembled it the lens assembly looked slightly different than on the tutorial videos/images. I was so committed I ignored this and continued by the filter removal.

Then all of a sudden I heard a high pitch pop and saw the lens chipped. I was'n happy too much as I red the sad and long stories about this situation but fortunately it occurred to me that I have an old webcam around. I used to FreeTrack with it but I couldn't make it work in Win7 and had about 10-12 fps anyway but I was thinking about maybe I can reuse its lens somehow.

As I saw the old lens I felt extremely lucky: it looked they have the very same mount so if I'm good enough I don't have to hack anything.

I tried to "carefully" remove the PS3 Eye lens. I say "carefully" because it wasn't intended to disassemble. You wouldn't see such a massacre what I did but I managed to remove/break everything but the small piece what is fastened in the mount.

As it was glued and couldn't unscrew it I put it into boiling water for a couple of secs to loosen the glue (be careful as this plastic is very rigid but melt easily) Then tried to unscrew. I repeated this dip-unscrew a couple of times and finally I could remove the last piece of plastic without damaging the mount or the screw thread.

Then I tried the old noname lens and hooray! It fit perfectly as expected.

So if you end up with this situation please don't panic but think a bit. Maybe you have such a retired webcam somewhere around in the big pile of things-that-will-be-good-for-something-sometime or you can get one much cheaper (free) than a new PS3 Eye or a mount.