toychest

This post is a proposal that we create a division “toychest” of hardware devices that would be available to all students, with the goal in mind that students would have opportunities to experiment with readily available tools in their projects. The type of items that I think would be most appropriate include:

1. Fairly inexpensive items that can be lent out without much concern.
2. Items that are useful to a number of students. (Other things such as software, and expensive hardware I leave up to others to propose.)

I’ve discussed the idea with some students and gotten a lot of positive feedback, so I’ve created this post to find out:

1. What everyone else thinks of the idea.
2. What everyone thinks we should purchase.

The proposed manner in which the chest would operate is not unlike a library. Students could easily access the items and check them out for use. The potential problem to be solved is how sharing between students would operate.

Some things so far include:

- Motion Trackers: ascension , intersense
- Mid-Priced HMD
- Shutter Glasses
- Projector (so we can do some interesting stuff in locations other than labs, such as installation works)
- Another webcam

Additional things that have come up, aside from “toys”:

- Game Engines
- Software Licenses for students to use on their laptops.
- Hard Drives with large quotas for students to host large media files.
- Visual C++

It would be useful to:

1. Establish what hardware already exists.
2. How available each item is for student use.

- I’ve heard there is an HMD set up for AR
- The Boom HMD
- Mobile devices?