CTIN 534 Experiments in Interactivity I

Motion Tracking for Two using IR and Greyscale

Before filtering and adjusting greyscale.

After!

For our upcoming performance, Brad and I are using a camera with an infrared filter in combination with "infrared" bathroom heat lamps behind the projection screen, so the screen appears white to the camera. We then have costumes with enough separation on the greyscale to distinguish us from each other(Brad is currently represented by a sheet of duvateen.

color tracking Jitter patch

Here's the patch we built on Monday night, all spiffed up and annotated.

colorTracker.pat

backround subtraction patch

here's a patch I made for doing video background subtraction (differencing). It's commented and should be fairly easy to use. The principle is that the video stream is compared with a background captured frame and anything different from that frame is made white. Useful for separating your subject from the background for tracking/interaction.

binary file (mac)

text file (windows)

Max patch from 3-2-04 class

Patch for communicating with Basic Stamp
Download file

quicktime frame readout

A patch that reads out the current frame while a quicktime movie is playing.
Download file

gl slider - (for Tripp & Kurt)

Here's a patch that implements a horizontal slider inside of a jit.gl.render. It got a bit complicated because jitter doesn't provide any simple method to translate from screen to 3D space.

A few caveats: You can move the camera along the z axis, but it breaks if you change any other camera parameters. And it keeps working when you change the size of the window with a "size" message - but you have to keep to a 4 x 3 ratio. The esc key toggles "full screen" (keeping to the 4 x 3 ratio). If something doesn't update when you change it, just click on the window & it should pop into place.

There's a toggle to turn on and off the mouse y coordinates (default off), and when it's off you can change the y position of the slider. And there's a separate control for setting the active vertical region of the screen.

It should be (relatively) easy to add a second slider (by distinguishing between two different ranges of mouse y coordinates) - but if you're having trouble let me know. Likewise any questions.

Download file

max serial fix

Download and then the file (a terminal script included in processing)

and feel free to download this simple max patch for getting data in through the serial port. lets you turn off/on the output of serial data w/ variable baud rate.

Download max patch.

Max patch from 2-19-04 class

Here's the patch we built in class today.
Download file

Dial-A-Movie

Here's the patch that I worked on with Mike in class. Put the patch in a folder with a bunch of quicktimes, open it up in Max, and use the dial object to flip through the movies.

Download Max patch

max workshop

seems like there might be some demand for a max workshop - susana expressed interest, and a couple of the 1st years just posted some stuff about wanting to go to the c-level max workshop.

I'm willing to hold a max workshop, if people are interested. I'm not sure exactly what the construction schedule for the zml is on monday, but maybe we could start around 8pm and go for a couple of hours. Does this work for anyone? Is anyone interested? I can bring my iSight, and we maybe could get a couple other firewire cameras to play around with. But I think it might be best to just go over max fundamentals. Perry has been giving good instruction and examples of Jitter and softVNS, as well as communication using the serial port. Maybe the workshop could compliment that fun stuff with some of the more boring max stuff like data structures, common control objects, etc. Any thoughts? I know we were planning on doing max stuff in class too, so maybe doing the nuts and bolts basic stuff is best, and then we can take it from there.

I may be able to come to campus earlier monday afternoon and try and move a couple of the PCs over to the ZML, if we need more machines...

SoftVNS up

I installed the keys for Max/MSP/Jitter and SoftVNS yesterday at around 7:00 PM, so we are ready to rock and roll with that. Maybe we should purchase a couple of iSights for people to play around with since getting cameras from those production (explitive omitted) will not be that big of an issue. I've had pretty good experience with all of these tools, so for those of you who are interested in doing something with any of these objects to create your final project, or any other projects, please comment on this post and express your interest, and I will be more than happy to hold a workshop that compliments the stuff that perry is teaching in class.

Max/MSP vs Panther

Read this and this before upgrading any Mac running Max/MSP to Panther.

Photocell Input

Here's a circuit diagram, Max patch, and Basic Stamp code for a little project we did in class a few weeks back in which we monitored a photocell and sent the reading to MaxMSP.

Included in the Max patch is an embedded patcher that reformats the incoming signed bytes (-128 to 127) to unsigned bytes (0-255).

Plus the patch demonstrates how to convert the photocell reading into sound.

It also reheats coffee and does the dishes.

photocell circuit diagram

Basic Stamp listing

Max patch (download)

fpic patch

fpic

Woo hoo!

I got the image to change using fpic just like Will said...

All you have to do is send the output from the last two streams on the bottom right (the ones that both feed into the final box... sorry for the shitty description) to two different messages:

"read light_on.gif"
"read light_off.gif"

I used gif's but it will also accept jpg. Make sure the image files are properly named and in the same directory/folder as the patch you are editing.

Then send the output of both those messages to an fpic object.

Ta da!

It's fun.

I'm so very tired now. Good night.

K

Image Control in Max

hey. just checking in to see if anyone is actually using this. thanks for posting the pics, perry.

I was hoping to see some more posts here, but I guess everyone hasn't had any problems with the project. I've gotten the stamp communicating with max, but have a feeling that my trasmit wire on my serial cable was soltered in a pretty pathetic manner, so I need to go back and fix that...

anyway, I wanted to make a quick post referencing the project, and possible implementations of the graphic of the light bulb turning on and off in max. this can be done many ways, but the easiest is probably swapping image files using the fpic object, which looks like a little series of orange, pink, and purple shapes on the top object bar. you can also just type fpic into a new object box. the help file shows how to swap images in and out of the object -- just bang a message with the image file name into the object, and it will change. that way, you can just use perry's patch for the serial object, and then send that bang from the select object (when the switch is on) to a message like light_on.jpg, and then send the output of that message into the left inlet of fpic. Similarly, when the switch is off, send a bang to something like light_off.jpg, and then feed that to fpic. this is a good primer to max, as much of the stuff you end up doing is firing bangs to messages, then sending those messages to objects.

First Post

hey everybody!

here is a test post. AND NO STINK BOMBS!!!