Yay!

The IR emitter turned up and oh man what a difference. The moment I powered it up it was like i'd just put the IR Sun in the room!

I'll definitely need some kind of IR diffuser as it was just too bright (28 IR LEDS) to shine straight at the sheet of acrylic (this was from underneath by the way). I managed to get a "diffused" effect of sorts by changing the angle but this meant I had a really bright "point of contact" that faded to nothing. It wasn't ideal but gave me a realistic testing area. The heavens opened - super bright blobs being detected all over place. After a good bit of tweaking on the camera I managed to get it to see just my finger tips - with the occaisional false blob (due to the position of my setup / test enviroment). It was more than enough to see it working properly for the first time with my fingers and not the remote control.

Naturally I fired up the Flickr photo app - oh man...

Just a quick update.

I'm waiting for an IR emmitter to turn up. I think that there's so much ambient IR in the room that Front DI isn't working - or the webcam isn't up to the job (though I'm more inclinded to believe the latter).

Hopefully when this thing turns up I'll be able to try out Rear DI and see if I get any better results. If so, I'll look at mounting the LCD matrix on an acrylic sheet properly. I want to try and get the size down so this fisheye lens business may be the way to go as I think I should be able to mount the camera around 10cm or so from the panel - which means the whole "unit" should be fairly small and compact. I'd like to be able to "rotate" the screen, see-saw style around say 15%+- so i've been digging around on the net for something that might fit the bill -so far.... nothing. :(

Have been doing some testing using a remote control and aiming it through the tft matrix at my camera. I already know this works but this is the first time I've had the sofware running as well watching the camera output to test how things perform......

A video to prove that you really can see IR light through an active tft matrix...

A picture of the sheets that make up the LCD backlight.....

Quick update. Been having a play with my camera - taken it apart (a Logitech Orbit one) and removed the IR filter - sandpaper on lens - not the best way but it seems ok - i've took some pictures of the process..

Once done, tried the cheap and cheerful, 3 strips of negative solution to block out all visible light. I actually cut the strips very small and then sandwiched between the sensor and the lens - works pretty well.

Then took a spare piece of acrylic I've got - only small, about 3 x 8 inches and started having a play with this thing they call Front DI.....

Stunned that it actually works! - there's lots of tweaking to do with the software though as it keeps picking up parts of my hand etc. I suspect that the best solution may be to provide additional IR light from a source either infront or the side. Dunno - need to spend time playing with it really I think.

Have made my mind up - DI is definitely the way to go as the setup is far easier to tweak and play around with - and its far less expensive. The camera I've been using for testing looks like it probably isn't up to the job for a real prototype so I think I'll get a second one - the Philips one that people are mentioning on the Nuigroup site seems the best bet.

Hmm - there's always a draw back isn't there.... Seems that "ficidual recognition" doesn't work with this method. Ficidual Recognition is (if I remember right) getting the system to see objects other than your hands and to know what they are.... not sure why this would be the case but hey, I'm new to this.