Secret Project (2): First Floor projection

Hehe, that is fun! I just took a projector and manually tried to align it with the kinect field of view. Unfortunately, different focal length->different distortion on the floor->no perfect match, but who cares! Next up: Calibrate the whole setup such that the image matches the kinect depth information and with this my feet-positions, then get rid of the angular distortion, then... GO ME!!!

'Secret Project'

What is it, that a half-computer scientist - half-electrical engineer does in the evening at Strelley Hall, you might ask...
The answer is simple: Playing around with the newest technology to increase the OAL (overall awesomeness level) of this planet by a tiny amount ;-). What I did was rather simple: Take a Kinect camera, some C++ magic including geometrical corrections plane estimations and a simple water effect simulation, and voila: the "interactive pavement". What I intend to do is to project the the water vis onto the floor such that it matches the real foot position... Let's see when I find some time for this last bit of coding :-)

1. Visualizing foot-floor-closeness. The movement of the table also shows you that I expect the background to be static...



2. The water effect on some blue tiles



3. The water effect on a Logo. Here, you can also see that the groundplane estimation and background processing takes quite a while... about 20 seconds. The artifact in the upper lefthand corner is a shiny tile near the fireplace in the living room. The kinect Infrared technology does not work that good on those...

Pictures of the Trip

Was a great Trip to Wales... except that I don't remember any of the names of places... all something with Gwd LLydd...ch..gn..dog or so... But apart from that, I really enjoyed the nature! It is fantastic that so much diversity is reachable within one day, be it valleys, caves, water falls, moors, or even the sea!

Anyway, here's what Wales is famous for: Sheep! Sometimes so many, that they clog the narrow roads ;-)

Maybe an eagle? Sure sounded like one... Edit: Probably a red kite... see here

A typical footpath: I just had to climb over a fence and off I went... One of the great things here in the UK: Even though most of the land is privately owned, it is still allowed -within the nature reserves- to access it via these footpaths. This is an ideal basis for exciting hikes :-)

Waterfalls! So many waterfalls! Within an 2hrs hike, you can easily reach 4 magnificent ones, and many others are nearby...

Going to Wales this weekend!

Let's see how this will be... So far, I know that they speak a strange language and have sheep ;-), what do you think of this:

Anglesey claims the village with the longest name in Britain: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllandysiliogogogoch (58 letters;0.5mi/0.8km from Menai Bridge). Roughly translated the name means "by the church of St Mary in the hollow of white aspen over a rapid whirlpool and St Tysilio's Church close to the red cave". It is usually known as Llanfair PG.

Pictures of my Last weeks London trip will follow soon...

The Wash and Gibraltar Point

Just a few pics of todays trip to the wash...

The Sea...

Hmmm, nice memories of a fantastic holiday on the Cape Verde islands... We spent most of the time diving :-), therefore, all but one of the pictures below are taken underwater! What'dya think?

Peak District

It's weekend again, and I could finally manage to do the trip I scheduled for last Sunday (when a certain phonecall from a certain colleague made me go to the office instead...). It was a great trip, see for yourself. Castleton seems to be a good starting point for hikes, I parked my car there and went on through Winnats Pass, visited a barrier lake, an old abandoned railway and so on. Really enjoyed the day...

Last but not least: am I the only one who thinks that this road sign a bit ... peculiar?

Will definitely go to Peak District again, I was told they have spectacular caves in which you can do a boat-tour on an underwater lake... Next time!