I have connected the computer vision / blob tracking software to the laser so now with proper lighting conditions the laser will draw your outline as you dance around in front of it. It works best if the wall is a solid color and brightly lit so the thresholding operation can pick up your outline. I am currently experimenting with various curve generalization algorithms to help clean up the image in cases where parts of the outline are missed.

I am testing the camera setup in the hallway in Elings in preparation for displaying the project at the end-of-year-show.

I also took the laser to Santa Barbara City College for a demonstration on 05/19/09.

I was having issues getting the laser interface library to always work with my camera program so I opted to decouple the laser interface from everything else.

I realized that it would be useful for future projects to not have to deal with the low-level laser details every time you want to make a new laser program so I decided to write a ‘laser server’ that receives drawing coordinates from a client program and sends them to the laser. It is written in Java and receives data using Open Sound Control (OSC) which will let the client and server programs communicate over the internet if necessary.

To demonstrate the utility of being able to write a simple client that does not actually talk to the laser directly I wrote a little ‘paint’ program that lets you draw doodles using the mouse. It is a nice way to learn the limitations of the laser medium since you cannot always draw what you want to.

Here is a flickr gallery with more progress shots: