Interactive IO & More

ikon

Taha — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 00:04:18 +0000

Released a new application called “ikon” on windows 8 and windows rt – its essentially like my original media app but for windows 8 in mind. It supports some new features that the original media app didn’t support, such as infinite canvas size, image selection and arrangements, Image Editing. You can download it from here. http://goo.gl/1rwXK

Scatterview Canvas

Selection and Sorting

Sorting Arrangements

Image Editor

Image Filters

Fast Face Detection

Taha — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 21:27:14 +0000

A while back i was working on a interesting project for an Autonomous Realtime Image Analytics Engine a component of this engine was fast face detection and tracking using existing classifiers available in OpenCV but improving their performance to get the best result possible.

I was able to get a stable 50fps for face detection and tracking for up 10 faces.

Some optimizations that were made were to achieve this were
Threading of the entire operation
skin segmentation
defining ROIs
and contour detection

below is one of the very first tests.

Enabling Flash in Windows 8 and Windows RT Metro Interface.

Taha — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 23:50:13 +0000

So recently i bought a Surface Tablet and realized that Flash was naively supported within IE , but there was a slight issue in that not every website that had flash content seemed to work. I later learned that this was due to Microsoft’s attempt to combat “BAD” flash websites. What Microsoft had done was essentially created a list which they called Compatibility View of safe websites which were allowed to render flash content within IE desktop and IE Metro; websites not within this list were deemed unsafe. Not that they are but just that they weren’t tested to be deemed “Safe”.

So, what to do now? I knew i wanted flash content within my browser but didn’t know how. While surfing the internet i came across many methods that to enable flash but none proved successful and then i stumbled across a small article by Adobe on how to test your flash enabled website for Microsoft’s compatibility view. The only catch was that it would only work on “ONE” domain at a time; this was okay initially but then i realized that as a avid media consumer i had to go and manually change and reset registry entries, work out the hosting providers and ip address in some cases; this was proving to be too taxing on time and energy.

That is when i decided to create my first Metro Application called FlashEnable. The application does exactly as its named it allows users to enable flash content on essentially any domain or use preexisting presets which are configured to enable flash content on various media providers. However due to Microsoft’s sever sandboxing of Metro applications the entire procedure could not be automated. But essentially what it does, is, it allows users to generate scripts which will enable flash content with a single one button press. Rather than manually going and editing various things.

Intro

FlashEnable Menu

Preconfgured Flash Content Providers

Adding a New Flash Content Provider

Kinect + 3D Volumetric Display

Taha — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 03:49:18 +0000

So as many of you know i’ve been working on my 3D volumetric display as you can see from my other post, what i’ve recently been able to do is add interactivity to the display by augmenting it using a Xbox360 Kinect Sensor. Enjoy the video.

3D Volumetric Display

Taha — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 05:22:13 +0000

Happy 2011, I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays. On to business; recently i’ve been working on 3d volumetric display that would be capable of rendering a free floating 3d 360° volumetric object/s. Below are a few videos of a quick prototype i knocked up in few days, at the beginning of the holidays. Hope you enjoy it.

The above video shows a simple 3d vector generated and textured primitive, rotating on its X and Y axis.

The above video shows a 3ds file exported from Autodesk (any 3ds file will work even generated from GOOGLE sketchup) rendered in 360° rotating on it Y axis.

The above video demonstrates how the rendering can be enlarged as well as how the rendering medium can be inverted to allow for varying design situations.

Quick Update OptoSensor

Taha — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 08:08:41 +0000

So i just finished a major code overhaul for the Optosensor, i now have pixel mosaic, interpolation, gaussian filtering and ~~tracking~~ (correction blob detection working on tracking at the moment) all done via OpenCV. The image below, shows the raw, scaled output in RGB, the next image is Grey Scale (Not really needed since the the IR sensors only detect a narrow band or IR only), Next is the tracked output, and finally is the reference image used for background subtraction (going clockwise from top left).

Interpolated, Filtered, Tracked Output from OptoSensor

OptoSensor News Update

Taha — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 04:31:40 +0000

So i’ve continued my work on the optosensor, when ever i’ve had time; i’m now at a point where i thought i’d talk about what i’ve been doing during the past few weeks. The past few weeks i’ve mainly been working on is the clean up the code on pc side i.e. updating the tracker for the most part, i’ve cleaned up the code separated it into various classes each representing a specific portion tracker i.e. pixel mosiac, serial communication, tracking, and tuio. There have been various improvements to the back end of code where i’m getting the data, how i’m processing it, etc. Not all that interesting what is interesting is that i’ve managed scale up the raw 16×8 pixel image via standard bicubic interpolation and i’ve further smoothed out the data by applying a Gaussian filter to the interpolated data. Below is what is looks like when i have 5 test points.

To explain it a little better these are the raw pixels that are active pixels (1,1), (1,16), (1,8), (16,8), (4,4), (4,5), (5,4) and (5,5) but anyway below you can see both the interpolated scaled output as well the non interpolated scaled output. Here in this test case I’ve interpolated the data set by a factor of 100 using standard bicubic interpolation, and applied a Gaussian kernel of 10 x 10. However in the final release the interpolation factor will be turned down to 10 and the Gaussian filter will be optional.

Interpolated Scaled Output

No Interpolation Scaled Output

Updated VVVV Tracker

Taha — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 08:43:16 +0000

So recently i was going through some of the old stuff i made and came across a tracker i made in V4 back in 2007. After playing with it for a little while i thought it may prove to be a great resource to others, so i’ve cleaned the v4 patch and made it usable to the average v4 user. This patch is basically an updated version my tracker that i released a while back on the v4 page of my blog.

Features (Added)

Front DI and MTmini Support
Background Subtraction
Dynamic Mesh Calibration
Network Broadcasting (OSC and TUIO)

Note: This tracker was only created as a proof of concept while at university and hasn’t been optimized. I mainly now use it in conjunction with a MTmini when i want to do rapid testing.

This is being released under LGPL for the moment.

Download

Electro-Optical Detection is HERE!!

Taha — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:38:26 +0000

Well first of all Happy New Year to all, its been a long time since posting anything. Okay so just over a year ago i started thinking about electro-optical sensing as a form of input detection for Multi-Touch and surface computing applications http://mtaha.wordpress.com/2008/12/25/update/. As such i’ve been working on this primarily by myself and am glad to say that within the next few months will have something to showcase. Till then here is are some titillating items below the break

NUI Group Community Book – Multi-Touch Technologies

Taha — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:12:27 +0000

The first edition release of the NUI Group community book Multi-Touch Technologies, is here!

This book comprises state of the art articles from the NUI Group Community Wiki, as well as several chapters written by leading experts in the field specifically for this publication. Detailing basic hardware technologies as well as the process of developing software suited for multi-touch systems, this book provides a technical introduction to the world of multi-touch.

I am proud to have been a contributor to and co-author of this book. Please check it out as it is full of helpful information. Well done to all who took part and made this possible..

Click here to download a copy of the book..

For more info please see the original post here at NUIGroup.

UPDATE:

We have gone ahead with the printing process, through Lulu.com’s online printing services. A this point, we are still waiting for an ISBN number to allow distribution through Amazon.com and other retail channels to achieve maximum readership. Once the ISBN application process is completed, ordering information will be made available. Tentatively, the price for a copy of Multi-Touch Technologies is $7.00 USD, + shipping. We are working to lower this cost: it is not final.

And remember, the online pdf is 100% free! – the version that is going to the presses is available on the NUI code downloads, as described above

Thanks!