Updated Lightweight Eye Tracker

eye tracker

[Igor Carron] pointed out that Derrick Parkhurst and his colleagues at Iowa State have been hard at work improving their lightweight eye tracker that we covered in January. The new version uses digital cameras instead of analog ones. This time they’ve included step by step build instructions instead of just a PDF describing the device. Most of the build involves removing the CCD from a couple cheap webcams and then building an extension back to the board. All of this work is part of the Human and Computer Vision Laboratory’s open-source openEyes project. If you want a quick intro into how this type of eye tracking works I suggest reading our previous post.

16 thoughts on “Updated Lightweight Eye Tracker

  1. oh boy, this was really nice.
    i have some old SGI cameras, any1 know how to use them ? they have like a 40 pin adapter thingy that i have never seen and stuff, if anyone knows plx post like stuff bout it.

  2. man, you got balls posting a link to a site that lets users edit the articles without any type of login man… The first page is already gone, someone should make a mirror of the rest asap >_< In any case, this is quite a hack :) It would have been nicer if they had found a way to keep the picture quality of the color camera at least somewhat decent (look at the pic of the last page, ouch)

  3. This is an amazing project- I cannot believe a bunch of retarded fucking vandals are ruining his site. I already emailed the guy and let him know what was up, hopefully he gets it in time to fix his site and get rid of the giant EDIT buttons.

    Good show HackADay, this is a REAL hack, and one hell of a hack at that! Now if I can integrate this into controlling an airsoft turret with laser sights, instead of body motion accelerometers, I’ll be groovin.

  4. This is an amazing project- I cannot believe a bunch of retarded fucking vandals are ruining his site. I already emailed the guy and let him know what was up, hopefully he gets it in time to fix his site and get rid of the giant EDIT buttons.

    Good show HackADay, this is a REAL hack, and one hell of a hack at that! Now if I can integrate this into controlling an airsoft turret with laser sights, instead of body motion accelerometers, I’ll be groovin.

  5. Andy, thanks for sending an email out to the guy. It is indeed amazing how stupid people can be.

    One more note, it is not really an update per se, the original eye tracker was done by Pelz and al., this one is done by a different group. They try to rely as much as possible on open source software (which was not the case of the previous entry).

    Good luck on your He balloon
    http://nuit-blanche.blogspot.com/2006/03/going-high.html

    Igor.

  6. So what’s the dealio? Has anyone heard back from the guy? I didn’t get to read the thing and now it is totally crapola. I didn’t find it waybacked either.

    I wish I was a 1337 kiddie that could hax0r a fucking wiki. It would probably get me laid.

    A fucking wiki? damn that’s lame.

  7. Wow, this is really amazing!
    Andy, I think it wouldn’t be that hard to create that turret of yours :)..
    I guess I just need some time off to realize it though, but it’s a fun idea. But one doesn’t have to mount a weapon. Maybe an eye-controlled GUI perhaps? – a cheap one.

  8. Does anybody realize what realistic video games we could have if someone jumped on the ball on this?? Instead of wasting tons of processing on an entire screen, just a pin prick would have to be super detailed while the rest fuzzy like it is in a real life eye. thousands of orcs, a million tree forest, a milling times square with zombies everywhere!
    I have been waiting years for somebody to do this cheaply.i wish i had one ounce of hackerbility. oh well someday this will happen.

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