Comments on: Mechanical Xeyes

By: coldironhands

coldironhands — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:08:51 +0000

[. Xeyes is an old x windows application that drew a pair of eyes that followed your mouse around. See the wikipedia article.]

Not just xwindows had or has xeyes. FVWM has it aswell, which i use alot on my SuSE 9.2

By: shill

shill — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 03:18:09 +0000

He said X Windows (X Window System), not MS Windows.

By: max

max — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:33:01 +0000

Wait, is Xeyes really from windows? I thought it was originally on Linux…

By: Marco

Marco — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 23:42:40 +0000

>
The eyes are not used for any kind of input at all. They are just rotating cardboard pieces used as output. For input he uses a camera, i.e. 2D input. To get 3d information you’d have to either use a distance sensor (e.g. the ever popular laser scanners) or guesstimate distance based on size of the object in the camera image and a reference size.

By: fucter

fucter — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 22:52:55 +0000

funny how i always hated xeyes. This is cool, imagine being some guy walking down the street and noticing that the eyes were following you, it could freak you out!

By: shogun

shogun — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 21:57:27 +0000

Agreed- is a really sweet hack. I never knew about Xeyes though until now…

Forgive my novice understanding, but would it be possible to add a third eye for triangulation purposes? I’m thinking, use this setup to control 3 devices, such as lasers instead of eyes, to triangulate a moving object in real time somehow using movement vectors. Does anyone think this could be done somehow, by combining movement vectors with distance vectors, ie: something moving closer or farther from the sight camera?

Just the ramblings of a madman, maybe…

By: Marco

Marco — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 20:23:22 +0000

I’d love to see a video of the creator running in front of his xeyes with a cardboard mouse pointer in hands ;-)

By: mr. jones

mr. jones — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:06:24 +0000

Now thats just freaking awesome! Simple, yet testing very high on the cool-ability meter….hacks like this are excellent coated excellence with excellent filling!

I knew i had faith in HAD for good reason…..thanks Will! keep it up, bud.

By: Garrett

Garrett — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 09:07:07 +0000

#3+#4 “handy for testing out connections” he’s referring to the inherent remote nature of xwindows, which is designed from the ground up to run over a network. if you had a remote session and wanted to test the connection, you could load up xeyes and move your mouse around. if the eyes follow the cursor smoothly and with no lag, you have a good connection; if the motion is jerky and takes a while for the eyes to “see” your cursor, the connection is not so great. and of course if someone left their server wide open, you can easily push an app onto their screen. kind of a “hello, you’re owned” deal.

By: luigi517

luigi517 — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 08:29:07 +0000

what number three said

By: Captin Shmit

Captin Shmit — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 08:24:19 +0000

I read the entire article but still can’t seem to understand what you mean by “handy for testing out connections and great for screwing with new people who had wide open servers.” Could someone please clear that up for me?

“2. This is one of the cooler things I’ve seen on hackaday in quite a while.” -AGREED!

By: insanikamil

insanikamil — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 08:00:40 +0000

This is one of the cooler things I’ve seen on hackaday in quite a while.

I like the fact he’s doing the video processing with mplayer instead of some VB application, I hope he posts the source for his filter soon.

By: bird603568

bird603568 — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:48:35 +0000

it would be even cooler if they had wheels so they could follow you around