video

354 Articles

Oscilloscope Thinks It’s A Video Monitor

March 30, 2011 by 13 Comments

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture.

Where would we be if we listened to advice like that? [Eric] writes that with a fairly simple circuit, he’s able to split a composite video signal into its constituent X and Y ramp signals for display on his trusty Tektronix 465m. A LM1881 IC does the bulk of the heavy lifting. After running the signal through a few passive components, the generated ramp signals are ready for consumption by his venerable ‘scope. All that’s needed past that is some additional glue logic to invert the levels so the image shows up properly. The end result is a display that has an almost ethereal quality to it, like an old TV set or something out of the movie Brazil.

Hit the break to catch a video of the circuit in action.

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Kinect Two-fer: MoCap Movie And Robot Control

March 26, 2011 by 6 Comments

kinect_twofer

It’s no mystery that we like the Kinect around here, which is why we’re bringing you a Kinect two-fer today.

We have seen video hacks using the Kinect before, and this one ranks up there on the coolness scale. In [Torben’s] short film about an animation student nearly missing his assignment deadline, the Kinect was used to script the animation of a stick figure model. The animation was captured and built in Maya, then overlaid on a separate video clip to complete the movie. The overall quality is great, though you can notice some of the typical “jitter” that the Kinect is known for, and there are a few places where the model sinks into the floor a bit.

If you want to try your hand at animation using the Kinect, all of the scripts used to make the movie are available on the creator’s site for free. [via Kinect-Hacks]

Our second Kinect item comes in the form of a gesture driven Lego MindStorms bot. Using OpenNI along with Primesense for body tracking, [rasomuro] was able to use simple motions to drive his NXT bot around the house. His movements are tracked by the Kinect sensor which are translated into commands relayed to the robot via his laptop’s Bluetooth connection. Since the robot has two motors, he mapped couple of simple arm motions to drive the bot around. We’ll be honest when we say that the motions remind us of Will Farrell’s “Frank the Tank” scene in Old School, but [rasomuro] says that he is trying to simulate the use of levers to drive the bot.  Either way, it’s pretty cool.

Videos of both hacks are embedded below for your perusal.

If you are interested in seeing some more cool Kinect hacks be sure to check out this Minecraft interface trio, this cool Kinect realtime video overlay, and this Kinect-Nerf gun video game interface.

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Real-time Wireframe Video Effect Overlay With Kinect

March 23, 2011 by 15 Comments

linedance

[Francois] over at 1024 Architecture has been working on a project we think you’ll be likely to see in a professional music video before too long. Using his Kinect sensor, ha has been tracking skeletal movements, adding special effects to the resulting wire frame with Quartz Composer. While this idea isn’t new, the next part is. He takes the QC tweaked video stream and then projects it back over the performer using MadMapper to match the video to the body movements, recording the resultant display.

The project started out with a few hiccups, including a noticeable delay between the body tracking and the display. It caused the performer to have to move more slowly than he would like, so things had to be tweaked. [Francois] first tested the latency between his computer and the projector by displaying a timecode representation on the screen as well as via the projector. He found the projector to have a latency of 1 frame at 60 fps, which wasn’t too bad. This led him to believe the culprit was his Kinect, and he was right.  There was a 6 frame delay, so he locked the video output to 30 fps in hopes of cutting that delay in half.

The effect is slightly reminiscent of Tron, but with more distortion. We can’t wait to see more projects similar to this one in the future.

The resulting video embedded below is pretty cool in our opinion, but you can judge for yourself.

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Commandeering Public Video Screens: Real Or Fake?

March 14, 2011 by 66 Comments

It’s time for everyone’s favorite comment thread game: Real or Fake? This week’s edition comes in from a tip that [Phil] sent about a way to take over video screens in Times Square. Watch the video after the break to see the hackers using a two-part solution to rebroadcast video from an iPhone onto a screen in the busy urban setting. The first part is a transmitter that plugs into the iPhone, the second is a signal repeater that, when held close to a video screen, overrides the clip currently being displayed with the video from the handheld. The image above shows the repeater being floated up to the big screen using a giant red balloon which you can make out in the black bar to the left of the replayed video.

Our first thought is that someone just watched Tron: Legacy and wanted to have a little Sci-Fi fun with the Internets. We can’t imagine a hardware solution that would actually make this work, but please do share your thoughts about that in the comments. We’d suspect this is more of a video hack that uses After Effects, similar to how the stopped motion candle video of the eyelid shutter glasses videos were faked. But apparently there is a follow-up video on the way that will show how the prototype was made so we could be wrong.

update: [Phil Burgess] points out that the “repeater” looks awfully familiar.

Fake for a variety of already-stated reasons (e.g. video out the headphone jack?). But the smoking gun, watching the 720P video on YouTube, is that I plainly recognize the hardware they’re using as the “repeater”: it’s simply the internals from a Digipower JS1-V3 cell phone USB boost charger (having torn apart a few myself):

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Hackerspace Camera Rig Auto-alerts The Internets When Projects Are Finished

March 10, 2011 by 5 Comments

alerttheinternets_cam

It seems like every hackerspace has their own means of communicating status messages to their members. The hackers at [MetaLab] in Vienna have put together a rather novel way (Google translation) of letting the world know they have completed a project. While some hackerspaces simply notify their members that they are open for business, this hack takes things a step further.

When a project is deemed complete, the camera is removed from the dock, and any number of videos can be recorded. When the camera is returned to the dock, a canned introduction video is added to the recordings, then everything is automatically uploaded to YouTube. No extra time is required, no video editing needs to be done – their work hits the Internet immediately once they have finished filming it.

It’s a great idea, and something that every hackerspace should have. It would be even better to see these things installed in public areas to allow for immediate reporting of events as they occur.

If you are so inclined, be sure to check out [MetaLab’s] YouTube channel.

[via Make]

Automated Window Curtain Hits The Road

March 1, 2011 by 7 Comments

[Niklas Roy] upgraded his privacy curtain and is taking it on the road. Regular readers will remember the first version that resided in his shop window and used video processing in conjunction with a motor to keep the small bit of curtain in front of any passersby. We’ve embedded the original demo video after the break and it’s not to be missed.

But now he’s decided to make some upgrades to the system because it’s going to be shown as an art display. He looked around for a motor upgrade but found that the best motor at the most reasonable price could be pulled from a Makita power drill. The track itself is modular, making the installation scalable up to ten meters in total length. He even built a clean-looking laptop dock that handles the video processing end of things. But there’s something here for you as well. He’s released all of his source code, schematics, board design, and even the SketchUp files for the motor mounts and other parts. Dig out that old power drill and build one of your own.

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Giant Oscilloscope Music Display

February 28, 2011 by 9 Comments

oscilloscope_wall

[Andrew] sent us a video of his home made oscilloscope wall, which he uses to visualize different audio tracks he has created. The wall is made up of nine old broadcast monitors he wired together in his studio. At first it appears that the monitors are split into two sets of four, with the center monitor running separately, but upon further inspection it looks as if he can control the display of each monitor independently.

We’re pretty sure he is not using an actual oscilloscope to generate the visuals, but rather visualization software that can approximate the output of an O-scope set in X-Y display mode. Though the screens run independently, it would be great to see all nine screens working in concert to display one large visualization. [Andrew] mentions that an high-def version is in the works, so perhaps we’ll see more features added in that iteration.

Stick around to watch a video of his oscilloscope wall in motion.

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