With the new build still waiting on parts I decided to do a small project to fill the time: A head tracker for Project Cars 2 (cheers to my mate Gibbo for the heads up on these things and the advice when I was stuck!).
The aim was to do this as cheaply as possible, using junk / spare bits wherever possible. In total I had to fork out about £7 for the camera, £4 for the LED's, £1 for a pack of resistors, £1 for a USB cable and £1 for some elastic. Not bad! Anyway, the build...
First job was to rip the camera apart (PS3 cam)
Remove the IR filter
And replace it with a light filter (old film negative)
The camera now picking up only IR light it was time to make the headset. But what could I use that's free? That's right, watercooling tubing I had left over from the W2W build
An extra piece to tidy up the USB cable a bit
And then the awkward bit: How to mount the LED's. The middle one was easy, I just made the hole directly opposite the larger USB cable hole and pushed it through from the inside, but the other 2... At first I was trying to make small plugs out of left over acrylic
Which was a major PITA, but then the missus had a better idea: BUTTONS! So I asked mother if she had any random buttons I could use and was given... This
Bit of searching later and found 3 perfect sized buttons, 2 for the LED's and one for the USB cable
All soldered up and glued together, time to test it's working
Then came the issue of mounting it. I did't want to have to wear headphones, but it needed to be far enough from my head that my face didn't block the centre LED when turning... More left over tubing & acrylic to the rescue!
Quick lick of paint
Some elastic velcroed on to make a headband
And we're ready to test!
I was worried it wouldn't hold stable enough and would pick up false movement as it 'twitched', but I needn't have worried, it holds rock steady and works perfectly
So, for about £14 all in I'm pretty happy with that! Now back to the proper build, with another small update coming tomorrow... Hopefully.
The aim was to do this as cheaply as possible, using junk / spare bits wherever possible. In total I had to fork out about £7 for the camera, £4 for the LED's, £1 for a pack of resistors, £1 for a USB cable and £1 for some elastic. Not bad! Anyway, the build...
First job was to rip the camera apart (PS3 cam)
Remove the IR filter
And replace it with a light filter (old film negative)
The camera now picking up only IR light it was time to make the headset. But what could I use that's free? That's right, watercooling tubing I had left over from the W2W build
An extra piece to tidy up the USB cable a bit
And then the awkward bit: How to mount the LED's. The middle one was easy, I just made the hole directly opposite the larger USB cable hole and pushed it through from the inside, but the other 2... At first I was trying to make small plugs out of left over acrylic
Which was a major PITA, but then the missus had a better idea: BUTTONS! So I asked mother if she had any random buttons I could use and was given... This
Bit of searching later and found 3 perfect sized buttons, 2 for the LED's and one for the USB cable
All soldered up and glued together, time to test it's working
Then came the issue of mounting it. I did't want to have to wear headphones, but it needed to be far enough from my head that my face didn't block the centre LED when turning... More left over tubing & acrylic to the rescue!
Quick lick of paint
Some elastic velcroed on to make a headband
And we're ready to test!
I was worried it wouldn't hold stable enough and would pick up false movement as it 'twitched', but I needn't have worried, it holds rock steady and works perfectly
So, for about £14 all in I'm pretty happy with that! Now back to the proper build, with another small update coming tomorrow... Hopefully.
