Microsoft Kinect powers DIY Eye of Sauron
Mordor-ball
Microsoft's Kinect has been wielded for numerous applications, but now it has been used to create a giant eyeball that follows you round the room.
The team at The Technology Studio put this homemade Eye of Sauron together using a Kinect, a PC and a Puffersphere.
The Puffersphere, a spherical display system from the company Pufferfish, was loaded with the eye image and readied to rotate with the help of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) software.
Of course, we all know about Kinect support on a PC, and with that and "natural interaction" middleware OpenNI, the team were successfully using the tracking information from Kinect to rotate the eye image projected onto the surface of the Puffersphere, making the giant eyeball appear to move.
Pretty clever, pretty creepy and pretty frikkin' awesome if you ask me. Now if only they could make it turn off when you remove your ring... ®
COMMENTS
Re: Not really
Even if the Kinnect is betterat locating people, they haven't used it in this demo. They don't appear to have calculated depth, only angle. Note how the eye looks out past the cameraman at the extreme angles -- it doesn't even know that it's in a different location from the camera.
Not technically impressive.
...Moley!
A friend tells me that it's her sword and cloak which scares the bible thumpers: that and pitching her voice lower than they expect. "Come in, I've been waiting for you."
One accessory to rule them all
Neat, but surely nothing that couldn't be done with a cheap £10 webcam and facetracking software. It seems that any old idea + Kinect is a shortcut into tech news websites.
According to the linked article:
"...the projector’s super-special Super Umami lens...."
Super Umami eh? I want one. If the novelty wears off I can always eat it and enjoy the fantastic flavour.
