Insight VR

In my PyCon presentation (video should be up shortly video is up!) I mentioned the difficultly of processing the pixels fast enough. In a 640×480 bitmap there are 307,200 pixels and the iSight is trying to pump them out at 30 frames per second. I did a few things to speed things up. For instance I limited the area of the bitmap that I scanned based on calibration data, I only scanned every fourth pixel (every other pixel of every other row) and I only processed every fifth frame. While this worked well enough, clearly it was not ideal.
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There is a new download up for Laser Missile Command.  This version now works with Linux as well as on the Mac.  My brother did the port so I don’t know all the details.  In fact, I don’t even remember exactly what webcam he has, but I know that it was purchased at SurplusComputers.com since we bought the laser pointers there at the same time.  I’ll have to have him post on the details.  If anybody out there is using Linux and wants to try this out I’d be interested in hearing how it works for you.

I spent the plane ride home ripping all traces of py2app out of my code. This has resulted in a version of the missile command game that can be installed with more ease on other computers. At least I think so. Please let me know what your experience is.

The code is here and includes a READ ME file, the text of which I’ve pasted below:

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I completely failed to bring my camera to PyCon. If anyhow has pictures or video from either my presentation or the BOF session I’d love to hear from you and get copies. Thanks.

I presented Marshie Attacks at PyCon 2008 today. This provided some motivation for getting the project posted online and whatnot. So I’ve put up this blog and also a very primitive project page at InsightVR.com to try to share this stuff.

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