Critique: 3 Organization & Management(Technical R&D) #3

On last Tuesday, Mr. Kok Yoong invited a guest lecturer, Mr Cheong from Engineering Faculty. He gave an interesting speech about Multi-touch Technology. He is a cool lecturer I must say. Very passionate, I feel like I'm attending some kind of Multi-Level Marketing talk.

Ok back to work.

According to Mr. Cheong, the theory to create the multi-touch is already there on the internet. but still, the actual hands on is not as easy as it looks in the theory.

Since the hardware technical for my installation is the hardest part to do. I decided to start the research and experiment as soon as possible.

I decided to start with converting a normal Webcam into infrared Camera.

"v) Infrared Camera
Infrared camera will be use in this installation. It will only detect infrared light(in this case blob from the surface). I have to modified the camera in order to make the camera detect only the infrared light and ignore the rest." - From my previous research/post.

Here is my Xbox Live Webcam that I'm going to sacrifice. :(


I follow this site to make the conversion. Credit goes to whoever they are. The site shows step by step on how to convert Xbox Live Webcam into infrared camera.

I am going to show some of the picture I took during the conversion process.

1. First, I took off the focusing ring because that’s what is keeping the front face of the camera from coming off other than the clips.


2. Open the case apart with screwdrivers



3. Unscrew everything that can be unscrewed. I lost one of the screw during this process. Too bad. :(


4. Base on my readings, some of the camera have and infrared-block filter. For this camera, it has infrared-block filter installed on top of the sensor. I had to remove it.


5. I replaced the infrared-block filter with two pieces of negative films.



6. Snap everything together and test.

Testing with infrared led. Pressure Map screen(on the left) shows that the camera detected the IR light from Astro remote control.


Now to check whether the camera detects other than infrared light. I pointed the webcam to my Macbook screen. Pressure Mapping screen(on the left) shows the webcam is no longer detecting the visual from the screen. Wohooo!


Succeed