Motion Tracking & HubFeeds

February 2nd, 2011, by Phil

---

We’ve released experimental versions of three widgets. Get them at the Download page.

• MotionTrack – A widget that tracks motion from a video camera attached to your computer. No documentation page yet
  • Set your widget inputSource to the instance name of the MotionTrack widget plus “X” or “Y” to access the coordinates of the tracked location. E.g. “myVideoX” or “myVideoY” where the MotionTrack widget has an instance name of “myVideo”
  • Try values for blur = 0 to 40, brightness = -100 to 100, contrast = -100 to 200, minArea = 0 to 50.
  • Set the width value to determine the scale of rectangle that coordinates are output in.
  • Try with easing on or off – easing on will smooth out the tracking and add some momentum to it.
  • If you have more than one camera attached to your computer, you can right-click on the left video feed and select “Settings…” to choose which camera you will use.
  • Thanks to the SoulWire blog for the code that this is based on!
• AnalogIn – Added a new controller input option of “HubFeed” which allows the application to accept input from an arbitrary source that seeds a feed to the Hub. Use in tandem with the new experimental AnalogOut widget.
  • To use this feature, set the controller parameter to “HubFeed”
  • Also, set the HubFeedName parameter to the name of the feed you want to listen to. You’ll need to find out the name that the source uses to feed to the Hub.
  • To get a feed from another computer running the Hub, set the remoteHubIP parameter to the IP address of that computer.
  • The oscMultiplier parameter is also applied to data received by a HubFeed. The name of this parameter will likely be changed to be more general.
• AnalogOut – Added a new controller output option of “HubFeed” which allows you to send output to the Hub for any other system to monitor from the Hub you send it to. Use in tandem with the new experimental AnalogIn widget.
  • To use this feature, set the controller parameter to “HubFeed”
  • Also, set the HubFeedName parameter to the name of the feed you want to create. You’ll need to let others know the name you are using so they can get the feed using the AnalogIn widget.
  • The oscDivider parameter is also applied to the data sent to a HubFeed. The name of this parameter will likely be changed to be more general.
• SoundControl – Changed the parameters to add a new feature called restartPlayToEnd, which will play a sound all the way through after the sound is triggered.
  • The triggerSoundBehavior parameter has been changed to soundBehavior. It now has these options: continuous, pause, restart, restartPlayToEnd.
    • continuous – the sound will start playing as soon as the swf is launched, even if the volume is off
    • pause – the sound will pause when the input value falls below the “min” setting in the interface, and begin playing from the same location as when it paused when the value rises above the min setting.
    • restart – the sound will stop when the input value falls below the “min” setting in the interface, and start playing from the beginning of the sound when the value rises above the min setting.
    • restartPlayToEnd – the sound will start playing when the value rises above the min setting and the sound will play to the end regardless of the input value. Typically, with this setting loopSound should set off, otherwise the sound will play forever. It is also a good idea to set the min just below the max (e.g. min = 0.99, max = 10) so the volume does not change while the sound plays.
  • The triggerSound parameter has been eliminated. If you don’t want the sound to be triggered, use the set the soundBehavior parameter to continuous.