ReacTIVision - final
From Physical Programming
For my final project I focussed on open source computer vision framework reacTIVision.
The reactivision software recognises and tracks fudicials markers attached to physical objects, as well as multi-touch finger tracking.
The fiducials are created using sophisticated generative software.
The fiducial design allows the efficient calculation of the marker's center point as well as its orientation. OSC messages implementing the TUIO protocol encode the fiducials' presence, location, orientation and identity and transmit this data to the client applications.
In addition, the reactivision software also uses the result of the image segmentation in order to retrieve and identify small round white blobs as finger tips on a surface.
Initially I searched the reacTIVision user forum to try and figure out where to start.
reacTIVision User Forum: http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=515398
I quickly found out that most reacTIVision tinkerers were much more tech savvy than me, and any tutorials (there aren't many) skipped over the 'simple' stuff.
The majority of posts in the user forum relate to using reacTIVision with a music program like Ableton Live, so I used that as an initial starting point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSoHtubQ9Rw
After some experimenting with Ableton Live and Processing, this proved to be way too hard for me, what with the lack of basic tutorials and everything. I couldn't get Ableton and reacTIVision to talk to each other.
I read something about running reacTIVision from Mac OSX's Terminal application (kind of like accessing the Linux system inside OSX) so I learnt how to use Terminal.
Terminal allows the user to interact with the computer through a command line interface.
I also briefly tried to figure out the difference between midi vs TUIO.
Next I worked on implementing the Processing TUIO sample code I downloaded from the reacTIVision website. This also proved to be tricky, but eventually I got it working (Hoora!)
Processing listens for TUIO information from reacTIVision and displays it graphically on the screen.
The next step (if I had had time) would be to manipulate the code and figure out a design context for its use.
