Make: Online : Orientation aware camera

Andrew from Boulder, CO created an orientation aware USB camera and imaging software to go with it -

First I built a circuit to make it so I could read a 3-axis magnetometer and a 3-axis accelerometer over USB, just for the heck of it. Then later, while trying to come up with something interesting to do with such a device, I decided it could be neat to throw a webcam in the mix.
After I got everything to work, and after a while of playing around with different ideas for software to make use of all that data, I came up with the app in the video.

Excellent! The potential applications run deep with this one. Hope he plans to share more on the design and software. - Orientation aware camera demo

Update: You can now find a bunch of helpful project details here - Orientation Aware Camera info
Thanks Andrew!

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Comments

Oldest comments listed first.

Posted by: Cybasumo on June 25, 2008 at 7:16 AM

commenty

So expensive as it prices, but so cheap as it looks.

Reply to this comment

Posted by: Dax on June 25, 2008 at 8:54 AM

Bad-ass

That's pretty bad-ass if you ask me.

Just FYI here is a bit of prior art by Professor Steve Mann called "Lookpaintings"

http://www.springerlink.com/content/h5wj0108v7702v25/

It doesn't use accelerometers or a digital compass, it just stitches together a video feed from a head mounted camera into images:

http://wearcam.org/orbits/gallery.html

Posted by: Kevin on June 25, 2008 at 9:57 AM

I can see a great application of this in filming of models/people in front of a blue/green screen. This would allow pans where the background exhibits the proper parallax scrolling.

This could also be accomplished with a Johnny Lee style wiimote tracking system. Instead of the magnetic sensor it would use the IR leds to determine yaw rotation, albeit with less rotational range than the compas sensor has.

Posted by: John Gomm on June 25, 2008 at 12:32 PM

iPhone App

The iPhone has a camera and accelerometer right? Anyone out there want to port this idea for panaramic iPhone shots?

Posted by: NiñoScript on June 25, 2008 at 6:36 PM

WOW

omg, that's amazing!! :D

@John Gomm:
I don't think that would work very good on the iphone, becouse of the lack of the magnetometer...
But maybe you could add one by the RS232 port!
That sounds interesting... ^^

Posted by: Sleepydog on June 25, 2008 at 9:54 PM

Man, that's great

I can't wait to put that up on a kite for some stiched together KAV.