hex705

the first creature to discover water was likely not a fish

Actuators

Mac OSX, CCV and playstation Eye

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Some quick notes on setting up a playstation eye web-cam on OSX.

I have been testing external web cameras for use in interactive installations and multitouch contexts.  I have an external i-sight– which is great but has been dropped enough times to be a little sketchy.  I recently acquired a playstation eye.  The former is firewire,  the latter is USB2.  i-sight is plug and play in OSX — but to get the playstation camera running you will need to download a driver — I am using macam — the standard for OSX USB camera support.

Macam is a free USB driver for OSX — latest version supports playstation eye.  Macam has a standalone app that will let you see the image, record stills and video.

If you wish to use the camera with CCV (community core vision — AKA t-beta) then you may need to manually add the macam component to your library.  IT must go in root —  /Library/quicktime/  .  Delete old versions of the component if you are upgrading.  Restart CCV and the image from the camera should appear in the CCV preview windows.

Written by hex705

October 16th, 2010 at 1:49 pm

Servo Control with an Arduino

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Servos are a class of actuator that have built-in positioning feedback. They are composed of a motor and a circuit with a potentiometer (variable resister) and time decoders that are used for feedback and positioning. They are controlled with time-based commands known as pulse-width-control. Pulse-width-control is a cousin of PWM (pulse width modulation).
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Written by hex705

November 2nd, 2009 at 5:38 pm