3d Camp

3d Camp was on yesterday in UL but having gone up to Dublin for a less than 24 hour visit to see the NCAD grad show (and enjoy the after party too!) I didn't enjoy getting up so early and driving back to Limerick (thank god for coffee!). 3d Camp was well worth it though and I was really glad I had dragged myself out of my lovely cosy bed! There were some really interesting talks as well as informal chats in between, over tea and biscuits! My original intent for attending 3d Camp was that I thought it might benefit my dissertation, not only did it do that, but it gave me inspiration for other career avenues that may be possible using my skills. The first talk I went to was from Gary McGinty of Ion on Visual Thinking and I found it really interesting not just because it was a good presentation but Visual Thinking is definitely something I would consider pursuing as a career. It was all about helping companies to tell their stories through facilitation, consultation and design. With the final outputs being 3D images and animations created by Gary's company. 

David Higgins talk on using lego robotics as a teaching aid for engineering and programming concepts was also very interesting and we even got to see 'hig' the robot in action. David talked about Lego NXT (which I really want to play with now!) and Scratch - a programming language for everybody created by MIT which made computer programming seem ridiculously simple! Why didn't I know about this when trying to learn Java ?!?

I was particulary interested in Brett Lawless' talk on DIY Multitouch Haptic Interfaces. Brett talked about how he made a multitouch screen at minimal cost and covered the construction including why he did / didn't use certain techniques such as the Wiimote. The Wiimote seems to be a very popular tool for iMedia folks to take apart and make cool stuff with, including Johnny Lee from MIT.  The reason I found this so interesting was that a lot of his aims were in line with my own for this project. Brett talked about to make a webcam into a infrared camera with particular reference to the Microsoft VX6000. 

When I talked to him after about my idea to capture sound and use it to create art he said that the microphones that come with guitar hero for the PS2 are very good quality for the price so I may in taking apart some of those! Brett broke down different software libraries and gave the pros and cons which I found very useful. He talked about Wiimote lib - good for simple Bespoke - good for games, TUIO, TBeta (his favourite!) - simple and easy to program, can get clear images and TouchLib.

To finish up the day, Shane McAlister showed some really interesting examples of Mobile Augemented Reality including living sasquatch, toyota iq, bmw, US mail, world builder and tonchidot, maybe hovercrafts from Back to the Future aren't so far away after all...