CompizTomato: the FCI revolution

July 14, 2008

Some firm produce, a good webcam and a new era of Fruit-Computer interaction.

A few days ago I was looking for a v4l2 wrapper and stumbled across OpenCV. I’ve been hooked ever since. It’s an open computer vision library that provides a simple interface to a lot of sophisticated image processing.

As a little test of the system I hacked the sample blob tracking application to send signals to Compiz over DBus when the tracked object moves to the side of the screen. The tracking can be a little flaky so I needed a brightly colored object that would stand out against the background. We happened to have some tomatoes lying around in the kitchen, and thus was born CompizTomato.

As you can see from the video, the recognition is not perfect but certainly seems to get the job done. I can use it with only slightly diminished accuracy while sitting right in front of my computer against a busy background. Further testing has also revealed that I can also track my head and wobble from side to side, but it’s not quite as fun and considerably harder on the neck.

Without further adieu, the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD9ZMjy_rkE

BRAVO

David Granberg — July 15, 2008 @ 3:58 am

Jacob, this was really interesting. thank you for showing me this.

-Chase McVeigh-Walker

Chase McVeigh-Walker — July 15, 2008 @ 12:21 pm

nice. now onto the minority report gloves, eh?

Lauren Alpert — July 15, 2008 @ 5:30 pm

That's tonight's project.

Jacob Andreas — July 15, 2008 @ 9:55 pm

oh god.

Claire Andreas — July 16, 2008 @ 5:44 am

[...] marvelous OpenCV library. While red is still a convenient color to track, I’m no longer using real vegetation. Instead, I found an old pair of gloves that do the job quite [...]

jacobandreas.net » Blog Archive » OpenCV X Input — July 18, 2008 @ 6:08 am