FreeTrack Forum
 I been trying to pry it off!!!!!!!!! That bugger doesn't pry off very easily. I've been cutting, poking, prying, smacking, sanding, and just about anything else. I even got ahold of my 7 pound sledge hammer. BUt then I thought it might be over kill!!!!!  I didn't get my new LEDs tonite. Radio Shack closed before I could get there. Maybe tomorrow. I don't know what happened. I don't see any issues. My voltmeter is not working so I need to get a new one. Then I can find the problem LED. Sean |
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Yeeha, partial success!
 I didn't have an LED problem. It was all in the IR filter. Once I got the filter out it was able to find the LEDs. Now I need some different help. I've got great frame rates and great jitter. Everything is green. My FPS are around 32 with a Jitter of 6. The problem is I get these, jerks. Or stutters. It's just not smooth enough to play. I'm sure it's an adjustement or setting in the software at this point but I'm having trouble finding it. I honestly don't understand the software very well. I've watched all the videos and tutorials but I'm a bit slow. At first it was real bad, but I've got it working decent now. It's just that the jerks or more like stutters are too bad to make it usable. Any help? Sean |
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Class : Beta Tester Off line |
Good to hear about the IR filter success
 For focus adjustment, for me ts sometimes better to use the original webcam software, not freetrack itself. If i set the exposure slider high, so i can see my head, not just the LEDs, it's easier to see if focus is adjusted properly. The increased CPU usage might indicate that the FT "sees" more than the 3 points it should see and simply "doesn't know" what to do with the extra points  I did run into a problem that caused behavior like one you describe. The frame of my setup is made of steel rod, which is rather shiny, so sometimes light of my room illumination - halogen reflectors above my head was reflecting off exposed parts of the rod, and the reflections were bright enough to be picked up my FT as additional points. I didn't notice the problem at first, since it didn't happen when the room was illuminated by daylight. When i covered the rod with matte isolation tape everything worked fine. So if your setup has some shiny parts, try covering them with some matte material and see if it helps. Also make sure that you don't have any light reflecting off background objects (like a glass of picture frame) - again it is the best to use the webcam software with exposure turned a bit up to do this. Here you can see the effect of a shiny frame, and Here i've put an alarm clock in the background - as you can see light reflecting off it is even brighter than LEDs, so there's no way you can get good tracking in a situation like this. |
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Kestrel, that helped a bunch. I don't know why I didn't think to do that. I guess frustration!
That has really helped. I'm still loosing my LEDs though. I have them filed very flat but it must not be enough. I still loose the tracking dots when I get my head turned. I think I'm at a spot now where the Freetrack is working just like it should my rig is not quite perfect. But the end is in sight! Here are a couple pics of my LEDs. They are pretty flat.   My machine by the way is an XP2200+ 1.8 GHz. Thanks everyone! Sean |
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Class : Beta Tester Off line |
Yes, they're flat, but there's a lot of plastic still left above the diode electrodes (the metal parts). It looks like they're about 2-3mm left. You can try filing it even more, so that only 0.5-1mm of plastic covers the metal parts inside. That should give you even greater viewing angle. Just make sure you don't file it too much - there's a very thin wire between the electrodes and if you file too low, it's the first thing that gets damaged. Of course, without it the LED won't work.
One more thing before you'll grab the sandpaper or a dremel - are you sure that the battery isn't exhausted? Maybe try using a new one? If that doesn't help, one more option you could try would be to increase the current in the LEDs a bit (by reducing the resistor value). What parameters did you input into the resistor value calculator (forward voltage, forward current)? At radioshack.com this LED is described as: High output infrared LED 5mm 1.2VDC 29mA 940nm I guess that you used something close to these values for the online calculator? Using 1.2V forward voltage, 30mA forward current, 9V supply gives 200R resistor. 30mA is enough to make the LED shine, but it won't be very bright. 30mA is fine for red, green, yellow LEDs. If you tried to use a white or blue one, it wouldn't be enough as well. Try going to 60mA - this won't be hard in your case, since that would require one 100R resistor, ans since you're using two of these in series to get 200R, just bypass one of them (connect both leads of one of the resistors with a piece of wire), leaving the other as it is. Or if you have a soldering iron around, just remove one of them - i don't think you'll need to go back to 30mA |
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