Week 5

17 Nov

Continued with the snapping function of the puzzle application for multi-user since I stepped into the lab in the morning. Leonard joined in when he arrived and we started testing the application. Things were working fine and we also had fixed some bugs whereby rotating piece did not focus and 'pop up' to the front when there's another piece overlapping the rotating piece.

Soon after, we took one of the MacBook Pro and webcam to the 2x3 tile display (orion) room. When went around looking for a suitable location for the placement of the webcam and soon, we decided to place the webcam infront of the screen because the frame at the back was blocking the webcam making it difficult or impossible to capture the whole screen.

And this is our findings/problems when placing the webcam infront:

• The screen is too bright, when the laser shines on the screen, the screen seems to be brighter than the laser
• The webcam is too small and the quality is not sharp enough to capture the laser
• The laser seem to pass through the screen instead of reflecting it

18 Nov

Since the DV camera is not here yet, we decide to start coding a simple application which listens to the OSC packets and control the X11 on the client computer. 

19 Nov

Had a team meeting with Bernard in the morning to discuss about the problems and possible solutions of setting up lightdraw on the 2x3 tile display. Had played with the SmartBoard in the room before the meeting had started and got to know briefly how it works and soon we came out with the task and objectives to be done for the whole week. 

Today, we will be setting up lightdraw on one of the node of the 2x3 tile display (n22) as suggested by Harold and see if it works well. We will be testing by placing the webcam both in front and at the rear.

And this is our findings

• Placing the webcam at the rear is almost impossible even though it was hanged above on the frame because the light from the projector was way too bright that it affect the lightdraw application from working normally
• Placing the webcam infront of the screen, hanging on the ceiling is the only possible way because it doesn't block the audience view and the surrounding environment enable lightdraw to work normally.
• The laser can only be detected only in the center of the node but hardly detected at the sides. It was suspected that it was because of manual calibration and the quality of the webcam that causes it.

20 Nov

Started the day by continuing with the application to be used on the client's computer. Tried for almost half a day and found there will lots of libraries missing in the make file. Edited the make file but was still unable to compile. Had switched focus to the puzzle application again because there will be kids of the staffs visiting tomorrow as told by Cheng Teng and from previous experience, we decide to test the application over and over again. As expected, we found bugs again. Its actually the same bug when you try to drag the puzzle pieces out of the window but this time round, it was the snapping that causes the crash. Below is an illustration drawn by Leonard:

If the user tries to snap at the extreme corner with sufficient for snapping to occur, the snapped piece will move out of the window and cause the whole application to crash and we managed to solve the problem before we left the office at the end of the day.

21 Nov

Today is the day where the kids will come and play with our lightdraw application and so I asked Leonard if he could do the final testing of our application while I continued doing the application that controls the X11 of the client's computer. 

Soon I was told by Leonard that he and Ming Hong had found another bug that is when a user is rotating and the other user was snapping, the snapping will not occur until the rotation had ended. Lucky we did a final testing and solved it before the actual event started and just minutes before the event started, I managed to control the mouse on the MacBook Pro using OSC. This are some pictures taken during the event:



After the event, I've tried control the mouse on leonard's macbook but it doesn't seem to be working, it was suspected that a firewall was blocking the packets from sending to other PC as told by Ming Hong. Will try to solve the problem on Monday.

Reflection:

This week, I managed to see a clearer view on the importance of getting prepared for anything. As with test our applications again and again, we found more and more bugs and tried to solve it. The more you run through the application and finally you found no bugs, you will have a great boost in confidence level because you know that everything will run smoothly when a presentation or event started. It is really important to think in a user point of view so as to give them what they expected and exceed their expectations.

It is also important to set a target everyday or every week so you will be able to strive hard for the target and get it done by the required deadline. Otherwise, things will just keep on hanging at the same position if there isn't any motivation at all.