You have to scroll through a bit to get to the part where it's using the camera as input.

I've seen a similar thing a while back about using stuff, CamSpace, but a group called Cam-Trax.
The possible uses for this seem very impressive. Hopefully we'll get an open source version

Perhaps, but then you simply return no mouse movement so it shouldn't be too strange.

DSP has hw acceleration for motion estimation, not perfect image correlation but would probably do the job well enough for this task.

JeffLuszcz I am quite interested in this application. I have been wanting to build it since I got my n810 (about 3 months ago). I am interested in a little bit more however. I would like to try and fully emulate an accelerometer with the cam.

There is a company that specializes in this (among other things) called gesturetek. see : http://www.gesturetekmobile.com/ Its a Canadian company and I only found out about it because I spoke to their CTO a few months ago about their multi-touch division.

I am a multi-touch researcher in general so I am no stranger to processing video as input, but I am a bit new to the maemo platform.
If you want to work together and set up a project on maemo garage I would be happy to work on this with you.

I have also read up on a guy who was trying to port openCV to maemo, but was mostly successful. ( I think)
see : http://www.nabble.com/Problem-using-...html#a16326280
and
http://andrew.daviel.org/n810-blog.html
But I think that openCV might be a bit to much bloat for this project anyway.

This will not be that CPU intensive. It does not need perfect image capture and recognition. It won't be as accurate as a accelerometer, but good enough for Up Down Left Right. I would like to see this implemented (since May in fact), as well as the motion gesture recognition.

I'm waiting to get my n810 back from warranty service since the camera stopped working!

Once I get it back (and reflash) I hope to start work.

I have searched about the thematic's on maemo.garage and found these
projects:

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/motion/
https://garage.maemo.org/projects/motiondetector/

I think these project's sources might be very useful for you

greeez

I just thought i'd bump this thread and express my (end-user) interest in some kind of camspace- or freetrack-type webcam motion tracking. now that i have a keyboard for my n800, i often prop the n800 on a table, and it would be great to be able to control cursor movements without touching the device (or a mouse or the stylus).

freetrack is designed to read only IR. they say to cover the front of the webcam with 2-3 layers of film negatives so that only IR gets through. i think this reduces processor load. EDIT: but then, of course, you have to use a flashlight or something to move the cursor, which--although very cool--might not actually be any more convenient than using a stylus or a mouse....

really interesting thread: In theory a really rudimental motion detector system could be achived using a REALLY low resolution camera image (even with a 3x3 pixel wide image should be possible to have some informations to use) should be able to recognize when something move from one part of the 'grid' to another, the direction and the speed. Higher the resolution and higher should became the precision (but I suppose will became harder to manage all the extra informations): emulate the shake rock and roll should not be too hard: emulate an acceletometer, well, that sound harder

Wanted to revive this topic as I think it would be a really usable way to control the n8x0. Perhaps a new thread should be started because the way I am picturing it it would not function like a mouse.

Maybe it is just me, but I see this being useful to control the browser (for example, flick your finger/thumb vertically up or down across the camera to send a "page down" or "page up" command, or flick your finger/thumb horizontally left or right across the camera to switch between windows or tabs or workspaces even). I could see it controlling games very easily as well (example, draw a dot on your thumb and hold it in front of the camera, if needed put a cheap piece of clear plastic to hold your thumb on). It really has lots of potential if it can just pair keybinds with what the camera senses. If it can be done on s60, can't it be done on maemo? The things that can be done on a PC with openCV 1 2 , freetrack, camspace, or opengazer are impressive, but simple webcam tracking would be much easier I should hope. Make the thresholds less sensitive to save on processing power. If I am completely off base let me know, but seeing it working on a s60 phone makes me think it would be feasible.

Or maybe I have just had too much coffee today and am off in Pink Floyd land.

No, I still like the idea of this. I'll try to start something over the weekend (in MATLAB) to do some testing.