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TouchCore Manual - Information about camera calibration
Table of contents
Getting started
Requirements
TouchCore operates under Windows® XP 32bit, Windows Vista 32bit or Windows 7 32bit and is not (yet) compatible with 64bit operating systems.
Recommended Minimum Hardware Requirements
Cameras that run with the CMU FireWire camera drivers (provided with the installer)
See General Snowflake Suite Requirements
See General Snowflake Suite Requirements
If you get a message stating that "Camera has failed to initialize after ten tries" at any point during the calibration please refer to the Snowflake log file for more information. The most usual case is that the firewire controller does not have enough bandwidth for the camera settings you have chosen, but we recommend that you check the log to make sure before you try to fix the problem.
Calibration
To access the calibration mode for TouchCore, start Natural User Interface®'s Snowflake Suite and press 'C' on the keyboard or the middle mouse button. The calibration mode can at anytime be accessed while using Snowflake Suite.In each calibration step, buttons are located in the top that can be pressed:
Calibration Button Information
Help
A quick explanation of what to do in the current step.
Save
Save adjustments and changes.
Restart
Reset the calibration to step 1 and removes any previously saved configuration files.
1-6
Go to a specific calibration step. Note that step 4-6 can't be accesses until step 3 is completed.
Most actions in the calibration process are executed with the mouse.
A quick explanation of what to do in the current step.
Save
Save adjustments and changes.
Restart
Reset the calibration to step 1 and removes any previously saved configuration files.
1-6
Go to a specific calibration step. Note that step 4-6 can't be accesses until step 3 is completed.
Most actions in the calibration process are executed with the mouse.
Note that pictures and sliders may differ depending on what camera setup is used.
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Calibration steps
1. Adjust projected image
In this step, “Adjust projected image”, the projected image can be changed.This is only necessary if the entire projected image is not viewable.
If the entire projected image is visible, this step can be skipped.
Button Information
Set: Select the area that should be visible. Click the bottom left corner and then the top right corner of the area to specify the visible area.
Reset: Reset the projected image to its default size (full view).
Reset: Reset the projected image to its default size (full view).
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2. Adjust camera image crop
In this step, “Adjust camera image crop”, select the track-able area (to leave out unneeded areas like table borders).In this step the camera FPS can be set. Do not touch this, if its unknown what the result is. If the FPS is set at a higher rate than the computer can process, frames will be skipped and this will cause the tracking to become slower. 30 FPS is a good value that will work on most systems.
Button Information
Switch camera: Select camera to adjust (if more than 1 camera is going to be used).
Select area: Set the cropping area. Click and drag on the camera video stream, to set the bounding box (begin bottom left, end top right of the wanted area).
Flip Offset: If the crop appears wrong from the selection, click Flip Offset and then Apply to solve this.
Apply: Applies the crop on the selected camera stream.
Reset area: Resets the crop.
Apply configuration: Completes this step and initializes the tracker.
Select area: Set the cropping area. Click and drag on the camera video stream, to set the bounding box (begin bottom left, end top right of the wanted area).
Flip Offset: If the crop appears wrong from the selection, click Flip Offset and then Apply to solve this.
Apply: Applies the crop on the selected camera stream.
Reset area: Resets the crop.
Apply configuration: Completes this step and initializes the tracker.
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3. Camera setup
In this step, “Camera Setup”, the following changes to the camera settings can be made: brightness, sharpness, gamma etc.In this step, it is also possible to invert the camera image, in order to run front illumination, opposed to rear illumination.
The sliders may appear different, depending on the camera model(s) used.
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4. White Balance
In this step, “White balance”, illumination across the screen is evened. If the illumination seems even enough, before having gone through this step, this action can be skipped. Skipping this step will result in a lower CPU usage and therefore an increased performance.Start the white balance step by pressing “Start light capture” and then wiping the screen with a white paper. Ensure that the screen is empty and that nothing is lying on top of it, when pressing Start light capture. If the capture seems wrong, press start capture again to redo the procedure. Once the entire screen is wiped, press “Stop light capture”. Press “Recapture background“ to refresh the camera image(s).
Note that this step is not available if the camera(s) are running in inverted mode. It is in general not recommended to use light evening combined with invert turned on.
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5. Adjust Filters
In this step, “Adjust filters”, the camera filters can be set.
Button Information
Switch camera: Select camera to adjust (when using more than 1 camera).
Stage: Cycles through the different filter stages. The name of the current filter stage is listed on top of the video stream (”Stage 1/7: Raw Camera” in the screen shot).
Highpass slider: Sets the sensitivity of the image.
Threshold slider: Sets the accuracy of the blobs.
Stage: Cycles through the different filter stages. The name of the current filter stage is listed on top of the video stream (”Stage 1/7: Raw Camera” in the screen shot).
Highpass slider: Sets the sensitivity of the image.
Threshold slider: Sets the accuracy of the blobs.
In general, set the high pass filter as high as possible, usually until a lot of blobs are shown and then increase the threshold until only wanted blobs are visible (visible blobs when touching). Drag the sliders to change the values for high pass and threshold, until satisfied with the results (bright blobs without any ghost inputs).
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6. Input Mapping
In this step, “Input mapping”, the camera image is mapped to the screen.To start, press the green colored with white glow highlighted points on the screen with a finger.
Button Information
Increase Rows: Subdivides the calibration points in rows.
Increase Columns: Subdivides the calibration points in columns.
Select point: Select a specific point to calibrate.
Start input mapping: Starts the input mapping procedure.
Increase Columns: Subdivides the calibration points in columns.
Select point: Select a specific point to calibrate.
Start input mapping: Starts the input mapping procedure.
When calibrating Snowflake for the first time, the default number of calibration points is 9. The first point to be calibrated, is located in the top left corner. Hold a finger on the green area of the point and a circle will start filling up. When the circle is filled, the point will get marked with an OK and the next point will get highlighted. Repeat the procedure until all points are calibrated.
After finishing the above process, the top row buttons are enabled again. Use fingers to test the accuracy of the input mapping.
Touch accuracy can be increased by increasing the amount of calibration points. To do so, click the 'increase rows' or 'increase columns' buttons with the mouse. Then click the 'Start input mapping' to calibrate the new points, similar to the above procedure.
If the calibration is inaccurate at a specific section of the screen, recalibrate the specific point where this occurs. To do so, click 'Select Point' with the mouse, then click the specific point that requires to be re-calibrated and execute the point calibration procedure as mentioned above.
Note that the amount of points that are used has an effect on the performance. Fewer points means faster tracking, so a tip is to not use more calibration points than necessary.
Finished
The camera(s) is/are now correctly calibrated and finger touches appear at the correct positions. If not, please revise several of the earlier steps, to improve the calibration. When satisfied with the results, press Save and then press 'C' to return to the applications.Now the calibration is completed.
Settings
In the TouchCore calibration config, there are a couple of settings that you can use to setup TouchCore further. Below follows a brief explanation of the interesting settings. The configuration files are located at C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Natural User Interface Technologies AB\Calibration or at C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\AppData\Natural User Interface Technologies AB\Calibration depending on your operating system.| Name | Description |
| tuio_fps | The frequency that TUIO events should be sent by |
| tcp_port | The TCP port TouchCore should use to send TUIO (usually to Flash) |
| osc_port | The UDP port TouchCore should use to send TUIO |
| osc_address | The IP address that TouchCore should send TUIO to |
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