rayman22201
Newbie level 1
Hello,
This may seem like an odd project, but I don't really know where to start, so I thought I would find and ask some experts lol. Thanks in advance for your help. Here is the story:
I am a Computer Science guy who dabbles in making short films and visual effects. I just took an intro to electronics engineering course and had an idea.
First, some background information: In visual effects it is very important to be able to match the movement of the live action camera with the computer so that the digitally generated effects will blend in properly. There is a whole area of visual effects dedicated to 3D tracking.
My idea is this. They make electronic accelerometers, as well as electronic gyroscopes fairly cheap. Wouldn't it be possible to mount a device that has an accelerometer and a gyroscope for each axis onto a camera, and then record the acceleration and orientation data?
That data could then be used to derive the position and orientation of the camera at any point in time within the accuracy range of the device? You would know the camera's starting position, velocity, acceleration, and orientation. What ever point it starts at would be considered the 0 position. Couldn't you then use the acceleration data with the Newtonian position equation (X = ½ at² + vt + x) to derive the position?
It seems like a feasible thing to do in theory, but how hard would it be to build? I see a couple of issues.
1.)Accelerometers and Gyroscopes are analog devices, so how difficult would it be to create a circuit that produces a digital output? Actually I have seen a model that has a digital output on it, but I have no idea how to interpret that data.
2.)How do you measure the accuracy on these devices. It would need a minimum of 1/30 of a second accuracy (for a 30 frames per second camera).
3.)Ultimately this data would have to be put onto a computer for processing somehow. Having a wire attached to a camera makes the device essentially unusable, or at least severely limited. It seems more effective to have a memory stick or some type of transportable memory attached to the device.
I'm guessing this would require a micro controller to interpret and write the data. What would be the cheapest and best micro controller to do that with? Also, how difficult would it be to program this sort of thing into a micro controller, (Data Read and Write functionality)?
The devices seems simple in theory, all it has to do is record the data from the sensors onto a storage device so that it can be read by a computer. All of the processing can then be done on a PC by a simple program that uses Newtons laws to calculate the positions.
What do you think?
Thank you again for all your help,
Ray
This may seem like an odd project, but I don't really know where to start, so I thought I would find and ask some experts lol. Thanks in advance for your help. Here is the story:
I am a Computer Science guy who dabbles in making short films and visual effects. I just took an intro to electronics engineering course and had an idea.
First, some background information: In visual effects it is very important to be able to match the movement of the live action camera with the computer so that the digitally generated effects will blend in properly. There is a whole area of visual effects dedicated to 3D tracking.
My idea is this. They make electronic accelerometers, as well as electronic gyroscopes fairly cheap. Wouldn't it be possible to mount a device that has an accelerometer and a gyroscope for each axis onto a camera, and then record the acceleration and orientation data?
That data could then be used to derive the position and orientation of the camera at any point in time within the accuracy range of the device? You would know the camera's starting position, velocity, acceleration, and orientation. What ever point it starts at would be considered the 0 position. Couldn't you then use the acceleration data with the Newtonian position equation (X = ½ at² + vt + x) to derive the position?
It seems like a feasible thing to do in theory, but how hard would it be to build? I see a couple of issues.
1.)Accelerometers and Gyroscopes are analog devices, so how difficult would it be to create a circuit that produces a digital output? Actually I have seen a model that has a digital output on it, but I have no idea how to interpret that data.
2.)How do you measure the accuracy on these devices. It would need a minimum of 1/30 of a second accuracy (for a 30 frames per second camera).
3.)Ultimately this data would have to be put onto a computer for processing somehow. Having a wire attached to a camera makes the device essentially unusable, or at least severely limited. It seems more effective to have a memory stick or some type of transportable memory attached to the device.
I'm guessing this would require a micro controller to interpret and write the data. What would be the cheapest and best micro controller to do that with? Also, how difficult would it be to program this sort of thing into a micro controller, (Data Read and Write functionality)?
The devices seems simple in theory, all it has to do is record the data from the sensors onto a storage device so that it can be read by a computer. All of the processing can then be done on a PC by a simple program that uses Newtons laws to calculate the positions.
What do you think?
Thank you again for all your help,
Ray
