The semaphore robots of death

[hirez]

Such is the marvellous pace of technological change, it only takes two lines of wonky Ruby to make the output of a C&N webcam work in much the same way as 'The robots of death'. Hopefully with less mayhem, wellies and seventies retrofuturism.

Retrofuturism is obviously the artistic response to what happens when the robots wioll haven be put in charge of making the maglev trains run on time.

Mind, given the way that yon shoddy webcam reacts to white LEDs (poorly), those who wished for mechanical signalling may yet get their way.

No c0de and no pics to show off this time.

Tangentially, it's probably not just me who grovels through rich but poorly-documented APIs/libraries, thinking 'That probably does something dead interesting, but I have no idea what since the effect of swapping CV_WOMBAT for CV_ANGRY_BADGER and making :polyp => 3 is not described.'

I should probably try to frig up some Fisher-Price knobs to test the interestingness of CV_WOMBAT.

In accordance with prophecy, stack_user.com is less than no help at all. Still, at least it's not as bad as the HPUX 'forums'.

Comments

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

Wonder if you actually want to make the leds dimmer so as to not wash out the camera ? Anyhow, good luck with the wombat-knobs.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I think the LEDs are fine as they are, and as long as the collection of splodges remain consistent in a given environment, it's all good. I mostly expected each install would begin with a setup/learning phase, because cameras aren't as good as eyeballs.

It does appear to show that thumping great LED arrays would be A1 jolly fun for cross-campsite art/comms, and that the 'vision' rig would likely have no problem with mechanical signals. So something of a win all round.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

Well, that all sounds fabulous. I guess we need a way to put LED arrays on poles cheaply, to get them above the tent skyline ?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Yes. Perhaps on a fabric backing. Active flags.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting thought all on its own. Hm.

View direction might be an issue, on a real flag that swings in the breeze.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I had assumed one would use an Apollo stick to make the flag point in the right direction.