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Dry erase board lined with IR sensors to record pen strokes [video]
- DiabloD3 11y agoIt'd be nice to do something similar to this on one of those cheap $200-300 40" TVs that go on sale sometimes (the kind that have very bad visual quality, but could reasonably display large high contrast text, and crude lines), and just record where a stylus is and make an extra cheap and ghetto pen TV out of it.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ohitsdom 11y agoReally impressive. Must be pretty sensitive IR sensors to not have false detections when the marker/eraser gets close to the board but doesn't touch it. Any info on the hardware and software stack?
- djrogers 11y agoLooks like it did actually have an FP+ on the eraser there if you compare the phone to what he actually erased onscreen. I'll second the request for more info though!
- arey_abhishek 11y agoThe eraser did actually touch the board, but appears like it didn't because of the reflective surface. :)
- arey_abhishek 11y agoThanks. If the pen is about 2mm off the surface, there is a false positive. Also haven't done palm rejection yet, so your palm needs to be off the board to write.
- arey_abhishek 11y agoI used an off the shelf IR touch frame bought from Aliexpress: http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=AS_20150911112236&SearchText=ir+touch+frame http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=AS... All touch inputs fed into Raspbery PI with a wifi dongle.
- mmastrac 11y agoImpressive. What platform did you build this on?
- 27182818284 11y agoFairly neat. Consider the listing status of the video. Right now it is discouraging people from sharing.
- arey_abhishek 11y agoChanged the status to public
- MichaelApproved 11y agoLooked like it was zoomed in on the written part. I wonder if it would gradually zoom out, as you write more, or if you could scroll around on the display to see the rest of the writing.
- langseth 11y agoIs this working on a similar system to Optical touchscreen technology? Did you build the ir sensors into the edge of the glass or at the surface? http://www.planar.com/media/111012/touch_technologies_white_paper.pdf http://www.planar.com/media/111012/touch_technologies_white_...
- arey_abhishek 11y agoDifferent technology. This is what we've used: http://www.touchscreen-me.com/technologies-comparison-infrared.php http://www.touchscreen-me.com/technologies-comparison-infrar... Same result can be achieved with CMOS sensors mounted on the corners as well but ambient lighting conditions affect the way the board works.
- arey_abhishek 11y agoOP here. If you'd like to see a kickstarter project out of this, please upvote this comment!
- olympus 11y agoNot that you asked, but here are some ways I think you could go about releasing this to the public and make some money off of it (only one method uses Kickstarter): 1. You could do a Kickstarter where you sold a kit that you sourced with hardware from Alibaba and code you wrote yourself. This would be a lot of effort, but could be fairly profitable if the KS succeeds. 2. You could release some how to instructions on how people can make their own panel, and charge for software. You don't even need KS for this, just a PayPal (or other money transfer company) account. 3. You could release your code on GitHub for free and let people pay you out of the kindness of their hearts, either through PayPal, Patreon, or Gratipay.
- arey_abhishek 11y agoI like #2 & #3 options better than doing a KS. Going to think about this. Thanks, appreciate this.
- ubersync 11y agoAnother payment option for #2 and #3 is Bitcoin.
- IshKebab 11y agoYou make orders of magnitude more money through Kickstarter than either of the other options. Much more stress too admittedly.
- phpnode 11y ago> 3. You could release your code on GitHub for free and let people pay you out of the kindness of their hearts, either through PayPal, Patreon, or Gratipay. Please don't do this, you will starve. Very few people are able to make enough money from open source in this way and I don't think this is the kind of thing that's suited to it. Commercialize this technology, market it, sell it.
- raldi 11y agoThis is cool as a DIY project, but digital whiteboards have been around since at least 1991: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Board
- pavel_lishin 11y agoThe one at my high school (admittedly, over a decade ago) was ridiculously expensive, though. If this is cheap, it could be pretty great for a cash-strapped startup, striking the balance between a smart board and a person with a cellphone snapping photos. (The expensiveness of the whiteboard made it even funnier when a teacher used a Sharpie permanent marker on it one day.)
- toolzytofndpwd 11y agoethanol or methanol will clean it up.
- jonsen 11y agoOr a white board pen. Just paint over it with an erasable pen, and it will all go when wiped.
- arey_abhishek 11y agoAll the previous whiteboards force you to buy a projector or invest in smart pens. This costs ~150USD to make vs. 1500USD+ for the kind of smart boards that existed in the past.
- jwcacces 11y agoMy high school had these in 1995. Each marker color had a different reflective pattern on a band around the tip so the scanning laser could read it like a bar code. I remember the eraser having a solid reflective band all the way around. It was pretty cool, as we all got whiteboard "transcripts" emailed to us at the end of the class that you could play back / pause / rewind / etc... whenever you wanted. Also, these boards had no projectors (they used real ink in the markers) and didn't require special markers (just the barcoded pen collars, which were removable)
- raldi 11y agoAnd the erasers were circular, so that their rotation wasn't significant and didn't need to be known by the software.
- jwcacces 11y agoYes!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jballanc 11y agoAlso had one of these in high school, but connected to an uplink for a distance learning setup. There were about 20 of us in the actual classroom, and then 3 or 4 other classrooms would get the same whiteboard feed live.
- hoopism 11y agoVery cool DIY project. Without details of price or advantage over existing tech I don't see it as a fundable/kickstartable effort... but good luck.
- tsangk 11y agoIf you are interested in a full commercial version of this (sharing an analog whiteboard with a link), check out http://smartkapp.com http://smartkapp.com (Disclosure: Am employee of said company)
- sovande 11y agoOuch, I know that when you see someone has already created a product that you are working on you should take it as a validation of your idea and not become discouraged. However, seeing this I can't help feeling bad for the OP. The OP has a prototype, while this (seems) like a fully fledged and very slick product with all bases covered and it is even cheap.
- vertis 11y agoIf the OP hasn't done research into potential/current competitors then the OP shouldn't be taking it further than a prototype anyway. It definitely sucks to prototype something that already exists, but it's probably a good lesson too.
- nacs 11y ago$900-1200 isn't what I'd call "cheap" (OP says parts for their prototype is around $150). Also, another person in this thread mentioned a 42" one from China thats $120 [1]. That is more in the "cheap" range. [1] http://goo.gl/N02wRa http://goo.gl/N02wRa
- FireBeyond 11y agoIf parts for your prototype are around $150, most conventional electronic product pricing wisdom would put this at around $600-$750 retail.
- jbermudes 11y agoSince the company seems to be a hardware company, I'm curious, is any of the software open source?
- bobosha 11y agocouldn't we have a webcam to stream/record the video? or perhaps capture snapshots? If needed we might subtract the human from the video stream using some basic machine vision techniques.
- zodiac 11y agoI imagine the human's hand would be obstructing active areas of the board a large percentage of the time
- imakesnowflakes 11y agoExactly my thoughts when I saw this. The problem with writer obstructing the view can be solved by place the camera behind the board and using a translucent white plastic sheet for the board. If the front of the board is illuminated well, then the camera shouldn't have any problems in capturing the stuff being written on the translucent board. Mirror the image in software and you are done!
- gotrythis 11y agoI want one. Seems like you're saying we can't buy it currently?
- joezydeco 11y agoOne tip from someone that has worked with IR emitters/detectors: make sure your product can handle direct and reflected sunlight. I'd hate to see you getting all the way through a kickstarter and then finding out you need to rework your frame to reject ambient and stray IR.
- CamperBob2 11y agoDon't these types of systems always use AC modulation for just that reason?
- joezydeco 11y agoUsually. Not always.
- skynetv2 11y agovery cool. practically thinking, why not buy a large touch screen and use some sort of stylus instead of this white board? in both cases, the user needs to buy special hardware. so i would think the costs would be comparable. genuine question, not diminishing your work
- phpnode 11y agocomparably large touch screens are going to be order(s) of magnitude more expensive than this.
- arey_abhishek 11y agoA 85inch DIY whiteboard will cost about 500$ to make while the MSFT surface hub costs 19,999$.
- smurlidhar 11y agoHey arey_abhishek I am an investor and have been looking to invest in a product like this! Let's talk! DM me @sidsays on Twitter.
- natch 11y agoPlease don't listen to all the naysayers (I was about to be one of them) who are saying this has "already been done." Sure, they are right. But is there one in every room of every office? No. But there could be. The thing that has changed between back then when this stuff was first done and now, is that everybody has smartphones. The old dinosaur systems aren't priced to take this into account.
- j45 11y agoAgreed. Doing something for the first time, vs doing it well enough for adoption, or in a way that is more accessible is a creation itself. If this was a frame or a kit I could attach to an existing board, I'd be ordering it right now. Shipping whiteboards is expensive so I hope that might be an option. As the Apple Pencil has demonstrated again, most new things aren't always quite new. There's few form factor, interface, or screen innovations. What will be new is new ways to create using what we have. Where you come across them, Naysayers are usually self-doubting doubt worshippers. Every person with unimpressed input should be taken with a grain of salt relative to how much a person feels the only thing of value is if it's something new or novel.
- Milner08 11y agoI remember my dad having something very similar in his office when I was a kid. You could write on it like a normal white board then it would print out a copy of it for you.
- deutronium 11y agoOut of interest, I was looking at one of the IR touchscreen frames you linked to. The control boards seem to vary in terms of the number of touch points they can monitor. So I'm wondering how you distinguish between a marker pen and the larger whiteboard eraser. Is it possible to access the raw output from the IR sensors I wonder.
- OliverJones 11y agoVirtual Ink, anyone? http://www.mimio.com/en-NA.aspx http://www.mimio.com/en-NA.aspx Think about how much fun it will be to try to sell expensive stuff to schools and colleges before you raise a lot of money for this.
- gohrt 11y agoSchools love spending tons of money on crap like this, instead of paying teachers. Blackboard is a huge company in this space.
- liamuk 11y agoHere's a poor man's version that uses <$50 of hardware (a wii remote and an ir led) If anyone's interested in playing around with it I'll put up some nicer usage instructions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX8JnC7-K8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX8JnC7-K8k https://github.com/liamuk/Omniboard https://github.com/liamuk/Omniboard
- hipjiveguy 11y agoi'm interested... i looked at your site, but didn't see any more info on it... thanks!