infrared leds

[rom]

Hi!! My wife just bought me an aerodrums kit for my birthday and I´m really happy with it! at last something to use at home without annoying anybody and with great sounds and, over all, real drum sticks to play!!

Anyway, I wanted to use it to jam with some friends of mine and it was very strange to have that bright light pointing to us on the room. I´ve been doing some tests these days and I´ve seen that what the software tracks is the infrared light reflected by the sticks (I used myself an infrared led directly to emulate that) but what I don´t understand is why the ir light transmitted by these leds does not reflect on the sticks the same way the bright white leds do.
Is just because I need more ir leds? or maybe they are not intese enough? will it work if I build myself a new IR led array or the reflector just reflects the irs coming from white leds?
I know glasses are just to avoid this annoyance but I´d prefer not to wear them!

Again, I´m very pleased with the kit, and the jam today went really well: after a couple of years playing accousic and soft versions of out songs (just with snare drum, hit hat and a cajon as drum bass) it was awesome to play normal rock and noisy version again!! and at home!!

(BTW, I´ve just managed to make it work on a MBP 2012 AND on a Intel Core2 Duo 2008 windows PC...will it ever be a linux version? That´d be great!)

[Sipaliwini]

Hello there, great to hear you are enjoying your Aerodrums.

Your IR LED's light isn't registering because the Playstation 3 Eye camera unfortunately has a built in IR filter. This is the main reason why we use visible light.
We are working on a solution to this.

In the meanwhile, you can improvise a cardboard screen to prevent your band mates from seeing the light. This will mean that you won't be able to place yourself in the middle of the band, but on the side, possibly at an angle.

P.S. There are tutorials online on how to remove the PS3 Eye's IR filter. I have tried it myself and it is hard work, it is very easy to break the rest of the optics doing it.

[rom]

Ah! ok!! I was totally confused, as I thought the pseye had IR sensors! It's the kinect, then, the one that has both infrared projector and camera.

Anyway, it's not a big deal at all, we all (the band) are pleased with the new instrument. Now I'm looking forward to test aered!

[Munibeast]

Hi, I got myself some aerodrums for xmas and I'm pretty happy with them so far.
The bright light is not very pleasant so I want to try the IR solution.
Has anybody actually done this successfully by now? I would be very thankful for any tips to get it working correctly!
I watched a Youtube tutorial about removing the IR filter from the PS eye. It looks like it should be doable with a little risk, of course. But since the cam is under 10€ I'll try it.
So far I successfully opened the casing. One thing I'm not sure about now, though: In the tutorial the guy inserts a piece of dark plastic as a low pass filter after removing the IR filter. Would that be a good idea for aerodrum purposes as well? I would guess so but I'm not sure. But of course if I put the low pass filter in there I could never use the white LEDs again. So I thought maybe one could stick the low pass filter under the fish-eye lens instead? Any reason why that wouldn't work?
The other question is what to use as an infrared light source. Is there any recommendation or am I alone with this? There are some pretty cheap IR lamps on amazon but I don't know if they would be right.
Another idea I had was to use the IR LEDs directly on the sticks and feet instead of using reflectors. It would probably be a lot of work but wouldn't this remove all the problems with playing in front of bright things or in sunlight?
I would be glad to hear any thoughts or recommendations for this project!

[Munibeast]

Bad news: I struggled over an hour trying to remove the IR filter of my cam. I followed the tutorials exactly but I found my filter looked much thicker and darker than in the videos and was a lot harder to remove. It turns out there are two types of PS3 eyes, one of them doesn't have the IR filter in a position that you can get it out. So that's mine unfortunately and what I removed and destroyed was an essential lens. I ordered a new cam now but I won't try this again any time soon. I don't want to ruin another one now. Plus it's nearly impossible to know which of the 2 types you have...

[Sipaliwini]

Sorry I couldn't write earlier, I had the same experience as you and we decided to postpone IR partly for this reason, until we have the resources to include our own custom made camera in Aerodrums. It is definitely possible to mod Aerodrums this way with patience, effort and a bit of money though.

It is interesting to note that when we demo Aerodrums in an environment as bright as it will allow, setting up the screen like shown in the printed manual ("Good" label), we don't get any comments about the light's brightness.

Unfortunately, in a gig setting it tends to be dark and so the light can stand out a lot.

[Munibeast]

Hi, thanks for stopping by. I received another unmoddable PS3 eye now which I will not take apart.
But I'm still willing to experiment and try some things out.
I found a raspberry pi IR cam that looks like it might be possible to transplant the lens onto the eye sensor.
It's 22€ on eBay, shipping from Hongkong: http://www.ebay.de/itm/Infrared-Night-V ... 2ed30c0347
Do you think this could work for an IR mod?

[Sipaliwini]

You will be able to fit it but the optical specifications would have to match those of the PS3 Eye's lens in wide angle mode. We don't know what those are exactly, we just took them as a given and designed our lens to correct the end result.

[Munibeast]

I see. I just found the right type of ps eye used on eBay so I ordered that now. I'll keep you posted about my progress.

[aerodrummer]

Hi Munibeast,

Did you have any luck with the ir setup? I see a website that you can order lenses and tinted filters from. Not sure what lens size would match the wide angle setting as there are lots of options. Looks like you swap the lens out and add the dark filter to the new lens.

Regards,

Aerodrummer