From: dstamp@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Dave Stampe-Psy+Eng)
Subject: Re: SOS!  Advice wanted...
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1991 04:28:55 GMT
Message-ID: <1991Nov13.042855.27227@watserv1.waterloo.edu>
Organization: University of Waterloo



sheckler@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Craig Sheckler) writes:

>    Dave Stampe, in your article <1991Nov9.061307.25359@watserv1.waterloo.
edu you wrote:
>
>>>You can put your own together for $300 to $600, depending on how
>>>much you like color, decent headtracking and other frills.  My
>>>own system will be about $800 TOPS, not counting the PC.
>
>Could you, Dave, or anyone else clue me in on the components?  Preference
>would be a system with color and acceptable resolution and head-tracking.  
>Since I'm working with the University department's budget, there's no 
>guarantee how much I'll be granted for the project, but I imagine the
>figure will be somewhat less than $1000.  

This is sort of the cost figure that I consider to be the goal for a
low-cost eyephone based system.  It assumes:

- Fresnel lenses instead of LEEP optics.  These result in more blur,
but are dirt cheap and help to blur pixels together.  You won't notice
the difference, since pixels tend to be large (1/3 to 1/4 degree).

- Monochrome LCDs or possibly 3" B&W TVs for the displays.  TV's are heavier
but you can set the picture area size, blur the pixels by defocusing,
and add circuity to correct for lens distortion.  They cost $50 each.

- Modified $50 VGA cards to supply video for the displays.  Obviously
not required for the IRIS, but you'll need to check the NTSC output
on the IRIS works as required.

- PowerGlove for input.  Nuff said.

- Head tracker not figured out yet, but I'm considering cheap IR
options as well as CW ultrasonics.  This could either be done cheaply
by building a PowerGlove type pulsed ultrasonic system at 25 KHz using
piezo tweeters and active filters (cheap but not great performance) or
more expensively by trying new ideas.  Lots of fun here.

As you can see, the system I'm discussing takes a lot of experience
with "hardware hacking" to do.  Of course, once it's done, anyone can
duplicate it-- but that'll take about 6 more months.

Some of the stuff (The TV's and lenses) can be put together by anyone,
but the rest will have to be developed.  Hope this has been of some help.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| My life is Hardware,                    |                              | 
| my destiny is Software,                 |         Dave Stampe          |
| my CPU is Wetware...                    |                              | 
| Anybody got a SDB I can borrow?         | dstamp@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca |
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