Family Fiducial

No, that’s not the title for a new italian sitcom. I’ve chosen it because the day before yesterday I received my acrylic pucks and started to make a set of fiducials.

dscf5808I bought these pucks here and here on ebay. The have a thickness of 8 mm and a diameter respectively a edge length of 60 mm. I’ve found no thicker option (for such a good price). They cost only 22,30 Euro for 10 round and 5 squared pucks including shipping.

dscf5811After sticking the fiducial markers to the LED-cubes and a round puck with double-sided tape, I varnished them with “zapon varnish”, which is normally used to prevent metals from tarnishing.

dscf5814The zapon varnish is clear and meant to function as a protective layer above the marker to prevent it from scrubbing. As you may see on the right, the paper gets a bit grey after varnishing, because it seems to absorb the moisture from the varnish.

dscf5815After testing the varnish on the puck in the lower right corner, I had to go on on another 14 pucks. I hated it, because at best you varnish every puck two to four times.

dscf5821A glossy picture of the fiducial family. One important thing in the end: the zapon varnish seems to be a bit impatient with the acrylic. As you may see on this picture (click to enlarge) nearly every puck has flaws on the edges. That doesn’t look very nice, but they will still do their job. My father told me that it could have something to do with the different surface tension of varnish and acrylic.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 4:31 PM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Family Fiducial”

  • Rampa Says:
    July 3rd, 2009 at 6:10 PM

    Did you do some test yet? :D

  • cdog Says:
    July 14th, 2009 at 2:38 PM

    Not yet. It seems, that object-tracking won’t functionate until I use more cams :(

  • Diego Says:
    July 31st, 2009 at 2:25 PM

    Wow, those fiducials look great!!. Why do you think you need more cams? How did the wide angle you bought work? Does it have too much barrel distortion?

  • cdog Says:
    August 3rd, 2009 at 12:25 PM

    Hey,

    thanks :-)

    Yeah, the distortion is to heavy. I need a lense with lower distortion but since such lenses won’t capture the whole screen, I need additional cams.

  • guillaume Says:
    September 28th, 2009 at 6:44 PM

    salut super travail dit moi comment on peut brancher deux camera pour un logiciel ( j’utilise touchlib) merci

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