Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Environmentallights.com Releases an IR Buying Guide



So after much confusion and questions from the constant flow of multitouch customers trying to figure out exactly what they need to buy to build their MT setups, Environmental Lights has answered with a PDF buying guide. It breaks the process down for you with descriptions on exactly what to buy and url links to the products so that you can easily find what you need.
Environmental Lights also continues to deliver and respond to the Multitouch community. They have recently increased the brightness of their LED ribbons (from 300 to 390 LEDs), which means the possibility of even larger displays can be made with them and better results all around. The results I have been getting in all my testing with their previous ribbons is exactly what I expect from such high quality products, and this new line of products will be even better.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

The Two Types of PS3 Eye Stock Lenses (Pictures of Each)

Here is picture proof that there are two types of stock PS3 Camera Lenses.
One is the easily modified one (the Good one), which is mostly sold inside the USA, and the un-modifiable one (the Bad one) sold mostly outside the USA.
First off, here are some pictures of the different boxes Sony packages them in:

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As some members have pointed out, the box type doesn't mean you'll get a Good lens or not.
The cameras look exactly the same on the outside, except for the most outer piece on the lens.
These are pictures of the Good one:




These are pictures of the Bad one:




And here they are side by side:



You may not be able to tell that well, but the Good one has a curved outer glass lens piece, and the Bad one has a flat outer lens piece.
When you take it apart, you can see the biggest difference and the cause of the problem with the Bad one (on the left):



Bad one:



Good one:



You'll notice that the Bad one has a larger outer-most piece of glass than the Good one (on the right).
As far as I can tell, in this camera's stock lens, there are two pieces of glass and one piece that is the IR blocking filter.
The IR blocking filter is the piece that needs to be removed and replaced with an IR Band Pass filter which you can see in my other ps3 threads.
The problem is that the Bad one has the IR blocking filter between the two other pieces of glass, and the Good one has it closest to the sensor on the PCB.
Thus, you cannot modify the stock lens on the Bad one, without destroying the lens. You will have to buy a new m12 mount and a new lens.
To modify the Good one, just follow the video which you can see at this thread: http://nuigroup.com/forums/viewthread/4189/