General (#7) - CMUCam3 good for picking up IR? (#554) - Message List

Hello,

I am looking for advice for the CMUCam3 and its possible use in a Senior Project.

My team is basically building a multi-touch surface table. Here is an example:  http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/maximum_pc_builds_a_multitouch_surface_computer?page=0%2C0

I realize the easiest thing to do would be to use a webcam, as mentioned in the tutorial. However, our instructor is requiring that we at least use a microcontroller for the image processing.

So I was reaserching and found the CMUCam2, but now there is an even better CMUCam3, and as such, I would like to know the following:

1.) Does the CMUCam3 pic up Infrared light? If so what wavelengths? If not can it be easily modified to do so?

2.) If the cam can be modified to only pick up IR (via a filter of sorts), can it be programmed to pick up multiple blobs and transmit the x&y coordinates to a PC to use as mouse/touch coordinates?

3.) Is the hardware provided enough to handle this, or would a seperate micocontroller be needed? If so, what is recommended?

I realize this might be more trouble than necessary, but I would really like a solution such as this as the alternative would be use expensives stand alone touch screens, which would seriously cramp the style of the project my team is going for.

Thanks in advance.