Selling head tracking IR-LED setups (sales pitch)
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Hi everyone.
I’m a flight sim enthusiast and have worked fairly hard the last year to get a small personal hobby-business off the ground which some of you may be interested in. Since high fidelity flight sims seem to becoming more common (where every button is functional and detail in the cockpit requires precision at all times), head tracking is growing in need/demand. I found myself discouraged from learning a sim or attempting to build one because of the time, research, tools and components it took to get one up and running. A point that most simmers come to in Falcon BMS or DCS is: Buy or build head tracking?. If you’re semi-casual, on a budget and need something to get introduced to more complex simulation, I’m here to provide a solution:
A simple IR-LED array that you can then attach to your hat/headphones or whatever configuration you desire to work with a modified webcam and FaceTrackNoIR or FreeTrack. My goal was to give the do-it-yourself crowd a leg up and help them get into head tracking with this device. If you’re interested in head tracking, and don’t have soldering tools, wire, IR-LEDs and resistors - we’ve got you covered. If you’re interested in a special build, power supply or some modification to the models I commonly sell, please communicate and let me know and we can work together to get something reasonable for your needs (AA batteries instead of AAA, wall plug type of design - whatever…I helped a guy get specifically measured distances between his LEDs so he could house the wire in a 3D printed device).
I’ve shipped a few tens of these, never had one returned or any complaints. Technical specifications, demo videos of it in action are all listed on our site and please let me know if you have any questions!
Product images:
USB
AAA battery pack
9V battery
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For me, the electronics is the easy part. It’s building the frame to hold the LEDs in the right spacings and find a way to attach it to my headphones that I have difficulty with and I imagine this is the same for a lot of people, as you only really need a soldering iron to wire up the LEDs but need plans, materials, tools and the knowledge to use them to build the frame and mounting hardware.
I did manage to knock up a side-clip frame out of thin wood (plywood I think) but the spacings weren’t large enough and the LEDs tend to merge when looking up/down, so I need to find out what spacings would be more suitable and build a bigger one. Had it attached to a round bit on the side of my headphones http://www.samsontech.com/samson/products/headphones/sr-series/sr850/ with velcro pads but they didn’t stick very well to the back of the plywood as it’s not smooth, so it tended to fall off. It also didn’t sit very upright, so I had to tie a bit of string higher up to hold the top of the frame in line. Sounds like a mess because it was!
Before that, I’d tried a cap style arrangment with bic pen casings attached to my headphones but that didn’t seem to work as well as the clip and was even more messy and couldn’t be easily removed from the headphones as the clip can (when only velcro’d anyway, not so easy once I’d tied a bit of string to the top of it!).
As if I haven’t embarassed myself enough with the description of my efforts, here’s some photos!
This was a prototype of the clip, made with thick cardboard, which the velco stuck to quite well but was prone to breaking as you can see.
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Your solution: foldable 1mm steel wire. You give it shape, stick the electronics with duc tape or any other thing and job’s done!
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Your solution: foldable 1mm steel wire. You give it shape, stick the electronics with duc tape or any other thing and job’s done!
Well it can’t be any worse than what I’ve done so far
It’d be nicer if I could contain the wiring in some sort of housing though (although I guess duct tape wrapped around the wiring and steel wire will hide it and stop it catching on anything). I’m not sure how I’d attach the steel wire to my headset either, as there won’t be enough surface area for a velcro pad. I’m using those little black headers (cut from a PC IDE HDD connector) so that the LEDs can be easily swapped out if they fail, so I need a surface to mount those on as well.
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What I did is trimming the head of the leds to remove the semispheric lens over them. This way you have a non (so) directional led. And I wrapped it leaving all led head free.
I attached the wire with duc tape the first time (bad idea) then I better suggest to create a loop around the headset and use some velcro to attach it.It would be better to find some small tube for that, as you suggested. If you find some flexible one that could make the job, let me know
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What I did is trimming the head of the leds to remove the semispheric lens over them. This way you have a non (so) directional led. And I wrapped it leaving all led head free.
I attached the wire with duc tape the first time (bad idea) then I better suggest to create a loop around the headset and use some velcro to attach it.It would be better to find some small tube for that, as you suggested. If you find some flexible one that could make the job, let me know
I’ve got the wide angle SFH485P IR LEDs with the flat head, as shown here http://www.free-track.net/english/hardware/point_model.php
Someone once suggested to me tubing you get from an aquarium shop and some kite t-connectors to join them but my local hobby shop shutdown before I got round to it and I’m not sure where the nearest aquarium shop is, so I’ve never tried that.
A clamp like on these http://forum.free-track.net/index.php?showtopic=2853&page=1 would probably work well to clip it securely onto my headphones but leave it easily removable but I’m not sure where I’d find such a clamp. I’ve seen plastic clothes hangers mentioned but the ones I’ve got have much wider clamps that would be too big for my headphones and then there’s still the problem of trying to cut the clamp part off the rest of the hanger without cracking it and then attaching it to the clip holding the LEDs.
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In the UK Maplins have a IR LED with a 40 degree beam angle YH70M this is the same as the recommended SFH485P. One assumes if these were to be filled down the angle may increase.
