AR DevCamp NYC: Recap and Going Forward

AR DevCamp NYC was great. We had demos of PyGoWave and Goblin XNA; as well as, numerous discussions on AR, markers, GPS, and AR games.  We had a number of people join us via Skype including the author of the Spads and Fokkers.  Tish Shute put together a comprehensive report of AR DevCamp NYC (within 12 hours of the event). I went through twitter and pulled the links to media that attendees posted.

• @mattlabs recorded Ohan Oda's presentation of Goblin XNA.
• @wonderchook also recorded a vide of a Goblin XNA marble game
• @comogard live blogged AR DevCamp which includes a video by Sean White
• Noah Zerkin brought a Nomad Unit for show and tell
• A video of the PyGoWave demonstration by Patrick Schneider.

Thank You
The event would not have been possible without @TOPPLabs providing their penthouse and Ashley DeVries' assistance with the event planning.  My co-conspirators Tish Shute and Ori Inbar assisted with planning and getting the word out. Kate Chapman created the logo. AR DevCamp was the brainchild of Mike Liebhold and  Anselm Hook provided encouragement (and the wiki) to organizers of the other DevCamps.  Finally,  thanks to all the attendees who brought their energy, enthusiasm and ideas.


Moving Forward
AR DevCamp NYC is just the beginning.  Two projects presented at DevCamp, ARWave and The Big ARNY, are building on the inertia of the event.  ARWave is a project to provide and open, distributed, and universally accessible platform for augmented reality built on the Google Wave Federation Protocol.  The Big ARNY is an Augmented Reality game for New York, a follow up meeting is scheduled for January 15, 2010.  In addition, Ori Inbar has started an AR New York Meetup.  Augmented Reality is starting off with a bang in 2010.

Augmented Reality Resources for Software and Hardware

One aspect of AR DevCamp is building and hacking stuff.  Augmented Reality has been around for quite some time and there are many software projects and some hardware projects.  I'll  cover what I found after a couple of days of searching.  This isn't intended as a comprehensive list, rather its a sampler of what's available right now.


Marker based Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality has been around for some time; but until the relatively recent advent of smart phones with compasses and GPS, the major focus of open source AR software has been around markers that register images superimposed on the a camera view.  The canonical implementation is ARToolKit from Washington University which has spawned implementations in multiple programming languages. In addition to ARToolKit derivatives, other marker based AR software are Goblin and Goblin XNA which was developed using C# and .NET, Simplified Spatial Target Tracker (SSTT) Visualizer developed by Hartmut Seichter in C++, and Studierstube Tracker which is conceptually similar to ARToolKit but is a different code base designed for mobile phones. Here is the sampler list for Augmented Reality marker software.


Flash/Shockwave: 

• FLARToolKit: http://www.libspark.org/wiki/saqoosha/FLARToolKit/en
• FLART example: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/augmented_reality.html
• EZFlar: http://www.ezflar.com/home/show_home (create FLAR app on line), code available: http://github.com/tcha-tcho/EZFLAR
• DART: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/dart/index.htm

C family:

• ARToolKit: http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/download/
• Studierstube Tracker: http://studierstube.icg.tu-graz.ac.at/handheld_ar/stbtracker.php
• Goblin: http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~eaddy/goblin/
• Goblin XNA: http://www.codeplex.com/goblinxna
• SSTT Visualizer: http://technotecture.com/ssttviz-download

Java:

• InstAR (ARToolKit based) http://code.google.com/p/instar/
• jARToolKit (Java binding to ARToolKit): http://sourceforge.net/projects/jartoolkit/
• NyARToolkit for Java/c#/AndroidL  http://nyatla.jp/nyartoolkit/wiki/index.php?NyARToolkit%20for%20Java.en

Processing: 

• Bryan Chung: http://www.bryanchung.net/?p=227

Mobile Augmented Reality

Mobile Augmented Reality places information, markers, and 3d objects in the camera view of a mobile device based upon location derived from GPS or positioning information and direction, typically from compass and accelerometer.  Markers are typically not used in mobile augmented reality platforms such as the iPhone or Android based phones.

Android and iPhone:

• Layar: http://layar.com/api/
• Wikitude:  http://www.wikitude.org/category/developer

iPhone:

• iphonearkit: http://code.google.com/p/iphonearkit/  and http://github.com/zac/iphonearkit/
• locative (Anselm Hook): A bare bones locative media server and client for sharing  favorite places http://github.com/anselm/locative
• Anselm Hook: augmentia: start of an iPhone AR app leveraging sio2  and http://github.com/anselm/augmentia

Android:

• OpenGamaray: http://sourceforge.net/projects/opengamaray/

Hardware
Augmented Reality hardware projects abound ranging from hacking heads-up displays (HUD) to wearable computing.  Pranav Mistry recently announced that the sixthsense project will be open sourced, probably so we won't have to resort to this:

There are also a lot of cool human computer interaction (HCI) projects coming from assistive technology that can be used to expand the AR experience.  Alternative modes interaction include using eye tracking for input and sound to provide additional cues that improve the user experience.  Also listed are a couple just plain cool projects

User Input:

• eyewriter: http://www.eyewriter.org/
• MICOLE: http://micole.cs.uta.fi/software/ haptics

Sound:

• soundmaps: http://makingmaps.net/2008/03/25/making-maps-with-sound/
• isonic: http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/audiomap/
• auditory icons: http://www.billbuxton.com/AudioUI06icons.pdf

Cool Stuff:

• Spads and Fokkers: http://spadsandfokkers.sourceforge.net/
• Johnny Lee: http://johnnylee.net/projects/   from wii remote hacks, to low cost eeg for brain control, kinetic typography
• EEG as HCI interface? : http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/index.html

This just scratches the surface of AR apps. Mashups between other software and public Augmented Reality APIs, such as Wikitude, are just starting.

AR DevCamp NYC

Augmented Reality Dev Camp (the unconference formerly known as GeoAR Camp) is scheduled for December 5th in Mountain View, CA.   AR DevCamp 1.0 is a full day of technical sessions and hacking opportunities in an open format, unconference style.


While a weekend jaunt to Mountain View from the east coast is well within the realm of possibility, the idea of yet another red-eye after a full day of unconference sessions and post event socializing sounded exhausting.  Tish Shute of  Ugo Trade and I were commiserating about not attending AR DevCamp, so we decided host a simultaneous AR DevCamp in New York for people on the east coast that couldn't make it to Mountain View.


New York has quite an active AR community, so there should a be diverse crowd that approaches AR from many different perspectives.  So far, some of the suggested topics are the Outernet Guidelines Initiative, using PyGoWave to implement the Google Wave Protocol for AR , the Internet of Things, and many more.  Like Mountain View, this an open format unconference. We plan to make use of teleconferencing and Skype to share sessions and include people who can not attend physically.  


The details are below and I hope to see geo-folks in attendance. 

New York City Event

ARDev Camp NYC is an open format unconference for Augmented Reality technical discussions and hacking opportunities. It will overlap with ARDev Camp in Mountain View, CA and provide an opportunity to collaborate with Mountain View.

Who Should Attend:
Anyone interested in mobile Augmented Reality, 3D graphics, the geospatial web, Outernet Guidelines, applications of AR in advertising and film industry (adult or otherwise), AR+Semweb, Google Wave Protocol for AR, locational privacy


Date/Time: 
December 5th, 2009. 10:00AM-9:00PM


Venue: 
The Open Planning Project office (TOPP) Penthouse in Manhattan


Directions: 
ARDev Camp NYC will take place at TOPP/OpenGeo's offices at 148 Lafayette Street, one block east of Broadway and one block north of Canal in downtown Manhattan. The nearest subway lines are the 6, N, Q, R, W, J, M, and Z.

Community Info:

Twitter: @ardevcampnyc, #arnyc

Skype: ardevcampnyc

Ning: http://ardevcampnyc.ning.com/

Sponsorship:

We are looking for sponsors for meals,snacks, and drinks; if interested please contact ardevcampnyc@gmail.com


If you're interested in attending or leading a session, sign up at ARDev Camp NYC on the ARDev Camp Wiki

Dell Mini 9 OSX: Blue screen after an update

I received an update notice from Apple for Java, Quicktime, and of course 10.5.8. Unchecking the 10.5.8 option, I accepted the update; but I forgot about it and didn't reboot for a couple of weeks.  I shut down the Dell Mini the night before a trip and when I got to the airport (free wifi at SAT), I booted up and it hung with a blue screen.  I was able to start the machine in Safe Mode during the DellEFI1.2a5 boot sequence by typing -x.  I fiddled with the DellEFI1.2a5 options, but none of that fixed the problem.


I had some time to think about it during my flight; something had gone wrong with the update and I decided to update the system to 10.5.8 as soon as I had internet access.  I chose to use the combo update because I like hit things with the biggest hammer I can find. The 10.5.8 combo update is huge, ~780 mb, and I think that safe mode also limits the download speed of the wifi card because the download rarely went above 125 kbps.  Another interesting side effect of Safe Mode is that the ethernet jack was working but could not recognize that the cable was plugged in.  After waiting a couple of hours to download the update, I ran it, which took another hour.  I did the DellEFI1.2a5 dance of removing the dsdt.aml file, rebooting to Safe Mode, running DellEFI1.2a5 to create a new dsdt.aml and reload the extensions, the rebooted with anticipation. After all of that, I still had a blue screen.


I tried a bunch of things such as checking the disk, removing programs from start up, but none of it worked.  Out of desperation, I decided to try the OSX Startup keystrokes, starting with booting to Safe Mode by holding the Shift key down during the the OSX boot sequence (Darwin is loaded and the Apple boot screen is displayed), and not using the DeLLEFI1.2a5 method.  It worked (but not as intended)!  The machine booted normally instead of going into Safe Mode; the first boot took a little longer than normal but subsequent reboots took the usual less than 20 seconds.


My initial hunch was correct, but rerunning updates did not work, so I did a little more research on why it worked. It turns out that holding the Shift key during boot does the following on OSX 10.5.6 and higher:

A Safe Boot deletes the dynamic loader shared cache at (/var/db/dyld/). A cache with issues may cause a blue screen on startup, particularly after a Software Update. Restarting normally recreates this cache.

While holding Shift during boot did not send the Dell Mini into safe mode as it would a regular Mac, it did delete the dynamic shared loader cache.  Of course, you can delete the cache manually while in Safe Mode.  Hope some one finds this arcane piece of knowledge useful.

Building a Prakticello: Build of Materials and making the body

It's been over a year since I "started" this project, but I finally took some time off to build the Prakticello.  For those who are curious about the plans, here is what you get:

The plans specify spruce for the body of the cello. Spruce tone wood is easy to find for guitar bodies, but its difficult to find the right dimensions because the sides of the cello body are 29". Tone wood can also be quite spendy.  With a bit of searching, I found that airplane builders also use spruce and you can order precut pieces.  I ordered slightly larger pieces so I could cut them to right dimensions.  I ordered the spruce from Aircraft Spruce and Specialty Company for $36 including shipping.  


Additional wood is needed for the saddle, bridge, knee, and chest supports.  I picked up several pieces of popular from my local home improvement store for about $15.  Mr. Nussbaum encouraged me to carve the neck and pegs, but I opted to buy a pre carved neck, finger board, nut and pegs from Metropolitan Music for $166.50 including shipping.  I picked up a tail piece on ebay for $8.00, but its wood and heavy so I'm thinking about getting a Wittner aluminum tail piece.  The remaining items that I still need are strings (Jargar  recommended), a bridge, and an endpin.  Here are the assembled materials:

Although the neck is pre carved, the size of the neck block gives me pause and I'm wondering who I know has a jigsaw or bandsaw I could borrow for a couple of hours.  I built the body of the Prakticello, here it is glued and clamped together.  For scale, the square on the cello is 16".

Nifty database login widget in GeoTools 2.6

Writing yet another login dialog for Postgres/PostGIS in Swing is tedious and mine always look crappy.  So I was happy to find that GeoTools 2.6 has a database login widget called JDataStoreWizard.  Updating the table with new features is also simple as adding your feature collection to the feature store.

Here's an example to call JDataStoreWizard and update a table in PostGIS

JDataStoreWizard wizard = new JDataStoreWizard(new PostgisDataStoreFactory());
int result = wizard.showModalDialog();
if (result != JWizard.FINISH) {
     System.exit(0);
} 

Map connectionParameters = wizard.getConnectionParameters(); 

PostgisDataStore dataStore = (PostgisDataStore)
     DataStoreFinder.getDataStore(connectionParameters); 

FeatureStore myFeatureTable = (FeatureStore) pgDs.getFeatureSource("myFeature");
myFeatureTable.addFeatures(myFeatureCollection);

Mike Blumenthal article on Google using its own geodata

Informative article on Google using its own data by Mike Blumenthal at Search Engine Land

Gamaray AR Browser Open Sourced

Development on Gamaray the AR browser stopped on September 30th.  Today, the Gamaray source code was released as open source and available for download.


In light of Layar wanting to charge content developers then changing their minds for the immediate future its nice to have alternatives.

Update on Dell Mini with OSX

It's been six months, so I thought I would do a quick update on my Dell Mini.


What works

• It's small and light weight: I travel frequently and its nice to be able to stick a notebook in my purse/backpack/grocery bag.  In contrast, my MacBook Pro (the old 15 inch model) weighs around  7-8 lbs with the power supply and requires a laptop bag.
• It's powerful enough: I typically have 10 -15 apps running at the same time.  This includes MS Office, Eclipse, Apache, Postgres, a couple of browsers, Thunderbird, Colloquy, Tweetie, Evernote,  Python stuff, java web apps, text editors - the list goes on.  If things go pear shaped, it's usually a browser hogging all the memory.  I recently built the GeoTools library and I think the Dell Mini did it in under 20 minutes.  I would have never believed that I could do my typical workflow with a 1.6 GHz processor with 2 GB of RAM.
• 32 GB of disk is sufficient: I thought that 32gb would be cramped, but I have yet to run out of disk space.  I don't think I've dipped below 5gb of free disk space, but I do cheat a little and use the 16gb SDHC card for storing big files.
• Wireless works everywhere: With my MacBook Pro, I have dead spots in my house.  This is understandable because my house is old with brick walls and with non-load bearing walls covered with plaster over a wire mesh.  I don't have this problem with the Mini, I get WiFi in every part of the house.
• Decent battery life: I can easily squeeze out 3 hours of work using the standard battery on a flight between San Antonio and DC, which is a 3.5 hour direct flight.
• SD card:  Being able to copy photos from the SD card on my camera to Flickr or just on to my drive is teh awesome.  No additional cables needed.
• Fast boot: So I have to hard boot on occasion, especially if sleep decides to throw a tantrum.  At least I don't have to wait very long, usually under 20 seconds.

What doesn't work

• Form factor:  Its friggin small, so I use a USB keyboard, a wireless mouse and an external monitor to be productive.  Using Spaces to organize the workspace sort of helps, but nothing beats a big screen.  I've gotten used to the Mini keyboard, but I still prefer the Apple external USB keyboard when I 'm  working.  I installed Melkort's touch pad drivers, but the gestures are not the same; i.e. one finger scrolling on the mini vs 2 two finger scrolling on the MBP.  The keyboard and external monitor are really helpful, but I can work without any of these things, if need be.
• Sleep:  Sleep used to work flawlessly, now it can be a crap shoot.  Sometime after the 10.5.7 update sleep started acting up.  Not a big enough deal to spend time tracking down a fix though.
• Watching movies: I've tried several versions of VLC and ran through all the fixes in the forums, but it still has halting problems.  Also sound is bleh at best, even with headphones or external speakers.  Really harshed my nostalgia when watching Space Above and Beyond.
• Monolingual:  Using Monolingual to slim down the install proved to be a case of being to clever for my own good.  Turns out that I did need some of those printer drivers and superfluous architectures.  I spent a couple hours debugging a make file before I realized that I only had an i386 architecture and that I need to remove the other architectures from the make file.
• N270 processor does not support virtualization:  This is the biggest thorn in my side with no work around.  More often than not, I have to look at stuff on a different OS; so  I use Virtual Box (gave up on Parallels) on the MacBook Pro.

For what it's worth, I haven't applied the 10.5.8 update but apparently my 10.5.7 update instructions work.  I did upgrade to the dellefi1.2.5a which got Melkort's touch pad drivers to work. Other than that, there have been no changes to the system since the 10.5.7 update.

I've use the Dell Mini as my primary machine for six months under heavy use.  My 15" MacBook Pro is used mostly for running other operating systems and watching movies.  Given that the MBP is 6 times more expensive than the Mini in its current configuration, leads me to question the conventional wisdom about buying the most hardware you can afford.  I think that this goes to show the OSX performs quite well with modest hardware.
   
So far, the advantages of portability outweigh the Mini's shortcomings.  However, that hasn't stopped me from eyeing the 13" MacBook Pros, which would do everything I need, just not in such a small package.

How To: Jars in a jar using Eclipse

I wrote a utility using GeoTools which uses a couple classes to transform geometry from one projection to another.  Projecting geometry uses EPSG definitions stored in the gt-epsg-hsql-2.5.7.jar which does not get bundled into an executable jar; for my utility to work as executable jar I needed to include the gt-epsg-hsql-2.5.7.jar.  


There are several approaches to building a jar that contains jars.  They typically involve using ant to bundle the files into the jar and a special class loader.  Writing the build.xml file and the class loader can be tedious.  Fortunately, the Fat Jar eclipse plugin simplifies the process and includes the One-JAR class loader.  


Installing the plugin can be done using Software Updates:

Click on Add Site

Enter the web site URL

Select the Fat Jar plugin and click on Install

Click Finish

Restart eclipse to finish the installation.

To build your project with external jars included, click on Export

Click on Other and select the Fat Jar Exporter

Select the project

Enter the name of the output jar, select the main class, and check off the One-JAR option to use the One-JAR class loader.

Clicking on next opens a dialog to select the jars to include, the default selects all external jars.  Unlike a typical executable jar, all the imported classes are not included so take the default and click on finish.  The Fat Jar plugin will build the jar with the external jars included, note that the final jar can become quite large.