Posture Tracking (aka magic)
I don’t know why, but having the computer draw a box around something you’re holding in your hand is really neat. Its like the computer has a brain and discern things… its still dumb as ever, I know because I know exactly what its thinking… and its not a lot, but somehow its still plain ‘ole neat.
This week for Computational Cameras we were supposed to ‘do something’ with video tracking. I thought it over for awhile and decided I would try to apply it to a goal I have: better posture while at my computer. I have a tendency to slump over and to one side, which I’m sure is not good… and its really just a product of laziness, so I thought a visualization my motivate me to change.
So this is what I made: Posture Tracking. I taped two blue dots to my chest, perpendicular to my spine, and adapted DanO’s TrackRect code to look for that blue. Because the Rect is drawn around both blue dots, if I lean to one side the Rect gets taller to fit both blue dots. Thus, if I want to track my spine angle, all I have to do is track the aspect ratio of the Rect. To add to the visualization, and bring logging into the mix, I added a graph that runs along the bottom and a number in the top left. Ideally this would be a app that would sit in the corner and monitor you, but for now its kinda up in your face.
I am really interested in this, and I hope I can extend it in the future to include forward leaning… thats really more of my problem.