The following message was posted to: dance-tech Hi Kent and everyone else, I have managed to get acceptable results in such situations by running long RCA cables. I wasn't convinced it would work until I tried it, but I have run at least 50-100 feet without terrible signal loss--certainly a clean enough signal for basic motion tracking. If signal loss does occur, you could always get a simple signal amplifier from radio shack (many of these will also split the signal, which can be useful). Of course, then you need an RCA input to the laptop. The iRez PCMCIA cards (if you can still find them) have the advantage of not slowing down the system like USB and firewire tend to do. Best, Peter On Wednesday, January 8, 2003, at 06:51 PM, Kent De Spain wrote: >The following message was posted to: dance-tech > >Mark and others, > > Here are a few more specifics to clear up my vague question >from a couple of days ago. I want to have a camera hanging over the >stage so that dancers moving to specific locations will trigger >events in Max/MSP. Because of the distance from the camera to the >Powerbook the issues are getting a clean signal to the Powerbook and >having a camera that will either just stay on all the time or can be >activated from the powerbook or a remote. For this project I do not >need to detect sophisticated color info, just movement, so I am >looking for a simple cheap camera that can accomplish that (the >webcam might be a good idea, I would have to test it at various >distances from stages) and a solution to the cable question (it >seems too long to run most cables without serious signal >degredation, and then it has to be something I can capture from in >the Powerbook -- which at the moment is either Firewire or USB, or >else I would need a cheap capture device of some kind). So any >further suggestions now that you know the full story would be >welcome. Thanks all for your thoughts so far. Kent > >Mark Coniglio (by way of dance-tech-admin@dancetechnology.org) wrote: > >>The following message was posted to: dance-tech >> >>>Hey Gang, >>> >>> I have a project coming up in which I would like to set up >>>a triggering video device over the stage. This leads to a couple >>>of issues: it will be quite a distance from my Powerbook so I >>>would have to find a way to get the signal from there to here (a >>>long cable run) and into my Mac. It would also be out of easy >>>reach so it would have to be on and stay on from before the show. >>>Does anyone have any suggestions for a good, cheap, easy solution? >>>If not, does anyone have any suggestions for any kind of solution? >>>Thanks for your help. Kent De Spain ---------------------------------------- The Dance-Tech mailing list has recently moved to a new address. To post a message, send email to dance-tech@dancetechnology.org. To unsubscribe, send email to lists@dancetechnology.org, with the words "unsubscribe dance-tech" in the message body. ----------------------------------------
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