A couple of days ago we came across the AS3 library Marilena which is based off the Object Detection from the C library OpenCV. It’s an object detection library which is able to process an image and search for a particular type of object with a set of features. In this case it’s looking for faces (was provided with the library). See more about how it works here.

The input images are driven from the webcam. We added confidence and motion monitoring for the purpose of “snapping” a photo.

Check out the video below or try out the demo.

Update 3.3.09: We’ve gotten a few requests for code examples using this technology and who are we to say no? Grab the source here.

We couldn’t help it. The XBOX Controller wasn’t enough. Had to hook it up to a wiimote too (big nod to the guys over at the WiiFlash project).

It’s no secret that we’re obsessed with augmented reality. Using this fantastic car demo whipped up by John Lindquist over at pv3d.org, we added in some FLARToolkit love to create a cool experience of driving the car around on a table.

But we didn’t stop there. Using the mind blowing-ly good ControllerMate and some simple keyboard mapping classes, we hooked the car up to a wired xbox 360 controller for maximum nerd. Next step, get some shaders going on that sweet Ford Focus. Ah, we couldn’t resist, so we added a shader.

UPDATE: YouTube was being unhappy with our videos for some reason (we suspect it doesn’t get along with Snapz, but who knows), so we’re moving over to Vimeo. We’ve also updated our demo video here, too, to include a slight shadow under the car, as well as part where the car does it’s business without the flar symbol present. Enjoy!

So we here at squidder have been playing around with the FLARToolKit a lot recently. Pretty amazing stuff really. And while fooling around with it, something (perhaps obvious) occurred to us: We love flash. And we also love t-shirts. And Papervision. And Twitter.

And, suddenly, we had a way to combine them all together.

Below is an early technical demo, in which a barcode, containing a twitter username, is embedded within our FLAR pattern. This is important because you don’t need to create a new pattern for each username. Instead, the flash reads the person’s username (up to 8 characters, encoded in 6 bit chunks) and then pulls that person’s latest post from twitter. 

The source code is a mess, but we’ll be posting some more how-to details soon. In the meantime, enjoy the video demo below!

Update: YouTube drools, Vimeo rules.