Make: DIYSUPERHUMAN
EYEWRITER
BY ZACH LIEBERMAN
IN 2003, MY FRIEND TONY, AKA GRAFFITI
58 Make: makezine.com/29
DESIGN
The Eye Writer works by illuminating the user’s
eyes in a controlled way and analyzing a video
image of his eye movements. For the camera,
we chose a PlayStation Eye (aka PS3 Eye),
a small $25 webcam sold as a game system
accessory.
The PS3 Eye captures 640×480 NTSC
video and can be modified for high sensitivity
to infrared, which makes the camera a favorite of the multi-touch hacking community.
The PS3 Eye then feeds its video via USB
to a computer, where it’s captured by the
Eye Writer application built in C++ using openFrameworks (
openframeworks.cc).
For our first Eye Writer, completed in 2009,
we put the PS3 Eye camera in front of one
eye, mounting it to an extension attached
to the front of a pair of eyeglass frames. The
software cropped the video image, boosted
its contrast, and thresholded it to show just
a black pupil dot against a white background.
Theo Watson
