If you're a Ractiv backer or a Touch+ buyer, you've probably noticed that the Ractiv team has gone silent for the last two months. While we can't do much when we're all over Kickstarter, Facebook and Twitter, I thought that maybe if we're united we can come up with a certain solution. For that reason, I've created this website to accomplish two main tasks: First of all, gather info of backers and buyers to prepare for legal action and secondly, have a unified chat space where everyone can talk and give ideas for our next step.

I haven't read thru all the notes since I've first found this.
But has anyone had reported success on things?

is it worth trying using these repositories: https://github.com/Ractiv ?
I'm able to do some light testing, but I'm no programmer, and can't provide a solution really for things. I am savvy enough to wire, flash firmware and run hardware tests if we want to still try to breath some life into this.

I haven't read thru all the notes since I've first found this.
But has anyone had reported success on things?

is it worth trying using these repositories: https://github.com/Ractiv ?
I'm able to do some light testing, but I'm no programmer, and can't provide a solution really for things. I am savvy enough to wire, flash firmware and run hardware tests if we want to still try to breath some life into this.

Jonathan,
It seems Matlab doesn't recognize the device, bad luck.
Keep me posted if you get it working!
Kind regards

Hi Jonathan,
I'm going to do the same probably. I have a project now for making a 3D-scanner with a laser and a webcam.
We are using Matlab to process the images and today I found out Matlab has great tools for making a 3D-scanner of my touch+. I hope you have acces to Matlab. Otherwise you'll have to make the calculations yourself. The initial program for the touch+ was made with Matlab btw.
Good luck!

Hi Jonathan,
I'm going to do the same probably. I have a project now for making a 3D-scanner with a laser and a webcam.
We are using Matlab to process the images and today I found out Matlab has great tools for making a 3D-scanner of my touch+. I hope you have acces to Matlab. Otherwise you'll have to make the calculations yourself. The initial program for the touch+ was made with Matlab btw.
Good luck!

Keep me posted, I can test, and find issues... I just discovered this group. I was going to mod mine to 3d scan

I bought 4 of these at the time what a waste

Anyone interested in finding a programmer to do this. We can use a GOFUNDME or something to pay them. At least we can get a working product.

If anyone would come here, nothing had changed, we're still screwed..
BUT we could try to log into their website http://www.ractiv.com/wp-login.php (admin is an account name) and post a trollface for fun

@Dan

Unfortunately, I have to admit that you are absolutely right Dan.

For those, like me, that are fascinated with possibilities of the 3D stereo vision, I've found an internet site with apparently more motivated people than Ractiv at https://www.stereolabs.com/ with https://github.com/stereolabs !

https://www.stereolabs.com/getstarted/

Let's face it, the project was a failure and we've got dated hardware with some extreme limitations. There really isn't much else that can be done-it's a lost cause.

@Touchhope, the thing is that the approach you're suggesting is beyond the point. I've worked with stereoscopic 3d detection before, more precisely to detect and recognize human posture (as an alternative to kinect). The whole 3d reconstruction takes a long time because its essentially a template matching process; one isolated area (block) from one feed gets matched to an area on the other feed. Should the two feeds be calibrated and rectified, you only need to search and measure horizontal displacement. Then, a formula gives you an accurate depth estimation. However this process is conducted by the CPU or GPU. The whole point here was to have the depth reconstruction ready by the device itself. Otherwise whats the point, we could have used the camera feed from a Leap. Isolating fingers will reduce the complexity of 3d reconstruction since you're only concerned about specific areas of the frame but still you have to do everything off the device. From my experience on the subject I believe its not worth it if we don't have any preprocessing done on the device itself.
PS I've used the OpenCV methods you mentioned.

http://docs.opencv.org/2.4/modules/calib3d/doc/camera_calibration_and_3d_reconstruction.html

http://docs.opencv.org/2.4/doc/tutorials/features2d/feature_detection/feature_detection.html

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3061282/microsofts-plan-to-build-the-ultimate-gestural-ui

https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/06/26/talking-hands-microsoft-researchers-moving-beyond-keyboard-mouse/#sm.0000dl3f5izjwcx3snd2l8n3indhl

Hi the touchhopers !

After testing a lot of commits, the most interesting to me is Regular update d679834 on 24 Jul 2015 https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/commit/d6798349bd6b4d385c4bef170a068a914b99287f because it shows us how win_cursor_plus process is supposed to control TUIO cursor.

Indeed, when you compile this commit (a lot of dependencies are missing in its dependencies folder and must be completed with other dependencies comming from other later commits) you can get a medium window called "image_visualization_pointer_mapper" showing us the supposed behavior of TUIO cursor as seen on Alexandru Bauer's Youtube on v0.55b release without full available source code on github.

2 circles get superimposed as finger is coming to a centered small pointing area and distance to get in contact with virtual surface on keyboard is detected by pointer mapper system which is called from main.cpp in track_plus in this commit.

Unfortunately this commit isn't stable enough and you get crashing of deamon_plus and also track_plus process in few minutes.

But no TUIO cursor is launched through win_cursor_plus process and indeed nothing can be listened using https://github.com/gregharding/TUIOListener !

However I've set TUIO port to standard 3333 port instead of random TUIO port.

How could we send to TUIO cursor tracking data sent to window called "image_visualization_pointer_mapper" ?

How could it had worked on Alexandru Bauer pc as seen on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulFTmjiwmAA ?

To get a very stable commit without the tasklist command problem in software path, you can try the last commit before "processes.cpp stability fixes" commit 6b7e36e on 2 Nov 2015, "In progress: new algorithm for finger segmentation" https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/commit/266d5e64dcdf8a0e19e44aa64059843017303f72.

The problem is that 4 points keyboard keys location calibration system seems to have been abandoned in the last commits (new circle initialization calibrating jauge) and we have to analyze how we can reconstruct logical pointer mapper system.

Indeed the notion of "palm point" seems to be important to inject tracking data to the win_cursor_plus process under csharp TUIO protocol.

So "Improved location of palm_point" on commit 2c0207a on 4 Nov 2015, post "processes.cpp stability fixes" commit must also be examined to try to understand how pointing circles get controled in "image_visualization_pointer_mapper" window https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/commit/2c0207a2e0ddfe1e0ec9fd43dcca81f714f5b0fc.

At worst, we could restart from the beginning from Umar Nizamani work and programming the proposed mathematical solution "A Fast and Robust Fingertips Tracking Algorithm for Vision-Based Multi-touch Interaction" by Qunqun Xie, Guoyuan Liang, Cheng Tang, and Xinyu Wu, and maybe mixing it with Matthew H. Fogle csharp proposal to get interaction the TUIO cursor !

So we need enraged newbies programmers to get it working with the minimal cursor function because it seems coding experts won't lose their precious time on that damn project !

What a pity that Lai Schwe isn't kind enough to share minimal information so that we must made a sort of retro-engineering to try to understand something making lot of tests !

Cheers !

Your desperate Touchhope still trying to find something interesting... until the hope will definitely died !

I never ever received any software nor could I find a site to download anything. I don't even know if it works period. Another scam on Kick starter.

A Fast and Robust Fingertips Tracking Algorithm for Vision-Based Multi-touch Interaction :

https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&ved=0ahUKEwjHqu2Xj9XNAhVGhywKHX4ZDs0QFghbMAg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fvc.cs.nthu.edu.tw%2Fhome%2Fpaper%2Fcodfiles%2Fphwang%2F201405231142%2FA%2520Fast%2520and%2520Robust%2520Fingertips%2520Tracking%2520Algorithm%2520for%2520Vision-Based%2520Multi-touch%2520Interaction.pptx&usg=AFQjCNGbYXgHuTMu1QB8EpGk9l8aeERraA&bvm=bv.126130881,d.bGg&cad=rja

http://reactivision.sourceforge.net/

Absolutely interesting !

https://github.com/mkalten/TUIO11_NET/issues/3

Heri Sim, because that was a blatant lie they told about what the real problem was. I'm 99.99% sure they screwed up the design making the hardware z-mapping fail to work. When they discovered the design flaw they tried for months to fix it in software before the key players started to "bail out". Eventually they picked it up again trying to make it work a bit better (and I'd imagine if we had someone pick through the code it could get to near the beta quality of buggyness they showed). In general though, why would anyone want to devote the time and energy to this project knowing that it's always going to be slow and buggy with a software z-map and limited hardware numbers since the devs have run off. Worse yet, heaven forbid you get something working and they "reappear" to take credit for their product finally working.

I tried for months to get it doing something reasonable, and even made a decent pointer app from it. However I could never get a reliable z-map myself and didn't have time to continue trying. I'll admit, touchhope is about the last man standing and continuing his hope of getting something to work. Wish you luck, if I ever have time I'll possibly look into this some more, but my office is filled with projects I have no time for... :)

Martin Kaltenbrunner have just answered my demand of help :

mkalten commented 12 hours ago • edited

"hi @touchhope, honestly I never heard of this device before ... looks interesting though.
as far as I understand, the manufacturer left you with non-functional drivers and sdk?
from what I saw quickly reviewing their code, they are using the CSHARP TUIO client in their software,
which may be a hint that their driver actually sends touch data encoded as /tuio/2Dcur cursors.

you could try to use one of the available TUIO client demos for any platform or language and see if you can receive anything on their UDP port (which seems to be different from the standard TUIO UDP port 3333)

you could also try to update the TUIO CSHARP code, which would also be the right place for this discussion, since this here is the C++ version ... https://github.com/mkalten/TUIO11_NET

if you want to provide me with such a device, I can have a closer look of course

edit: it also seems that they modified/extended the TUIO protocol, which probably results in making it incompatible with standard TUIO software. what's exactly the function of the win_cursor_plus component?"

https://github.com/mkalten/TUIO11_CPP/issues/2

New here. I never did understand why the bug shadowing other camera was taken to be such a big issue. Most projects just recall the product and get it fixed, and return the unit. Other projects just produce a second generation of hardware. Kickstarter backers don't expect a perfect 1st-gen product. It is ridiculous that they killed the startup because of a small setback.

Hi all the seekers (and researchers) for functional solution for the touchplus device's software !

Well in the past few days, I didn't found much things :

If you don't want console to get shown, you just have to comment "// #define SHOW_CONSOLE" before compiling in file track_plus_core/daemon_plus/globals.h !

Then the 4 processes (daemon_plus.exe, menu_plus.exe, track_plus.exe and win_cursor_plus.exe) still get launched but without showing any console, like in the commit 950e348 on 6 Oct 2015 (with pretty circle jauge instead of 4 calibration steps with 3 gestures and 4 keys pressed), which indeed shows no console while running, but unfortunately with inert launched process "win_cursor_plus.exe", maybe not receiving any udp port message from track_plus.exe !

Well it would be cool to finally understand how and where in code udp messages are sent from track_plus process to win_cursor_plus process and its subprocess "MainWindow" as seen on taskmgr.

If it could help, for the specialists on csharp, here is the debugging errors tracking while testing a commit but I don't know which anymore, I've obtained the following errors from launched win_cursor_plus that just crashed :

"Unhandled exception: System.Windows.Markup.XamlParseException: The constructor invocation on the type 'win_cursor_plus.MainWindow' that matches the specified binding constraints threw an exception. ---> System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException: Could not find a part of the path 'C: \ touch_plus_source_code \ build \ ipc'.
at System.IO .__ Error.WinIOError (Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath)
to System.IO.FileSystemEnumerableIterator`1.CommonInit ()
to System.IO.FileSystemEnumerableIterator`1..ctor (String path, String originalUserPath, String searchPattern, SearchOption SearchOption, SearchResultHandler`1 resultHandler, Boolean checkHost)
to System.IO.DirectoryInfo.InternalGetFiles (String searchPattern, SearchOption SearchOption)
to System.IO.DirectoryInfo.GetFiles (String searchPattern)
to win_cursor_plus.FileSystem.ListFilesInDirectory (String path) in C: \ touch_plus_source_code \ track_plus_visual_studio \ win_cursor_plus \ FileSystem.cs: line 34
win_cursor_plus.IPC.Update to () in C: \ touch_plus_source_code \ track_plus_visual_studio \ win_cursor_plus \ IPC.cs: line 69
to win_cursor_plus.IPC..ctor (String selfNameIn) in C: \ touch_plus_source_code \ track_plus_visual_studio \ win_cursor_plus \ IPC.cs: line 61
win_cursor_plus.MainWindow..ctor to () in C: \ touch_plus_source_code \ track_plus_visual_studio \ win_cursor_plus \ MainWindow.xaml.cs: line 123
--- End trace of inner exception stack ---
to System.Windows.Markup.WpfXamlLoader.Load (XamlReader XamlReader, IXamlObjectWriterFactory writerFactory, Boolean skipJournaledProperties, Object RootObject, XamlObjectWriterSettings settings, Uri baseURI)
to System.Windows.Markup.WpfXamlLoader.LoadBaml (XamlReader XamlReader, Boolean skipJournaledProperties, Object RootObject, XamlAccessLevel AccessLevel Uri baseURI)
to System.Windows.Markup.XamlReader.LoadBaml (Stream stream, ParserContext parserContext, Object parent, Boolean closeStream)
to System.Windows.Application.LoadBamlStreamWithSyncInfo (Stream stream, ParserContext pc)
to System.Windows.Application.LoadComponent (resourceLocator Uri, Boolean bSkipJournaledProperties)
to System.Windows.Application.DoStartup ()
to System.Windows.Application. <. ctor> b__1_0 (Object unused)
to System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall (Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs)
to System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.TryCatchWhen (Object source, Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs, Delegate catchHandler)
to System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.InvokeImpl ()
to System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.InvokeInSecurityContext (Object state)
to System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal (ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean preserveSyncCtx)
to System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run (ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean preserveSyncCtx)
to System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run (ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)
to MS.Internal.CulturePreservingExecutionContext.Run (CulturePreservingExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)
to System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.Invoke ()
to System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.ProcessQueue ()
to System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.WndProcHook (IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean & handled)
to MS.Win32.HwndWrapper.WndProc (IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean & handled)
to MS.Win32.HwndSubclass.DispatcherCallbackOperation (Object o)
to System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall (Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs)
to System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.TryCatchWhen (Object source, Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs, Delegate catchHandler)
to System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.LegacyInvokeImpl (DispatcherPriority priority, TimeSpan timeout, Delegate method, args Object, Int32 numArgs)
to MS.Win32.HwndSubclass.SubclassWndProc (IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam)
to MS.Win32.UnsafeNativeMethods.DispatchMessage (MSG & msg)
to System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrameImpl (DispatcherFrame frame)
to System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrame (DispatcherFrame frame)
to System.Windows.Application.RunDispatcher (Object ignored)
to System.Windows.Application.RunInternal (Window window)
to System.Windows.Application.Run (Window window)
win_cursor_plus.App.Main to () in C: \ touch_plus_source_code \ track_plus_visual_studio \ win_cursor_plus \ obj \ Release \ App.g.cs: Online 0"

Hi Jerry !

Pleased to finally get in touch(plus ;-) ) with the famous Jerry Bocci Jr, also a kind of "touchhope" at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/haptix/haptix-multitouch-reinvented/comments !

It was funny the other day when I've sent an email to australian backer Lachlan Pollock (friend of Maz), asking him to post you on Kickstarter a request of technical explanations on how you finally get it to work on your pc !

Indeed, as the frenchman that I am, I didn't understood on first read it was a joke ! In the minute I've sent another email to Lokki to say him I realize you were joking. He said you're probably a sarcastic man and of course you were ironic on that post !

Lai must be laughing at us seeing how stupid we are on not understanding his few commented code. Or maybe he is in a depressive phase so he is psychologically washed out after so big coding effort last year. Fortunately a band of stupid people can become intelligent if they communicate with each other. That's what we need : a good brain storming !

Lai is surely a brillant young engineer but, as he will grow old, he will be learning to better communicate with other people. No man is an island and what is more exciting in human life is surely what we can learn one from each other to go further together. You know like monkeys and in 2016 we are in the chinese year of monkey, aren't we ?

I invite Lai to reestablish dialog with us, people who still believe in your genious idea and project ! Come on Lai, thanks in advance man, you're the best :D ! You're mustn't be a dog and us neither, we're human beings !

I guess what is preventing win_cursor_plus process from being launched properly must be a silly thing such as "true" or "false", or "1" instead of "null" in some function.

As a csharp expert like Matthew H. Fogle, maybe you could explain us how a csharp exe is controlled ? Is there such thing as the manifest file for example ? (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/1w45z383%28v=vs.110%29.aspx)

What about C:\touch_plus_source_code\track_plus_visual_studio\win_cursor_plus\ cs files, also in TUIO folder ?

Maybe some examples to examine at http://www.tuio.org/?software and http://blog.mosthege.net/2012/08/19/windows-8-touchinjection-with-c/ and http://touchinjector.codeplex.com/ where you suspect windows firewall to get implicated on port blocking (blue message from last commit in December) ?

To me there could also be a kind of debugging console mode that Lai has established to develop his code and which is preventing win_cursor_plus to get launched in windows mode : some lines somewhere to get commented or uncommented maybe ?

Just time to find !

I'm sure one day we'll all, even Lai, be renamed Tom, Jerry, ultimate mouse killers !

I'll be glad to read you also on http://gharbi.me/ractiv/ soon Jerry !

Keep being confident in finding a solution together !

Cheers,

Touchhope (or Christian or The Hopin'Frog or The Artist or Prince or the unbelivable ramblings spammer at http://gharbi.me/ractiv/ !)

Regular update commit number d44e966 on 5 Aug 2015 is much more functional than commit number 65abaf6 on 8 Jul 2015 that I previously toughly solved on compiling errors under vs2015 community :

absolutely no compiling errors under vs2015 community

apparently very fast gesture recognition and 4 keys press detection during the 3 calibration steps

also udp channel messages sent and received between track_plus and win_cursor_plus processes

good base I think to try to understand what wrong in subsystem console instead of subsystem windows launch maybe (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/f9t8842e.aspx)

I'm definitely not gifted enough on C++ coding language ! However I still try to change different parameters and still search on internet forums. I'm quite obstinated when I start to solve something !

http://www.masscharterschools.org/sites/default/files/docs/news/view_press_release.pdf

For now, only a little message of encouragement from Lino, teacher at AMSA, which goes right to the heart :

Lino Alvarez

23 mai (Il y a 2 jours)

À moi
Traduire le message
Désactiver pour : anglais
Christian,

You are amazing, my friend. I have been watching silently from the beginning. Your choice of nick (Touchhope) was and still is perfect!

I would not know how to begin to help in this project, but I just had to send you a note of appreciation.

Keep it up,

Lino

OpenCV Error: Assertion failed (0 <= roi.x && 0 <= roi.width && roi.x + roi.width <= m.cols && 0 <= roi.y && 0 <= roi.height && roi.y + roi.height <= m.rows) in cv::Mat::Mat, file C:\builds\2_4_PackSlave-win32-vc12-shared\opencv\modules\core\src\matrix.cpp, line 323

@Matteo Mazzanti

If you are running win10, you maybe could give us feedback to see what happen at the end of the 3 calibration steps.

First, download the zip file on dropbox at https://www.dropbox.com/s/7oh7defgiwpe42z/win10vs2015touch_plus_source_code.zip?dl=0

Inside, you'll find the installer (you can make a first try just after installed) and then the build folder to overwrite Touch+ Software folder content in C:\Program Files (x86)\Ractiv\Touch+ Software (and make a new try then) and also the code I've modified if you want to make your own modification to the code.

@touchhope sorry if I didn't understand very clearly your last message: did you get the program working? how do I get it in that case?

Hi everyone ! It's again Touchhope from http://gharbi.me/ractiv/ !

Well, with my slow old brain, I've only just understand that it was possible to get ancient states of touchplus source code from github, clicking on "307 commits", then on the update that you want and then on "Browse files" on the right, then on the green button 'Clone or download", for example at https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/commits/master?page=9 from the very beginning.

After a lot of search on internet forums, to solve all compiling errors under vs2015 community from vs2013 code, (adding compiling options in properties under vs2015, adding several includes on top of a lot of the cpp files such as #include "stdafx.h", adding file in C:\External Storage\Dropbox\projects\touch_plus_source_code\track_plus_core\track_plus\imu.cpp, making all includes pointing to right absolute path dependencies, using Find And Replace Tool (https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/), I have zipped an ancient state of code from early 2015 July with all functionnal calibration steps and an udp channel opened for win_cursor_plus process which is launch in console mode unfortunately, in file win10vs2015touch_plus_source_code.zip, available on dropbox at https://www.dropbox.com/s/7oh7defgiwpe42z/win10vs2015touch_plus_source_code.zip?dl=0

To get it work on your win10, first install Touch+ Software.exe to get path C:\Program Files (x86)\Ractiv\Touch+ Software on your pc, then overwrite all its content with "build" folder content.

Don't forget to set your keyboard to English QWERTY instead of AZERTY to perform calibration steps ! Be patient while moving your fingers, and hold finger long time enough to let the software detect the key pressed on the keyboard !

Then you could make some code modifications under Visual Studio 2015 Community you'll find here : https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/vs-2015-product-editions.aspx, loading track_plus.sln project file in C:\touch_plus_source_code\track_plus_visual_studio.

I hope it will help someone (Matthew H. Fogle maybe, or Umar Nizamani when he would be able to buy a new win10 pc, or Maz and his team on OpenCV in California, or someone else with better knowledge than me, a pure self-educated c++ dabbler and beginner) to produce some hybrid version under win10 and vs2015 (of old and last state of code from 1st of 2015 December).

Now the technical challenge is maybe to pick up some portions of code in the different states of code during 2015 year and to mix it adding it maybe to this basic version on win10 and vs2015, instead of vs2013 and win7 or win8 ?

I'd like to end with these words from backer Robert Sweetman one year ago : "As someone once said... No man is an island. Thus no great things come from someone who cannot communicate with their fellows as they remain forever doomed as legend in their own mind only. An inability to deliver on anything, promises, product etc. leads to further isolation. Seek first to understand before trying to be understood. Be of service to others ahead of expecting rewards for empty words. From the short interview text below you could drive a bus through the perceptual issues/potential roadblocks associated with this insular approach. I now formally abandon all hope of seeing anything from this venture. The smartest people in the world are usually sunk by their inability to communicate."

You're so right Robert ! Indeed what about Albert Einstein ? Was he able to communicate enough ? And Nicolas Tesla ? And Rudolf Diesel ? And Xue Lai (or Lai Schwe ?) And Darren Lim ? Surely, maybe too much complicated thoughts to get explain to other people !

Could someone tell me (Corey Manders maybe at IEEE or Dr. Andrea Tagliasacchi ?) why this win_cursor_plus process isn't launched properly to show its big green pointing circle ?

Indeed if you'll make a try under vs2015 with this old state of code from vs 2013, you'll need to first install "vs2015 nuget package manager", you'll find here : https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/5d345edc-2e2d-4a9c-b73b-d53956dc458d and then, once installed in vs2015, going in the nuget manager in tools menu, click on browse thumb to search for missing "TCD.System.TouchInjection. 1.0.0" !

Cheers everyone and thanks in advance for any eventual help !

Touchhope

settings file loaded
track_plus created
message sent: menu_plus show stage
menu_plus created
Touch+ Camera:vid_1e4e pid_0107
Touch+ Camera found
HD WebCam:vid_1bcf pid_2c17
camera opened = 1
settings file loaded
message sent: menu_plus show notification Please wait:Initializing Touch+ Software
lmmin start 17 -0.0625 102 27 => 8.8574512464
lmmin diag 17 -0.0625 102 27 => 38.937247358
o i lmpar prered ratio dirder delta pnorm fnorm p0 p1 p2 p3
0 0 7.5e-10 0.99 -136188 -0.99 3.894e+03 3.894e+03 3.257578520679308e+03 1350.89623 -9.37912809 -846073.533 1295.47822
0 1 9.8e-09 0.99 -1341.89 -0.99 3.894e+02 3.894e+02 3.234297096063896e+02 152.992915 -8.79677653 -83455.5088 156.868713
0 2 1.1e-07 0.99 -9.14679 -0.99 3.894e+01 3.910e+01 2.812345443854284e+01 31.9310619 -8.73832706 -6362.60825 41.7329552
0 3 0.75 0.47 -0.533259 0.023 3.894e+00 4.128e+00 9.895639494260942e+00 17.219583 -2.1818491 185.809731 27.2941152
0 4 16 0.07 1.20613 0.027 3.894e-01 3.942e-01 8.474394462928776e+00 16.9125343 -0.243465595 73.888238 26.9152316
1 0 3 0.071 0.999151 0.012 7.885e-01 8.084e-01 8.167136010881887e+00 16.798468 -0.453914014 69.1773574 26.8799825
2 0 1 0.085 1.03525 0.033 1.617e+00 1.621e+00 7.800304404582053e+00 16.8434865 -0.816411489 78.8717992 27.3255439
3 0 0.5 0.17 1.10073 0.072 3.242e+00 3.151e+00 7.021468914398151e+00 16.7437777 -1.47364135 93.821699 28.442294
4 0 0.25 0.41 1.14788 0.12 6.303e+00 5.898e+00 5.108576367012606e+00 15.8210873 -2.63903859 109.33949 30.7108406
5 0 0.0091 0.98 0.689894 -0.83 1.180e+01 1.183e+01 2.913732420989827e+00 12.6857568 -4.76178647 123.025422 35.5100193
6 0 0 0.94 0.992328 -0.94 1.180e+01 4.198e+00 7.431822867262537e-01 11.5896332 -3.89756675 119.762047 35.3019043
7 0 0 0.11 0.904534 -0.11 8.397e+00 2.837e+00 7.051821872474435e-01 10.8442948 -3.56552813 117.221326 36.8446364
8 0 0 0.011 0.999469 -0.011 5.674e+00 3.517e-01 7.011518348117394e-01 10.7594774 -3.5554181 116.899842 37.0814765
9 0 0 5e-06 1.04006 -5e-06 7.034e-01 1.130e-01 7.011500253813939e-01 10.7937891 -3.56917069 116.974485 37.0197881
10 0 0 1.2e-07 1.1806 -1.2e-07 2.260e-01 2.202e-02 7.011499742902622e-01 10.8013456 -3.57200733 116.984487 37.0083637
11 0 0 6.6e-09 1.28289 -6.6e-09 4.404e-02 7.173e-03 7.011499713402897e-01 10.8037166 -3.57290845 116.988223 37.0045488
12 0 0 5.4e-10 1.28086 -5.4e-10 1.435e-02 2.022e-03 7.011499710994058e-01 10.8043908 -3.57316295 116.98925 37.0034774
13 0 0 4.3e-11 1.30325 -4.3e-11 4.043e-03 5.704e-04 7.011499710799826e-01 10.8045809 -3.57323471 116.98954 37.0031751
14 0 0 3.7e-12 1.29113 -3.7e-12 1.141e-03 1.701e-04 7.011499710783136e-01 10.8046374 -3.57325608 116.989628 37.0030847
15 0 0 2.1e-13 1.68566 -2.1e-13 3.403e-04 3.441e-05 7.011499710781922e-01 10.8046494 -3.57326048 116.989643 37.0030669
16 0 0 1.5e-13 0.485264 -1.5e-13 6.881e-05 3.853e-05 7.011499710781660e-01 10.8046613 -3.57326521 116.989667 37.0030458
17 0 0 2.6e-15 2.47817 -2.6e-15 7.706e-05 9.574e-07 7.011499710781638e-01 10.8046618 -3.57326532 116.989666 37.0030456
18 0 0.00061 9.5e-15 1.00485 4.1e-15 1.915e-06 1.915e-06 7.011499710781605e-01 10.8046612 -3.57326509 116.989665 37.0030467
19 0 0 1.9e-15 -0.913541 -1.9e-15 3.830e-06 3.611e-06 7.011499710781610e-01 10.8046603 -3.57326467 116.989662 37.0030487
lmmin outcome (1) xnorm 73.6149 ftol 6.66134e-15 xtol 6.66134e-15
lmmin final 10.8046612 -3.57326509 116.989665 37.0030467 => 0.70114997108

a: 10.8047 b: -3.57327 c: 116.99 d: 37.003
pose estimator initialized
message sent: win_cursor_plus open udp channel
message_received start daemon_plus0
message_received get toggles daemon_plus1
message sent: menu_plus get toggles 1011005
message_received open udp channel 60445 track_plus0
udp port is 60445
message sent: menu_plus show window
message sent: menu_plus show wiggle
exposure is 10
message sent: menu_plus show point
message sent: menu_plus show calibration
message sent: menu_plus show calibration next
step 0 complete
message sent: menu_plus show calibration next
step 1 complete
message sent: menu_plus show calibration next
step 2 complete
message sent: menu_plus show calibration next
step 3 complete
message sent: menu_plus show stage
calibration finished

message received open udp channel win_cursor_plus0
message sent: track_plus open udp channel 60445
bound to UDP port 60445

It's a pity that your first experience with Kickstarter is a failed project. Ractiv had a working prototype, but their code had a critical bug shadowing other cameras on the same computer. They couldn't deliver a fix and disappeared. The core developer, Xue Lai, stayed longer and open sourced the software, but didn't see it through either. Now the community is trying to do the rest of the development.

As a frequent Kickstart backer, my advice is that never view Kickstarter as a store. It is a donation platform. All contributions are donations, regardless of the promised rewards. In other words, don't expect the value coming back.

Sometimes I support as if I'm buying when the rewards are simple to produce, the prototype is really close to a final product, or/and the maker has a good track record on similar stuff.

Also be cautious in front of extraordinary claims which need extraordinary proves. There are scams for sure, although Ractiv probably wasn't one, at least at first.

So what is happening with this Ractiv thing now then? My friend at work asked me about it and I thought I'd see whats happened to it as I stopped hearing back from them. I kind of gave up and life is so busy I just forgot about it! Bad first experience with Kickstarter.

So what is happening with this Ractiv thing now then? My friend at work asked me about it and I thought I'd see whats happened to it as I stopped hearing back from them. I kind of gave up and life is so busy I just forgot about it! Bad first experience with Kickstarter.

In case the extension uses Chinese in its interface, here is the usage:

0. Have aria2 listening RPC
0. Install Extension
1. Get into file download page
2. Check after page load a yellow notice block is displayed and two additional buttons appear before the three buttons on the line below the file name
3. Hover over the right one of the two buttons, which is also the one with bold font, and check that a dropdown appears with "ARIA2 RPC" as the first option
4. Click it and the download should start

It seems @MJ took care of the downloading. If not, I am sharing this extension that enables download without a Baidu account. To use it you need an aria2 instance with RPC enabled and listening on default port.

Baidu Exporter:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/baiduexporter/mjaenbjdjmgolhoafkohbhhbaiedbkno

aria2:
https://aria2.github.io/

@touchhope
I made a google drive with everything I have from touch+, the build section in the rar file is way bigger.
Gonna take a look at it with a friend of me for osx, don't expect something. On github there is missing a lot.
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B06wt0SuwL2PSDFBUk01U1ZWUkk&usp=sharing

@MJ
Yes but when you click on that download button, even with Chrome, you get to a popup window that doesn't allow you to go on without a Baidu's account.

Strangely, when you try with "Touch+ Software.exe" (v0.55b touch+ software for those who want to make a try !), it does work when clicking on the grey button in the popup window !

Hi touchhope,
You can download it!
I had to open the link with chrome and chrome wanted to translate the page for me... ;)
The download button is on the top of the page, in between the qr button and the blue button.
Cheers!

@Yufan Lou

Do you have a Baidu.com account to download "touch_plus_source_code.rar" at http://pan.baidu.com/share/home?uk=3361743851&view=share#category/type=0 ?

I wonder to see folders content of this rar file but without a baidu account I can't download it.

Maybe a chinese member could download it for the community.

It would be cool to get it on a simple dropbox download link for example.

Thanks in advance.

Lai appeared on a local Shanghai TV programme today. He was introduced as a genius programmer who has an asteroid named after him (which is true, 25580 Xuelai). He mentioned Ractiv project implicitly when asked about his job. by saying "we were working on a hand gesture recognition solution, and it turned out much more difficult than we have imagined". The Kickstarter campaign was not mentioned.
Evidence (in Chinese, in the official Weibo account of the TV programme): http://weibo.com/2280075034/Drr1jdA20?from=page_1002062280075034_profile&wvr=6&mod=weibotime&type=comment#_rnd1461325071767

@everyone

Hi, everyone !

I've succeeded in compiling different states of Ractiv's code along 2015's months, even now on Windows 10 using VS Community 2015 and Find And Replace Tool (https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/) to make all includes pointing to the right dependencies, but, although I found a lot of interesting things on the net, I've failed getting the famous main green pointing circle from win_cursor_plus process :

http://www.tuio.org/?software

https://github.com/frog/touchproxy

https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/Touch-Injection-Sample-444d9bf7

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/6460.simulating-touch-input-in-windows-8-using-touch-injection-api.aspx

http://www.getcodesamples.com/src/5A0342CF

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/607234/Using-Windows-Interaction-Con

Any idea to get udp channel sending tracking data to win_cursor_plus process ?

On some of the late states of code, it seems to send something to udp channel but you get the blue error message "Your pc cannot run this program on this windows version." if you don't run it under the software folder "C:\Program Files (x86)\Ractiv\Touch+ Software", but on the latest states it only run in a path without blank spaces, such as "C:\touch_plus_source_code\build". On both cases, you can't get any green pointing circle.

Anyone with good knowledge on c++ and csharp to help us ?

Anyone with the zip file of the very earlier 2015, July functional state of code mentionned by Lachlan Pollock ?

@Vic Jang and Lachlan Pollock :

Any news from Maz and his team on OpenCV in California ? Did Vic Jang got in touch with Maz ?

Cheers,

Touchdespair ;-(

Quick update - for anyone experiencing the continuous need to disconnect your Touch+ then reconnect in order to use it in different sessions on OSX, the previously mentioned fix does actually work. In turns out that the current rendition of LibUVC always hangs onto the device on exit and never quits gracefully, but with the fix implemented the previous race condition that causes it to hang is avoided.

Cheers @touchhope , although I'm running on the OSX platform. I've read that there's some sort of bug in either thread.c involving a mutex or the number of buffers used for libuvc which causes the connection to fail. Trying to follow the problem is like entering 'issue hell' however - https://github.com/ktossell/libuvc/issues/16

@Mr Karoshi

To get stability with software and device detection, you can run the very last regular update from Lai Schwe following that below :

" to make a try to run something on windows, to see only 6 little windows with your fingers moving in realtime for now, just copy turbojpeg.dll file to build folder, after compiling in VS Community 2015, then launch daemon_plus.exe directly from build folder, without modifying any code in fact as soon as your path is without any blank spaces (C:\touch_plus_source_code\build), see : Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code#36 "

Anyone else finding they have to unplug and replug the Touch+ an awful lot while developing it? Getting it to connect properly through the SDK viewer is like the perfect storm of pipe errors and access denied errors for me.

Anyone with Visual Studio 2013 without Update 4 on his computer ?

Trying to compile earlier 07/08/2015 July build with VS Community 2015 #38

https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/issues/38

Umar Nizamani commented an hour ago :

Hey touchhope,

haha Kashmir is a political issue, I believe we are all children of the internet and wish the world didn't have borders or conflict.

I think I won't be able to do much for some time on the touchplus project now as my only windows laptop at home has died. I might be replacing it but that decision is a few months down the road.

Its great that you are keeping track of all the progress as this allows this issue post to have the complete low down for anyone ever planning to help on the project.

Cheers!

https://jayrambhia.wordpress.com/tag/opencv/

http://docs.opencv.org/2.4/modules/core/doc/basic_structures.html

http://itseez.com/opencv/

https://github.com/Itseez/

touchhope, interestingly that's the key point I'm making. There are NO specs that matter on the etron chip! Because ractiv failed to follow the reference design the etron chip cannot be used for anything but USB communications and alignment/control of the stereo webcams. Our entire solution is software based.

Hi everyone,

I've just found the very interesting simple work on OpenCV for beginners on Jay Rambhia, Bengalore, India's personal website, see https://github.com/jayrambhia/Vision and http://www.jayrambhia.com/computervision/ !

Yesterday I sent him an asking for his help email to see if he would by ok to try to hellp us.

Indeed, Dr. Andrea Tagliasacchi isn't sure anymore if he's finally willing or not to receive a unit and if it would really worth his time.

He wants technical specs of Etron's eSP870 embeded in Touchplus device to compare with Intel Realsense SR300 he is using in his lab : "comparison in terms of variance of z-noise, precision of silhouette images, range of operation and frame rate".

Unfortunately I don't have these informations to send him. However, Robert Sweetman from UK was ready to send him his unit.

I've also asked Lachlan Pollock on his build which he actually had it functioning in Windows 7 ???

Cheers,

Christian or Touchhope or Touchdespair I'm not sure anymore ! ;-)

Touch+ has more than a few things going against it - I'm guessing they won't be making any more for a start... but there are still a _lot_ of units out there in the wild.
And it did work at one point before they ditched the etron library and for whatever reason started reverse engineering that. Licensing issue maybe? Either way, I actually had it functioning in Windows 7 and even tried playing some minecraft with it.
I still have hope that someone can paste it all back together.
In the meantime there are definitely some interesting touchscreen options out there. http://www.air.bar/ looks like it'll be cool when it launches. Leap motion works.
But having briefly used the Touch+ I've got to say I enjoyed the experience and found it a lot more natural than the leap ever was on a flat surface.

Matthew-

Appreciate you taking the time to try and look into the code but it sounds like you are right,there probably isn't much we can do at this point. Something clearly went south on their end (if you recall, they allegedly flew out to meet directly with Etron after they "released" the software but then immediately pulled it due to crashing issues. In any matter-this would have been cool technology a few years ago but let's face it, even if it started working magically tomorrow, it really wouldn't be all that special. I'm more excited about the crowdfunding hardware that will turn any display into an android multitouch tablet (Forgot the name offhand). Again, thanks for at least trying!

FYI, I tinkered a lot with their code but was unable to get coordinates pushed over the UDP port to show up. I think something more changed than I realize. If you roll back to the first month of updates it works however. It's crap, barely works, but works. In general I feel the need to again point out I'm 99% sure whatever they "had" working was based on the ETron chip. What reason would they have to deviate from the reference design at a cost of no hardware disparity map? I think at the end of the day they fubar'd the production run and thus dissapeared when they discovered software wasn't going to pan out. We bet on the wrong company. Regardless, I'm happy to have my stereo webcam in the event I might someday use it for a robotics project. No, I'd rather use a Kinect! Anyone want to buy my sensor? :D

Hi Vic, could you email me at [email protected] with your details please

I am willing to send my unit to whoever is interested in getting the software to work.
But I only have one question: is there a chance that I can get it back if it starts working eventually?
I only have one unit and I will still want to have one if it become functional.

Ok, I think I see the issue, the release around 7/25/2015 has some code in main.cpp which clearly sends the points over to the cursor app. In the current branch that never happens. Instead code is called into the scopa section which clearly gets the points but never sends them over the udp channel. I'll tinker with adding back in some hybrid routines and see if I get anywhere...

Haven't made any real progress, but discovered if you type in "show pose name" in the track plus window while it's running you get an extra 2 windows showing a "pose" approximation and the track plus window clearly labels rest and point. Every once in a while something called rocknroll also. lol... I wish Lai were helping with this.

I went back to the earliest release on github and interestingly already seem to be confirming a problem I see. The win_cursor_plus has no entry point, I see where the menu plus app tosses up the note that it's starting it (cursor subprocess); but it only sets the paths. Originally it was launched from the daemon. I'm going to tinker with it and see what if anything happens.

Can someone outline the scenario that "used" to work? Does anyone have that release package/build folder and what OS etc was being used?

http://gfx.uvic.ca/people/ataiya/

Contact Me
Dr. Andrea Tagliasacchi, Assistant Professor
Graphics Laboratory @ University of Victoria
Department of Computer Science
ECS 608, 3800 Finnerty Road, Victoria (BC) - Canada
E-mail: [email protected]
Office: +1 250 472 5049

Response to my Hello Anastasia (https://github.com/OpenGP/htrack/issues/17) !!!

ataiya commented 13 hours ago

"Hi @touchhope.
Note this software is not for gesture recognition, but for continuous 3D tracking (a much more difficult problem). You can surely send my lab a sensor to try, and I wonder how it will compare to the Intel realsense SR300.

Cheers, Andrea"


So, what can we do now ?

Is there someone with more than one unit, ready to send one to this lab ?

Hey touchhope,

Just wanna say thank you for your continuous attention to this damn project.
Let's hope, like your user name suggests, that we can find someone who's capable of getting something out of touch plus' source code.

Good luck to all of us.

Hello Anastasia

https://github.com/OpenGP/htrack/issues/17

Hello Nick

https://github.com/nickgillian/grt/issues/46

Hi guys, thanks to everyone who emailed in - I think we have a unit sorted out for my programmer friend to use for testing. I'll get back to everyone who answered later in the day.

I and a couple of others were actually using a compiled version of the Windows code from Lai Schwe before later updates broke it again completely. So it has to be possible.

Again with the request for a spare Touch+ unit, or someone who just wants their money back - I'll purchase the thing off you for what you pledged. Email me at [email protected] if you're interested in helping out with further community development.

I've been avoiding this device/project ever since they seemed to come back and release some code right when I started into it myself about this time last year. Sounds like it's again not moving anywhere. I'm sad to say this company is an example of entrepreneurs that should be banned from public funding. It's one thing to publicly admit problems and at least communicate to your backers. It's quite another to just turn tail and run like cowards.

I'll try to boot up my development software and take a look at the current code state, I know a little C++ (I was a big C dev back in the day). But if the core functionality isn't present there isn't a lot I can do. I honestly haven't even tried Lai's code yet.

Will update sometime soon with what I find.

I need a complete, undamaged Touch+ unit with box for a friend who is well versed in OpenCV and believes he can make functional software. Email me at [email protected] if you're willing to sell me a unit.

@touchhope that's perfect, thanks for that. In regards to your latest post - I've started using the Touch+ with OpenCV in a robotics project, and your code has been instrumental in getting my work off the ground. Thank you!

========================================

Message du : 18/02/2016 12:24
De : "cmanders " <[email protected]>
A : "Ractiv/TrackPlus_OSX" <[email protected]>
Copie à : [email protected]
Sujet : Re: [TrackPlus_OSX] Hello Corey (#1)


Hi Christian,

Sorry for the delayed response.

I know things are really disappointing. I have left the team, I'm not sure
what I can really tell you. Darren and Lai didn't really communicate to me
that much when I was on the team. No surprise, but I think the biggest
problem with them is communication. I hope the executables and SDK i posted
quite a while ago github will help people. I really hope that they do get
some software released. In the future I may be able to share more details,
but I right now I can't.

I'm quite busy with other projects right now, but if there is some way I
can help the community without committing too much time, I can definitely
do that.

Cheers,
Corey

@Mr Karoshi

Etron 3D Depth-Map Camera Controller - eSP870

https://www.leopardimaging.com/uploads/LI-ESP870-STEREO-M031_datasheet.pdf

http://www.computex.biz/etron/default.aspx?com_id=2215&pdt_id=62402&PageType=ProductDetail&ContentTab=Specification

http://www.etron.com/en/pr/latestnews2.php?ID=341


Output Interface

USB3.0 Super speed

USB 3 types end point - Control, Interrupt, Isochronous

Support isochronous IN x 2

CMOS sensor Interface

2 lanes MIPI CSI-2 x 2 channels

Parallel 8/10bit x 2 channels

Pixel clock up to 96MHz

Embedded Image Signal Processing engine

Supports up to Full HD 1080P (1920x1080)/ 30fps

Supports up to HD 720P (1280x720)/ 60fps

Supports up to HD 720Px2 (2560x720)/ 30fps

Embedded stereo vision depth map engine

Up to VGA/60fps output

Embedded motion JPEG engine

Enabled on USB high speed only

Support video output format

YUY2

8/10/12 bit RGB RAW data

MJPEG 422

Support 3D video format

Side-by-side mode

Support splitter video out

2D mode

3D mode

Depth map mode

2D + depth map mode

3D + depth map mode

I2S audio interface for external ADC

Support EEPROM or SPI Flash

Support GPIO x 7

USB Video Class V1.1 complaint

USB Audio Class V2.0 complaint

144-Pin BGA package: Pb and Halogen Free

Does anyone have the specs for the camera resolution, sensor sensitivity etc?

What money, Renato? Blood, stones and Ractiv.

But onto something else, does anyone have a spare unit that they'd like to donate to the cause for someone familiar with tracking software and problem solving to look at? No promises, but it's much better than waiting on absent creators. And he agrees that it'd be hilarious to release software before the creators.

Instead of trying to get it to work, why not focus our efforts in getting our money back?

Who's with me?

Today, Lai is coming back on github on the nwjs webkit (used in menu's touchplus software ?)

https://github.com/sheley1998?tab=activity

https://github.com/nwjs/nw.js

http://nwjs.io/

Hello Corey

https://github.com/Ractiv/TrackPlus_OSX/issues/1

Hello Matthew

https://github.com/shadowmite/TouchPlusCMDR/issues/2

On processes.cpp, just a simple issue of slash and blank spaces characters in software path.

https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/issues/36

Dead and not even worthy of a good story I guess. If anyone sees or hears of old mate Darren popping up again, leave a message. I'd love to hound him for answers.

Happy New Chinese Year 2016 in Shanghai !

https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/issues/35

so...is it time to finally declare this project dead?

@Tom Hickey
and @Wassim Gharbi

Unfortunately not yet.

I wonder if Wassim Gharbi could send a single email to all members to ask if someone have the knowledge or know someone who have it to finish a minimum working version.

Indeed, at this point, since Lai from Ractiv appears to have abandoned, it would be cool to try to use the existing code to develop something interesting.

I hope Umar is gifted enough to achieve understanding Lai's code, which is certainly not so easy, I think !

Let's hope again !

I have seen a few things on GitHub, but is there any working SW yet for this device?

Hi all,

I've been screwed like anyone else.

Discovered this site thanks to @NickWhitcroft

Hi all,

I'm new to the website but am interested to hear of any progress with the Mac code.

Thanks

Yesterday, I post an issue "Hello Umar" on https://github.com/umarniz/TouchPlusLib/issues/2


And today :

Umar Umarniz commented 22 minutes ago

Hi touchhope,

Wow, I didn't know this much has happened since I did that weekend hack on Ractiv. Thank you for such a good breakdown on the situation of things.

I can't promise anything but I will be compiling the code that Lai has done and play around with it in the coming days to see what could be done.

Will keep you guys posted as I have progress on http://gharbi.me/ractiv/

At this point, I think everyone has pretty much accepted that we're not getting a working product. Honestly, at this point, I'd just love to know why. Perhaps it's worth reaching out to some media outlets again-this is a pretty unique kickstarter fail in that the company actually delivered a tangible good to backers but has been unable to provide software or an explanation. It would have been one thing if we never actually received the touch+ - that (sadly enough) happens all the time with crowdfunding projects for various reasons. But it seems pretty odd that the software-something which had to have been around for quite some time in various states before shipping the product was never released. At the very least, it'd make an interesting article lol...

For those who were still believing in Santa Claus, I think they were disappointed once again not to find their software for the Touch + under the tree.

There is nothing in our socks and we "have the moral in the socks", as we say in French.

And now, we will still nevertheless expect a new "regular update" on Github to be sure that Lai has not definitively abandoned.

Maybe he has calibration issues, or device detection loss issues, or spatial coordinates issues, or human communication with the community issues, or some other issues... Who knows ?

At this stage of software development, I wonder if some among backers or buyers would be able to modify the code to run a minimum of basic functions.

I see the issue #34 has just been opened on Github about the code for OSX, then maybe the community will take over if ever Lai eventually let it drop.

So keep hope and Happy New Year 2016 to everyone!

Hello,
As you mention we were screwed.

I was a kickstarter backer.
I tried in the past to request a refund.
However at the moment I am trying to make it useful.

I tried today and image appeared.
I needed to restart my computer and now no gray are were image appears...

I was trying to understand if there is a software development that could maintain the camera operational as well as memorize gestures to be really useful.

Any toughts?

Thanks Guys
Nuno

Combined search efforts might lead to existing/upcoming solution/product, check this:
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/273119564_Augmenting_Indirect_Multi-Touch_Interaction_with_3D_Hand_Contours_and_Skeletons

https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/issues/32#issuecomment-150536381

Hi Lai! Since there is this community around this project, why not clearly establish a roadmap (as Justin Huang suggests on Wassim Gharbi's website http://gharbi.me/ractiv/index.php) to reach a new version that would work like the 0.55b on Alexandru Bauer's computer but with a win32 win64 of 7 to 10 compatibility and of course also on OSX?
Indeed, now that maybe everyone is gone at Ractiv except you, maybe some people within backers and buyers in this community could help you facing some issues on c++ if only they could know a little more about the current precise roadmap. Maybe not so much because you seems to mainly work on algorithm (Are you doing some "Robust Articulated-ICP for Real-Time Hand Tracking" like on https://github.com/OpenGP/htrack ?), but initial Ractiv's roadmap was : "Next Steps : As this is only the alpha version of the software, you can expect it to improve tremendously over time. We will be releasing updates weekly! Here’s what we’re working on, which you can expect in future updates soon. (in order of priority) :
(OSX support)
Linux support
SDK (will give you access to images, hand segmentation, and finger coordinates)
Multitouch gestures (pinch to zoom, two-finger scroll)
Table mode (manual calibration on untextured surfaces)
Improved tracking performance
Faster performance (including SSE and GPU acceleration) and lower CPU usage
Gesture learner (so you can teach Touch+ to recognize different gestures to activate different functions)
3D hand model

This video is impressive. That's the most robust hand tracking I've seen so far - amazing what good software can do.

Check this:
http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/206951/files/htrack.pdf
https://youtu.be/rm3YnClSmIQ

the biggest problem of this project is the developers/owners don't have any sense of product development lifecycle management, in which you would have a design, and then prototype and the implement and then test and then release. you might mix implementation with test, but you would have a clear roadmap about where the development is, what still needs to be completed.

without this basic knowledge you will be declaring 'release', 'done', 'the first working version' time and time again and still you make nothing. you should not have any hope if you see no plan, no defect list, no schedule, but a lot of promise.

too many 'definitely this weekend', too many 'we are very closed'. all that i see in the passed year doesn't make sense at all, not at all.

this team is just a group of junior middle school students happen to have an interesting idea and built a prototype and have no idea what to do next. (a prototype can show the idea but not necessarily needs to work, you can put a lot of hack, workaround and even hard-coded values into it so that it looks nice. i've built prototypes that attracts a lot of interests but i know it is far far away from what people think it is.)

on the other hand, the backers of this project is the best, world class, most patient.

i am just complaining again and that doesn't help, i know.

From the very last two regular updates, we now only get that message in console :

"settings file loaded
Error : non valid argument or option - « Files ».
Enter "TASKLIST /?" to show the syntax."

and nothing else for the moment... but there is still some activity on that project... and that is better than nothing... a little hope left... to get a first working version...

Still some activity today on github :

sheley1998 deleted branch dense_pose_estimation at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
3 hours ago

Updated 12 hours ago, some new hope?

the definite release never came... now things have been quiet again.

a brand new week!
is it released? or is it just another 'promise'?

sheley1998 commented an hour ago

Hi guys! Definitely gonna compile and release this weekend, I'm under a ton of pressure right now cuz people are starting to leave the team. Made some serious progress on the algorithm in the past 2 weeks, so I'm gonna focus primarily on stability issues tonight.

Looks like there hasn't been any action on github in a week... not looking good? All along it seems like everything has been being updated regularly.

When copying database folder (empty in the build tree) from other version, we can get 3 more windows from track_plus.exe(32 bit):

image_palm_segmented0 (calculate where are your fingers on each of your hands)
image_palm_segmented1 (calculate where are your fingers on each of your hands)
image_preprocessed1 (black and white)
image_small1 (violet)
image_visualizationkladhflkjasdhf (In that last window, you can see a realtime tracking moving circle for each of fingertip. Also in that window on the left top, a grey and a white hand drawing each finger in realtime, but it seems to detect if it's the right hand to show the circles, apparently not moving if it's the left hand !)

But on my windows 10, track_plus.exe just run for few minutes before it crash (maybe roughly losing device detection) !

I've just compiled from "Brand new (and much better!) stereo_processor" last update on github and I confirm we now pass the calibration data download step to "val_exposure" in console and get two little windows, one in violet, the other in black and white where you see your hands moving in realtime, but still no pointing circle...

https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/issues/32

It's true we're now all so impatient to see something work on our computers since Alexandru Bauer saw a pointing circle 2 months ago and we still don't know how his computer's configuration did made it possible to run with which good dlls ! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulFTmjiwmAA)
Before the penultimate update on github, the compiled code doesn't show anymore the blue error message from windows 10 but it still stop at 99.9% after downloading calibration data.

Not yet, Jericho. Won't even compile in xcode at the moment.

has anyone gotten anything to work on osX?

Just found this community after a year of frustration. Whats going on with the folks at Ractive?

Most recent build if anyone interested trying: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5CB6lYHiJRxcjRrSlhQYXF2LWc/view?usp=sharing
Link wont be working long.

Most recent build if anyone interested trying: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5CB6lYHiJRxcjRrSlhQYXF2LWc/view?usp=sharing
Link wont be working long.

And most recent commit is not compiling with
..\..\track_plus_core\track_plus\hand_splitter_new.cpp(198): error C2065: 'wdith0': undeclared identifier

Well, most recent version what complied looked like that for me http://screenshots.ryotsuke.ru/scr_3038e53c37f3.png - a loop of crashes

https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/issues/28

@everyone

Sorry girls and guys (ladies first :) i know the girls love technology too) ! But here is the return of the ramblings of the spamming hoping frog because this silent website is becoming a bit unbearable ! All i'm interested in is to get a usable product ! But it's true, i'm a bit crazy, but like most people around the world i think !

@Lai Schwe

Hello Lai !

What an awesome downloading calibration data circle gauge on touch plus control panel ! But it stop at 99.9% with a blue message from windows 10 : "this application can't run on your pc" "To find a version for your pc, please contact the software publisher" button "close" then "bad image caught" "access refused" in the console and again and again, so you have to kill the task. This is on my ACER R7 under win10 x64 (exWin 8.1 with no working update menu).

Under VS community 2015, it's now compiling quite easily from the very last regular update after modifying "LIBJPEG-TURBO_DIR root_dir\dependencies\Windows\libjpeg-turbo" and copying turbojpeg.h and turbojpeg.lib missing under thr right folder under "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\"

When trying to update from the still working update menu on my exWin7 pc under win10 x64, it now says it fails to verify and "please check your internet connection" but i'm connected to the internet : maybe the web target for update build isn't existing no more ?

Would you soon propose us a new windows installer with the missing dll and a new build embedded to make some beta tests and sending you feedback to go further ?

Again congratulations for your hard work because it seems to become a very sophisticated software, hopefully a soon working software, i wish !

@Wassim

Hello Wassim !

Could you check your email notifications system on your website ? It seems it doesn't work at all.

And i think it's a good idea to have the main interesting posts pinned on the right side for example, keeping the newest on the left side, or the other side if you prefer.

Having this done for a more attractive design, it would be great to send a single email to all the subscribers to have them connected (maybe in several batches to avoid down server issues : often offline these days).

Not possible in it's present state. Keep watching the github for progress.

Would it be possible to also "pin" a comment with directions on how to get the latest software and install on our paper weight - I mean, device?

Almost daily updates on github now, seems things are getting shape :)
Lai uploaded a .rar file on pan.baidu.com yesterday, http://pan.baidu.com/share/home?uk=3361743851&view=share#category/type=0
I can't open the file but maybe one of you knows the trick ;)

what is the new update version now? Can it work?

Thanks AlexZ. It's becoming a bit unbearable with all of touchhope's ramblings and every single commit, issue, and correspondence to them. All i'm interested in is a usable product.

@touchhope: plz stop spamming this site, there is no need to post every commit of lai.

I installed VS 2015 yesterday and compiled the latest code, didn't see a lot of changes since I checked last 4 weeks ago, again disappointing.

https://github.com/sheley1998?tab=activity


2 hours ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 d58426a

Regular update

@sheley1998 caeae71

In progress: OSX adaptations

3 hours ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 3ecd9a4

Hand pose data added

3 hours ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 c7b6457

Regular update

Pretty impressive working amplitude for Lai !

Is he sleeping enough ?

an hour ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 ffd5b47

Added additional calibration data

an hour ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 626c2fb

Centered pose data for better matching

11 hours ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 0862951

Regular update

What's up for today ?

You can view, comment on, or merge this pull request online at:
https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/pull/25
Commit Summary
• Enhanced background learning mechanism
• Miscellaneous enhancements
• Added DTW matching indexes output
• Updated IPC lock file mechanism + misc enhancements
File Changes
• M build/menu_plus/js/ipc.js (16)
• M build/menu_plus/js/main.js (5)
• M track_plus_core/track_plus/camera_initializer_new.cpp (11)
• M track_plus_core/track_plus/camera_initializer_new.h (2)
• A track_plus_core/track_plus/dtw.cpp (145)
• A track_plus_core/track_plus/dtw.h (28)
• M track_plus_core/track_plus/ipc.cpp (16)
• M track_plus_core/track_plus/main.cpp (36)
• M track_plus_core/track_plus/math_plus.cpp (16)
• M track_plus_core/track_plus/math_plus.h (4)
• M track_plus_core/track_plus/mono_processor_new.cpp (4)
• M track_plus_core/track_plus/motion_processor_new.cpp (112)
• M track_plus_core/track_plus/motion_processor_new.h (4)
• M track_plus_core/track_plus/pose_estimator.cpp (50)
• M track_plus_core/track_plus/pose_estimator.h (3)
• M track_plus_core/track_plus/stereo_processor.cpp (24)
• M track_plus_core/track_plus/stereo_processor.h (21)
• M track_plus_visual_studio/track_plus/track_plus.vcxproj (2)
• M track_plus_visual_studio/track_plus/track_plus.vcxproj.filters (6)
• M track_plus_visual_studio/win_cursor_plus/IPC.cs (16)
Patch Links:
• https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/pull/25.patch
• https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/pull/25.diff

@Wassim
I confirm email notification just don't work for me !
I didn't get inform of zycho42's post !

@zycho42
Sorry, but i can't help you to compile under OSX because i only have some knowledge on windows !
Hopefully, someone will help you to make a try on you Mac, if email notifications works for someone !

Just wanted to send a huge thank you to everyone that's trying to salvage our Touch+'s! Can't wait to try out a Mac or Linux(!) version. I wouldn't mind compiling the code myself but I would need some pointers on how to do that on Mac/Linux.

Big thumbs up for everyone keeping this going!!

No holidays for Lai ! Yes, he's still working hard on the project !

4 hours ago:

Updated IPC lock file mechanism + misc enhancements

latest commit 4a44894a4a
@sheley1998 sheley1998 authored 4 hours ago
.settings In progress: fixing pointer_mapper plane logic bug 5 days ago
build Updated IPC lock file mechanism + misc enhancements 4 hours ago
dependencies ATLMFC dependency added 10 days ago
track_plus_core Updated IPC lock file mechanism + misc enhancements 4 hours ago
track_plus_unity Regular update 4 days ago
track_plus_visual_studio Updated IPC lock file mechanism + misc enhancements 4 hours ago
track_plus_xcode Added OSX cursor project 7 days ago
.gitignore Regular update 10 days ago
LICENSE.md Regular update 2 months ago
README.md Merged with OSX code base 26 days ago

"I see seven little windows
but i only see one way out..."

Come on AlexZ, sing with me (you know U2's Running to stand still ! Or maybe you would prefer from Depeche Mode "A question of time" or "Never let me down again" ?)

So now from the latest regular udate, two more little windows :

image_dist_min (with my fingers from only one hand drawn in white lines)
image_current (with my fingers from only one hand drawn in white lines)

image_visualization0 & image_visualization1 (where this time i can see now a picture of my keyboard with five moving white lines while i'm moving my fingers)

Running to stand, still no pointing circle but no track_plus.exe crash at that time !

And menu "Update software" still don't work anymore on my ACER R7.

And something very strange : when running all that stuff, it hour and date on task bar on the right is truncated : it seems the software is telling windows screen is larger then it is in fact !

1>------ Build started: Project: track_plus, Configuration: Release Win32 ------
2>------ Build started: Project: daemon_plus, Configuration: Release Win32 ------
3>------ Build started: Project: win_cursor_plus, Configuration: Release Any CPU ------
4>------ Build started: Project: win_cursor_plus_fallback, Configuration: Release Any CPU ------
2> globals.cpp
2> main.cpp
2> filesystem.cpp
2> ipc.cpp
1> blob_detector_new.cpp
1> blob_new.cpp
1> Camera.cpp
1> CameraDS.cpp
2> processes.cpp
2> string_functions.cpp
2> udp.cpp
1> camera_initializer_new.cpp
1> contour_functions.cpp
1> curve_fitting.cpp
1> c_tracker.cpp
2> Generating code
2> Finished generating code
2> All 1587 functions were compiled because no usable IPDB/IOBJ from previous compilation was found.
1> exponential.cpp
2> daemon_plus.vcxproj -> C:\touch_plus_source_code\track_plus_visual_studio\\..\build\daemon_plus.exe
1> filesystem.cpp
1> foreground_extractor_new.cpp
1> globals.cpp
4>CSC : warning CS1668: Invalid search path 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK\Lib' specified in 'LIB environment variable' -- 'directory does not exist'
4> win_cursor_plus_fallback -> C:\touch_plus_source_code\build\win_cursor_plus_fallback\win_cursor_plus.exe
3>CSC : warning CS1668: Invalid search path 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK\Lib' specified in 'LIB environment variable' -- 'directory does not exist'
3> win_cursor_plus -> C:\touch_plus_source_code\build\win_cursor_plus\win_cursor_plus.exe
1> hand_resolver.cpp
1> hand_splitter_new.cpp
1> histogram_builder.cpp
1> hungarian.cpp
1> ipc.cpp
1> kalman.cpp
1> point_resolver.cpp
1> stereo_processor.cpp
1> surface_computer.cpp
1> tool_pointer_mapper.cpp
1> tool_resolver.cpp
1> imu.cpp
1> low_pass_filter.cpp
1> main.cpp
1> math_plus.cpp
1> mat_functions.cpp
1> mono_processor_new.cpp
1> motion_processor_new.cpp
1> permutation.cpp
1> Plane.cpp
1> pointer_mapper.cpp
1> pose_estimator.cpp
1> processes.cpp
1> quadratic.cpp
1> RactivJPEGDecompressor.cpp
1> Ray.cpp
1> reprojector.cpp
1> string_functions.cpp
1> thinning_computer_new.cpp
1> tool_stereo_processor.cpp
1> udp.cpp
1> value_store.cpp
1> warper.cpp
1> tool_mono_processor.cpp
1> lmcurve.c
1> lmmin.c
1> Generating code
1> All 6748 functions were compiled because no usable IPDB/IOBJ from previous compilation was found.
1> Finished generating code
1> track_plus.vcxproj -> C:\touch_plus_source_code\track_plus_visual_studio\\..\build\track_plus.exe
========== Build: 4 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========

deleting userdata folder to start new calibration
first no device detection : replugging and then
downloading calibration data
showing wiggle, and 2 gesture recognition steps then keyboard step (qwerty caps lock desabled)
calibration finished
showing five little windows :
image_subtraction0 & image_subtraction1 (with black and white hands shade)
image_visualization0 & image_visualization1 (with five white lines moving to determine angles ?)
image_forground0 (with black and white hands shade)
still no pointing circle

new try and this time stoping on wiggle step and track_plus.exe crashing :

here is the just-in-time debugger from vs community 2015 :

Call Stack :
opencv_core249.dll!6a99a640() Unknown
[Frames below may be incorrect and/or missing, no symbols loaded for opencv_core249.dll]
opencv_core249.dll!6a99a332() Unknown
> track_plus.exe!compute() Line 322 C++
track_plus.exe!main() Line 850 C++
[External Code]

Output :
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Ractiv\Touch+ Software\track_plus.exe'. Symbols loaded.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\kernel32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\KernelBase.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ole32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\combase.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msvcrt.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\rpcrt4.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\sspicli.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cryptbase.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\bcryptprimitives.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\sechost.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\gdi32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\user32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\oleaut32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Ractiv\Touch+ Software\opencv_core249.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Ractiv\Touch+ Software\opencv_highgui249.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Ractiv\Touch+ Software\opencv_imgproc249.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Ractiv\Touch+ Software\eSPDI.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\comdlg32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Ractiv\Touch+ Software\eSPAEAWBCtrl.dll'. Module was built without symbols.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Ractiv\Touch+ Software\sfml-network-2.dll'. Module was built without symbols.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\SHCore.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\shlwapi.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ws2_32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\shell32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Ractiv\Touch+ Software\turbojpeg.dll'. Module was built without symbols.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\nsi.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\windows.storage.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\advapi32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\kernel.appcore.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msvcp140.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\powrprof.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\vcruntime140.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\profapi.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ucrtbase.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Ractiv\Touch+ Software\EtLib.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msvcp120.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msvcr120.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Ractiv\Touch+ Software\sfml-system-2.dll'. Module was built without symbols.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_5.82.10240.16384_none_49c02355cf03478c\comctl32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\winspool.drv'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msvcp110.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msvcr110.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\bcrypt.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msvfw32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\avifil32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\avicap32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msacm32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\winmm.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\winmmbase.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cfgmgr32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\devobj.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\imm32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msctf.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\uxtheme.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Ink\tiptsf.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\dwmapi.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\clbcatq.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\devenum.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\setupapi.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntmarta.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\wintrust.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msasn1.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\crypt32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msdmo.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ksproxy.ax'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ksuser.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\d3d9.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\policymanager.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msvcp110_win.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\xmllite.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\vidcap.ax'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Kswdmcap.ax'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\mfc42.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbc32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\dpapi.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\quartz.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\UIAutomationCore.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\userenv.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\qedit.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.windows.gdiplus_6595b64144ccf1df_1.1.10240.16384_none_d15682eeaf714889\GdiPlus.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cryptsp.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'track_plus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\rsaenh.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
The thread 0x1cac has exited with code 0 (0x0).
Unhandled exception at 0x6A99A640 (opencv_core249.dll) in track_plus.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x00000000.


- image_current_frame {flags=1124024336 dims=2 rows=480 ...} cv::Mat
flags 1124024336 int
dims 2 int
rows 480 int
cols 1280 int
- data 0x0700b020 "\x16\n\b\x16\n\b\x16\n\b\x17\v\t\x18\f\n\x19\r\v\x19\r\v\x19\r\v\x19\r\v\x19\r\v\x19\r\v\x1a\xe\f\x1a\xe\f\x1a\xe\f\x1a\xe\f\x1b\xf\r\x1a\xf\v\x19\xe\n\x18\r\t\x17\f\b\x16\v\a\x15\n\x6\x15\t\a\x15\t\a\x15\t\a\x15\t\a\x14\b\b\x14\b\b\x15\t\t\x15\t\t\x16\n\n\x16\n\n\x17\n\b\x18\v\t\x19\f\n\x1b\xe\f\x1c\xf\r\x1d\x10\xe\x1d\x10\xe\x1d\x10\xe\x1d\x10\xe\x1d\x10\xe\x1d\x10\xe\x1d\x10\xe\x1d\x10\xe\x1d\x10\xe\x1d\x10\xe\x1d\x10\xe\x1e\xf\f\x1e\xf\f\x1f\x10\r\x1f\x10\r\x1f\x10\r\x1f\x10\r \x11\xe \x11\xe\x1f\x10\r\x1f\x10\r \x11\xe\x1f\x10\r\x1f\x10\r\x1e\xf\f\x1d\xe\v\x1c\r\n\x1a\v\t\x1a\v\t\x1a\v... unsigned char *
22 '\x16' unsigned char
- refcount 0x02688030 {2} int *
2 int
- datastart 0x024c6030 "" unsigned char *
0 '\0' unsigned char
- dataend 0x02688030 "\x2" unsigned char *
2 '\x2' unsigned char
- datalimit 0x02688030 "\x2" unsigned char *
2 '\x2' unsigned char
- allocator 0x00000000 cv::MatAllocator *
__vfptr void * *
- size {p=track_plus.exe!0x001ea0d8 {480} } cv::Mat::MSize
- p track_plus.exe!0x001ea0d8 {480} int *
480 int
- step {p=track_plus.exe!0x001ea100 {3840} buf=0x001ea100 {3840, 3} } cv::Mat::MStep
- p track_plus.exe!0x001ea100 {3840} unsigned int *
3840 unsigned int
- buf 0x001ea100 {3840, 3} unsigned int[2]
[0] 3840 unsigned int
[1] 3 unsigned int
updated true bool

What a newbie i make, i wasn't on top of the project tree while asking to build and i didn't get the four exe files, now that's better but when running the device isn't detected anymore :
1>------ Build started: Project: track_plus, Configuration: Release Win32 ------
2>------ Build started: Project: daemon_plus, Configuration: Release Win32 ------
3>------ Build started: Project: win_cursor_plus, Configuration: Release Any CPU ------
4>------ Build started: Project: win_cursor_plus_fallback, Configuration: Release Any CPU ------
1> blob_detector_new.cpp
1> blob_new.cpp
1> Camera.cpp
1> CameraDS.cpp
2> globals.cpp
2> main.cpp
2> filesystem.cpp
2> ipc.cpp
3>CSC : warning CS1668: Invalid search path 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK\Lib' specified in 'LIB environment variable' -- 'directory does not exist'
3> win_cursor_plus -> C:\touch_plus_source_code\build\win_cursor_plus\win_cursor_plus.exe
2> processes.cpp
4>CSC : warning CS1668: Invalid search path 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK\Lib' specified in 'LIB environment variable' -- 'directory does not exist'
4> win_cursor_plus_fallback -> C:\touch_plus_source_code\build\win_cursor_plus_fallback\win_cursor_plus.exe
2> string_functions.cpp
2> udp.cpp
1> camera_initializer_new.cpp
1> contour_functions.cpp
1> curve_fitting.cpp
1> c_tracker.cpp
2> Generating code
2> All 1587 functions were compiled because no usable IPDB/IOBJ from previous compilation was found.
2> Finished generating code
1> exponential.cpp
1> filesystem.cpp
1> foreground_extractor_new.cpp
2> daemon_plus.vcxproj -> C:\touch_plus_source_code\track_plus_visual_studio\\..\build\daemon_plus.exe
1> globals.cpp
1> hand_resolver.cpp
1> hand_splitter_new.cpp
1> histogram_builder.cpp
1> hungarian.cpp
1> ipc.cpp
1> kalman.cpp
1> point_resolver.cpp
1> stereo_processor.cpp
1> surface_computer.cpp
1> tool_pointer_mapper.cpp
1> tool_resolver.cpp
1> imu.cpp
1> low_pass_filter.cpp
1> main.cpp
1> math_plus.cpp
1> mat_functions.cpp
1> mono_processor_new.cpp
1> motion_processor_new.cpp
1> permutation.cpp
1> Plane.cpp
1> pointer_mapper.cpp
1> pose_estimator.cpp
1> processes.cpp
1> quadratic.cpp
1> RactivJPEGDecompressor.cpp
1> Ray.cpp
1> reprojector.cpp
1> string_functions.cpp
1> thinning_computer_new.cpp
1> tool_stereo_processor.cpp
1> udp.cpp
1> value_store.cpp
1> warper.cpp
1> tool_mono_processor.cpp
1> lmcurve.c
1> lmmin.c
1> Generating code
1> All 6748 functions were compiled because no usable IPDB/IOBJ from previous compilation was found.
1> Finished generating code
1> track_plus.vcxproj -> C:\touch_plus_source_code\track_plus_visual_studio\\..\build\track_plus.exe
========== Build: 4 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========

@Wassim
Are you sure that email notifications are working ?
Indeed, on my user's settings, it is selected from the beginning.
But i've never received any, except when you first enabled it one day and when users were disappointed by it.
As Matthew, i think a single informative email could be enough to awake users.

As Lokki-P said on github :
https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/issues/23

I confirm you can compile under free Visual Studio Community 2015 the last regular update of the project :

https://github.com/sheley1998?tab=activity
19 hours ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 f3085ed

Regular update

after copying dirent.h
from :
http://softagalleria.net/download/dirent/dirent-1.20.1.zip
to :
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\include
and also modify winnt.h :

#define POINTER_64 __ptr64
typedef void *PVOID;
typedef void * POINTER_64 PVOID64;

like said in the build instructions :
https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/tree/master

1>------ Build started: Project: track_plus, Configuration: Release Win32 ------
1> Camera.cpp
1> CameraDS.cpp
1> camera_initializer_new.cpp
1> filesystem.cpp
1> hand_resolver.cpp
1> ipc.cpp
1> point_resolver.cpp
1> tool_pointer_mapper.cpp
1> main.cpp
1> pointer_mapper.cpp
1> pose_estimator.cpp
1> processes.cpp
1> reprojector.cpp
1> lmcurve.c
1> lmmin.c
1> Generating code
1> All 6749 functions were compiled because no usable IPDB/IOBJ from previous compilation was found.
1> Finished generating code
1> track_plus.vcxproj -> C:\touch_plus_source_code\track_plus_visual_studio\\..\build\track_plus.exe
========== Build: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 3 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========

Unfortunately, when running deamon_plus.exe, i get no icon menu in the task bar and no control panel... and i can't kill menu_plus.exe in memory : i think i will need to restart computer to make a new try !

Lai Schwe is really a hard worker because it must be very late at night in Shanghai or Singapore, same time in these two cities : past midnight and he's publishing his new code :

23 minutes ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 9b5200d

In progress: fixing pointer_mapper plane logic bug

@sheley1998 54ea02e

Improved motion_processor

Here are the errors you get when trying to compile under Visual Studio Community 2015 :

Severity Code Description Project File Line
Error C1083 Cannot open include file: 'dirent.h': No such file or directory track_plus c:\touch_plus_source_code\track_plus_core\track_plus\filesystem.h 28
Error C1083 Cannot open include file: 'dirent.h': No such file or directory daemon_plus c:\touch_plus_source_code\track_plus_core\daemon_plus\filesystem.h 40
Warning D9030 '/Gm' is incompatible with multiprocessing; ignoring /MP switch daemon_plus C:\touch_plus_source_code\track_plus_visual_studio\daemon_plus\cl 1
Error C2146 syntax error: missing ';' before identifier 'PVOID64' track_plus C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\Include\um\winnt.h 342
Error C4430 missing type specifier - int assumed. Note: C++ does not support default-int track_plus C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\Include\um\winnt.h 342
Error C3646 'Buffer': unknown override specifier track_plus C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\Include\um\winnt.h 12342
Error C4430 missing type specifier - int assumed. Note: C++ does not support default-int track_plus C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\Include\um\winnt.h 12342
Error C1083 Cannot open include file: 'dirent.h': No such file or directory track_plus c:\touch_plus_source_code\track_plus_core\track_plus\filesystem.h 28
Warning D9030 '/Gm' is incompatible with multiprocessing; ignoring /MP switch track_plus C:\touch_plus_source_code\track_plus_visual_studio\track_plus\cl 1
Warning Invalid search path 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK\Lib' specified in 'LIB environment variable' -- 'directory does not exist' win_cursor_plus C:\touch_plus_source_code\track_plus_visual_studio\win_cursor_plus\CSC
Warning Invalid search path 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK\Lib' specified in 'LIB environment variable' -- 'directory does not exist' win_cursor_plus_fallback C:\touch_plus_source_code\track_plus_visual_studio\win_cursor_plus_fallback\CSC

On my Packard Bell EasyNote Butterfly Touch, with win 10 x64 re-initialized from the dvd, to get msvcr110.dll and msvcp110.dll missing and run the software, after unsuccessfully trying vs_isoshell.exe runtime, i've just resolved the issue by installing Visual Studio Community 2015 !

So on that computer, the Ractiv updater still work but the same under my ACER R7 win 10 x64 don't fix the updater issue however !

9 minutes ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 3fcc0c4

Added OSX cursor project

Just want to drop in and say a big thanks to Wassim, Corey, Lai, TouchHope and everyone else who's been pushing so hard to try and actually keep this project moving in the hopes of eventually having a working device. Have been following this for a long while now so am really appreciating how much time and focus has gone into not letting this slip into the ether.

Much love from London!

Nick

I can confirm it no longer compiles in VS2013. Seems I need VS2015

I am wariting for all of your best news,thought I just a user,but I will support all of you!!
If you get a good useful software,please send me an E-mail! Thanks a lot!

@Wassim

On a total of 265 users for now of your website, could you tell me how many users have asked for email notifications ?

To go on with Matthew's proposal, a single informative email sent from your website, as noreply you know, could look like this :

Hello,

I am Wassim Gharbi and you have subscribed to my website because you were despairing of Ractiv's silence and its TouchPlus device software !

Well today, i am glad to give you hope again !

Indeed, the last few weeks Lai Schwe, the technical director at Ractiv, did publish his source code and few of us have tested some buggy versions from a first buggy windows installer.

He is answering some of our questions and truely actively hard working on Windows and also OSX first stable versions with the help of Corey Manders in Singapore.

So the things are finally moving rather faster than the last long months of silence from Ractiv witch commercial director Darren Lim is still silent though.

So if you want to stay tuned, well just take a look sometimes to my website at http://gharbi.me/ractiv/ !

Best Regards,

Wassim Gharbi

I'm getting the following error when compiling now:
"The build tools for v140 (Platform Toolset = 'v140') cannot be found"
Has Lai switched to VS2015?

@Wassim
Thank you for re-enabling email notifications !
Sadly, i am not the code junkie that it could seem : i just code some basic sometimes but i don't really understand c++ !
I don't have Visual Studio on my computer, so i can't compile any new build, sorry !
In fact, i am just a geek !

@Ibolya Yes, there is progress, they have released the source code and people are building regularly
@touchhope, I have re-enabled email notifications so hopefully we get interaction from buyers and backers
Also, if you do have the means, could you please upload and link to the latest software build from the github? Thank you :D

@Ibolya Szebeni

Hi, just again few days or weeks of patience this time i think.

You should be able to finally get a first stable version of the software !

Lai Schwe, the technical director of Ractiv is actually hard working these days with the help of Corey Manders in Singapore for OSX, and also the help of some of us in debugging.

Hi, I just found this site now, is there any progress in getting the software or refund for my useless device?

@Wassim

I feel a little alone on your website.
As Matthew had asked, would you send an informative email to all website's users ?
I know it's summer holidays but surely people here would be glad to get hope again !

De : Lai Schwe
Envoyé le :samedi 8 août 2015 07:23
À : Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
Objet :Re: [touch_plus_source_code] Compiling OSX (#21)

Hi guys,
Still merging Windows and OSX code bases, will likely take this entire weekend to sort through. I don’t have a working OSX cursor app yet, Corey’s working on that part.

My mouse told me she is afraid
Of an ultimate mouse killer
But so useless since it get paid
So forgotten by the seller

And suddenly the rebirth
Of backers and buyers hope
From all around this old earth
Faraway from tv soap

Silent sales's boss is named Darren
Restarting com could be sudden !

2 comments on commit 4c3c85a

@touchhope
touchhope commented on 4c3c85a an hour ago

Hello Lai - (n.) \ˈlā: A lyrical, narrative poem written in octosyllabic couplets that often deals with tales of adventure and romance !
Still hard at work as i see ! Congratulations ! Can you say hello to Corey for me ?
Do you think Darren could now finally restart to communicate, even only a little through the blog, with your backers and buyers ?
Cheers,
The hop'in frog

@touchhope
touchhope commented on 4c3c85a 31 minutes ago

Lais were mainly composed in France and Germany, during the 13th and 14th centuries.
I think i'm gonna compose a kind lai about Darren and Ractiv !

Most recent build should be launched by manually starting menu_plus.exe and 7.exe after running build. I see ton of preview windows and still no "circle" cursor

http://screenshots.ryotsuke.ru/scr_0c8fd47fb55b.png

Good night, hard workers ! And thank you for us all to finally trying to make a dream come true !

@everyone

Apparently on Github, Lai Schwe has just added OSX dependencies to master source code at about 22:50 this evening in Singapore probably after working with Corey today (but it's the same time in Shanghai !):

latest commit 301caa2fea
@sheley1998 sheley1998 authored 5 minutes ago
build Added OSX dependencies 5 minutes ago
dependencies Added OSX dependencies 5 minutes ago
track_plus_core Added OSX dependencies 5 minutes ago
track_plus_unity Regular update 8 days ago
track_plus_visual_studio Added OSX dependencies 5 minutes ago
track_plus_xcode/Touch+ Software.xcodeproj Added OSX dependencies 5 minutes ago
.gitignore Regular update 11 days ago
LICENSE.md Regular update a month ago
README.md Merged with OSX code base 14 days ago

@TF
I'm not surprised at all of your issues because any version from v0.55b to v0.57a is very very buggy.
It depends on a lot of things : what win version, what screen resolution, what dll files already installed or not, and so on...
So wait and see : i think the next build delivered through a new windows installer would be much better to test !
For me, i've never been able to get the pointing circle because my HD screen resolution might have produced overloaded memory and so slow software treatment.
I also have had, on different win version, to install vs_isoshell.exe to get the two missing dll files.
So actually, it's just a pity to test ! So few days or weeks maybe to wait until something really interesting to run !

@touchhope
Thought I had downloaded and installed the software,but when everything is set,the touch plus still can't work actually,the mouse running beyond my control!

For those interessed knowing more about Corey actually working with Lai on OSX driver in Singapore :
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Corey_Manders

Message du : 05/08/2015 05:56
De : "christian leriche " [email protected]
A : [email protected]
Copie à : [email protected]
Sujet : Two hard workers in Singapore :Tr: Re: [touch_plus_source_code] Restoring a better image of Ractiv compagny among backers and buyers. (#20)

Hello the two hard workers in Singapore !

A little wink from France ! It's early in the morning here.

I wish you a nice day working on that so expected project.

I wish too that Darren sometimes read his emails and will be kind enough to make me a little answer (you know communication between human beings) !

Ractiv must be [r]eactive !

Cheers,

The Frog (still hoping !)

@Wassim
I think Matthew is wishing you will make an email to all the users of your website to inform them that things are moving these days !

Hey Touchhope, thank you so much for the link! Indeed, I do speak French but let's speak English so that everyone here understands. So, conserning the email notifications, I just enabled them for my own post because I found that I missed a lot and thought that since there's software we can test, why not notify other users. I have disabled the notifcations now. I'll be trying the file you linked to on a Virtual Windows 10 Machine on my iMac since there's no OS X build yet (as far as I understand) and I'll tell you what happens :D

@Wassim

Bonjour Wassim !

Je commençais à me demander ce que tu fabriquais ?
Encore merci pour ton site web : quelle merveilleuse idée tu as eu !
Pardon d'écrire en français mais je commence à faire une overdose d'anglais et comme je pense que tu es francophone mais ok j'arrête, je traduis en anglais et je continue en anglais :

Hello Wassim !

I was begining to wonder what you were doing ?
Again thank you for your website : what a wonderful idea you got !
Sorry wrinting in french but i begin to make an overdose of english and as i think you're francophone but ok i stop, i translate in english and go on in english :

So if you want to try, you can use the link provided by Xiangyu Meng, http://pan.baidu.com/s/1pJ0zNfl , but you should read chinese : (personally i can't read chinese but i have clicked on different places and it finally start the download of v0.55b (which won't install on win 7 !).

But don't get too impatient (though i understand you after these long months of waiting) because even on v0.57a or b, it's not yet the Peru and you'll get very very desapointed i think at this point of the development (i never obtain any pointing circle, certainly because of my HD resolution screens) !

But i think it won't be long now (but who knows with Ractiv ?) that we all get an installer with all necessary dll for win 7, 8.1 and 10 and for x32 and x64 versions !

I also get your attention to the guy from Colorado i think Matthew H. Fogle : "Wassim, while the auto-emailing of everyone was extremely annoying, this recent news of "real" software is worth an email. I had no idea this was happening until I just came to check for updates here. Perhaps a one-time email notice would help folks that have long since given up hope? I'll have to dig into the release... It's extremely sad after all this they still don't release an update!"

I agree with Matthew and hope (as the hoping frog i am !) that Darren would be kind enough to answer me and finally update Ractiv's blog !

I don't know where we would be without your first idea of your website Wassim ! Again thank you !

La Grenouille, oh pardon non :)
Oh no sorry, the Frog !

Hey guys! I wasn't here for a while so can someone please share the latest build (executables) for either mac os x or windows 10? Thank you!

========================================

Message du : 04/08/2015 06:31
De : "Lai Schwe " <[email protected]>
A : "Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code" <[email protected]>
Copie à : [email protected]
Sujet : Re: [touch_plus_source_code] windows installer msvcr120.dll and msvcp120.dll for x64 and msvcr110.dll and msvcp110.dll for x32 (#15)


Thanks for the help man! I'm traveling to Singapore today to work with Corey on resolving the remaining issues. Will keep you updated.

On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 12:29 PM, touchhope <[email protected]>
wrote:

> I confirm that, on a naked win 10 x64 re-initialized from the dvd, though the installer did run, when trying to run the software, it says msvcr110.dll and msvcp110.dll missing !
> I don't understand why sometimes, in other contexts of win OS x32 oy x64, it talks about msvcr120.dll and msvcp120.dll.
> So i think the new windows installer must integrate the four dll to be fully compliant !
> Because re-installing vs_isoshell.exe in silent mode on a SD screen resolution from the command line didn't resolve the issue, i sadly now can't run the build under my ex win 7 x64 and under my ACER R7 win 10 x64 the updater doen't work anymore !
> I won't be able to test the next build ! :(
> ---
> Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
> https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/issues/15#issuecomment-127473503

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

I see the head is coming, Darren ! Push, Push, Lai !
Wait, i'll go and search the forceps !
Don't move too fast, you're gonna hurt the baby !
But it look scratched, but it’s actually just the plastic !
We'll soon gonna hear it crying on the blog, starving of two or maybe four missing dll not provided by the installer !
You two got a great sens of humor !
You're not cynical at all and maybe i'm a little ironical !
Your website is so beautiful and funny too, especially when talking about a plug and play device in the FAQ !
So the next generation of Touch+ will have to be waterproof to be used a bath full of Le Champagne to celebrate the birth !

========================================

Message du : 03/08/2015 06:51
De : "cmanders " <[email protected]>
A : "Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code" <[email protected]>
Copie à : [email protected]
Sujet : Re: [touch_plus_source_code] Restoring a better image of Ractiv compagny among backers and buyers. (#20)


Hi Touch Hope,

I'm working in the OS X code (as I think you know). I'm fixing some compilation issues on the current OS X port, but should have an update to that code within the week.

Cheers,
Corey

Sent from my iPhone

> On 3 Aug 2015, at 12:45 pm, touchhope <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hello Darren,

Hello Darren,

As the commercial director of Ractiv, you must think now of restoring a better image of Ractiv compagny among backers and buyers. You know we are not dogs but thinking people, people who have gived you trust and money because we were believing in that marvellous project.

You could tell me dogs are thinking too, and that's what we are going now on github to help your technical director. You know dogs need to feel they are loved ! Nine months of silence are harmful in the spirits. Thanks to Corey to have let us a little hope.

Nine months to have a baby born but with a caesarean. You know a mother and a father generaly talk everyone during the pregnancy to share excitation before the birth !

So could you now think of even a short message on the blog to rebuild the dialogue with your backers and buyers ? We are smart people who can understand a lot of things you know. I can understand that a young startup with young people isn't as simple as we could think.

I think a good strategy to rebuild that dialogue would be to difficulties you went through along these long months of silence. It's now a big issue of respect and i though asian people were very repectful people, well maybe more in Japan than in China i don't know. So as a french but japanese minded person, i'm begging you, please communicate now !

Again thank you to Corey !

Best regards,

The frog (known as touchhope on Wassim's website)

For some reason, the user might need to initialize new calibration (bad beaviour for example) and it would be nice that he (or she) wouldn't have to manage with manual folders deletion to do that and that it would be automatic, with maybe a confirm message before to run it.

"Current v[e]sion" in the bubble : just add an "r" to v[e]sion or you mean current v[i]sion of stable software from [A]ctiv compagny, oh sorry, from [R]activ compagny ! lol ! :-)

I wonder how keyboard keys would be managed : will it be a caps lock detection ? It seems it has importance to go through keys step location.

And for internationalization, will it be an automatic adaptation to country location ?

And maybe you will add a menu translation system to let us bringing you text files for our countries translation.

After migrating from win 8.1 x64 family to win 10 x64 family the update menu won't work anymore but yes if it's from win 7 x64 family to win 10 x64 family !

While cleaning my win 10 x64 from any redistributable of vs and also vs_isoshell to be naked like a non code junkie as Xavier said (and i think most of the future users are non code junkie !), i was able to produce a running error from the installer itself saying msvcr120.dll and msvcp120.dll are not found !
I have had to reinstall vs_isoshell to fix this issue !

So i think you will have to be careful when generating the new windows installer because all the users don't have the these two runtime dll and i wonder if it's possible to have it running on a win 10 x32 with the right msvcr110.dll and msvcp110.dll ?

I've tried it on an old ASUS pc running win 10 x32 build 10240 and the installer runs well but software can't run because of the lack of the two dll msvcr110.dll and msvcp110.dll missing. After installing vs_isoshell, it says msvcr110.dll and msvcp110.dll are not in the good version !

Build from most recent code now stucks in crashes loop for me http://screenshots.ryotsuke.ru/scr_b9869876fadd.png

We're making more progress on the beta code. V.57a has much better input detection. Finding a good amount of bugs and Lai is working on them.
https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/issues

Thank you for that new build.
Still no more working update menu.
Well at exposure is 10 it blocks then after few minutes, show wiggle message, i wiggle for a half minute but nothing and suddenly the 2 next gesture steps and then the keyboard step but very very slow hard to get to 95 for each key then the 2 little windows and still no pointing circle !

How long should we wiggle normally ? Because the two next step of gestures after are so fast that we don't have time to move properly i think.

In fact device detection was completely broken and i had to click on Exit, then replug and hearing windows sound that tell it detects something on usb.

Well restarting after clicking on "Exit", then again blocked after "pose estimator initialized, message sent: win_cursor_plus open udp channel" and this time replug don't make anything on a eventually loss of device detection.

Deamon_plus.exe console says "step 3 complete, message sent: menu_plus show stage, calibration finished". Still no crash : a kind of stability ! lol :)

Got now the 2 little windows running and no crash for now (few minutes) but after deleting userdata folder and ipc for new initialization, but still no pointing circle !

I don't know why on one of my 2 pc (the ex win 8.1 x64) under win 10 x64 when i click on "Update software" it does nothing but on the other, which was previously under win 7 x64, where i have had to install vs_isoshell.exe to get the 2 dll, asking for update still work.

After a bad night, dreaming of a working touch+, new try this morning with the idea of taking care of caps lock enabling : keyboard step ok but make sure you wait until 95 for each key in the console. I get the 2 little windows but still no pointing circle but again a big crash with error message from vs debugger "An unhandled win32 exception occurred in track_plus.exe".

@Alexandru & @Lai Schwe
I confirm, as two dll are missing in the installer, if you want have it running ubder win 10 x64 family, you have to vs_isoshell.exe (Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 runtime isolated).
Again with v0.57a, tedious slow initialization and blocking on 8 key no matter qwerty or azerty and still no pointing circle !

@Alexandru
Again i beg you : could you share your msvcr110.dll and msvcp110.dll files on Windows 10 build 10240 for win 10 x32 and now i only got win 10 x64 computers your msvcr120.dll and msvcp120.dll because you know what : touch+ software don't work on public family win 10 x64 ! Must i have to install vs_shell_iso32 runtime to make it work ?
@Lai Schwe
You'll have to find other buyers or backers until you fix your installer !

I'm actually migrating all my computers freely to windows 10... so i finally get it working like Alexandru !
Downloaded and verified... creating a windows 10 media...64% !
Soon i will see that fucking pointing circle !
And finally kill my mouse with that fucking mouse killer !

And sometimes, you feel alone...

And sometimes, you go and search in the first patch.zip the database folder because it seems it's more recent and fonctional ?

In order to lauch a new initialization after updating software, you sometimes need to delete userdata folder and ipc too i'm not sure ?

https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/issues/8
current v[e]sion v0.57a (Do you mean current ve[r]sion in the bubble ?)
Well, i've unstalled completely the software under win 8.1 x64 and then reinstall and of course first update don't work.
You must have the first patch.zip after v.55b to first overwrite with v0.56a to make update work to get v0.57a (and as deamon_plus.exe was killed you have to kill also one of the 4 instances ofmenu_plus.exe because "Exit" menu doesn't work at this step).
A bit tedious as someone said !
Then i'm sorry but again under win 8.1 x64, first a big "An unhandled win32 exception occurrredintrack_plus.exe [3648]".
It says "elevated" talking about the profile running the program.
When you replug device, the console goes on with messages.
How long must you wiggle your fingers ?
Because i was fed up to wiggle (blocked on last console message "exposure is") and then starting to write this on gihub and as i already saw it on win 7 x64, suddenly the two little windows appear and i see my two hands moving inside !
So you're then on keyboard step but this time with qwerty switch, after pushing successfully on 8 and = keys, i keep being blocked on shift key (better than previous but still blocked !).

@TF
Just first download "Touch+ Software.exe" from the link provided by Xiangyu Meng 5 days ago :

I'm a buyer from China,here is a link of touch+ software

http://pan.baidu.com/s/1pJ0zNfl

Then when deamon_plus.exe is running, right click one the little icon on you task bar and choose "Update software" to migrate to version 0.56c.

In this current version 0.56c again for me it seems worse than v0.56a.

In v0.56c, i get to keyboard step but when i push 8 key, it does nothing (oops ! qwerty and azerty automatic detection added ?), no when i switch to azerty again, it detects my 8 key but block on = key !

I don't obtain the two little windows and before keyboard step, i have had a lot of win_cursor_fallback.exe crash again and have had often to replug device !

After pushing 8 key, in the console i have "message sent: menu_plus show calibration next step 0 complete" and then 5 to 5 numbers and nothing (blocked on = key, no matter if azerty or qwerty).

When showing in console "pose estmator initialized, message sent: win_cursor_plus open udp channel", and also first with "menu_plus created, message_received get toggles deamon_plus1, message sent: menu_plus get toggles 1011005" to go on out of the blocking you have to replug device !

Then you go to taskmgr, to kill some of the 4 instances of win_cursor_plus.exe in memory, just to get the control panel to come again. The console runs again and says menu_plus created but nothing appear !

@Lai Schwe:
Wouldn't be much more simple if you could temporaly bring debugging tool to the build automatically sending you errors codes ?

I have waited for the software for 1 year,my carema is still useless,can somebody give me the download link which is 0.56b?
thanks very much!!!!

I have waited for the software for 1 year,my carema is still useless,can somebody give me the download link which is 0.56b?
thanks very much!!!!

I have waited for the software for 1 year,my carema is still useless,can somebody give me the download link which is 0.56b?
thanks very much!!!!

Yes. Not quite ready for prime time yet.

oops! i mean Alexandru...

Andrew- would you say it's better to just wait until a stable release for those who aren't able to debug or provide valuable feedback in terms of bugs and other issues?

Update: Lai actively working on the code. Expecting a new code drop in 24 hours or so.
Touchhope and I are actively watching the github page and compiling and testing each new code drop.

v0.56b : This time updating software did work automatically. But still the same issue of win_cursor_plus_fallback.exe crashing with 4 instances of win_cursor_plus.exe launched by deamon_plus.exe. This version is worse because i even can't get the two little windows named "image_foreground0" and "image_foreground1" and don't get to keyboard step.

https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/issues/8

When wiggling my fingers, win_cursor_fallback.exe crash but just don't validate the error because suddenly the two little windows named "image_foreground0" and "image_foreground1" appear and you're on step 2 with keyboard (make sure you switch to querty not azerty, particularly for M key). Then you get to "step 3 complete
message sent: menu_plus show stage calibration finished" but then win_cursor_fallback.exe crash and crash again and again !

message_received open udp channel 60344 track_plus1, track_plus2, track_plus3 and then again "OpenCV Error: Bad argument (Input array is not a valid matrix) in cvPointSeqFromMat, file c:\builds\2_4_PackSlave-win32-vc12-shared\opencv\modules\imgproc\src\utils.cpp, line 54."

Maybe because of the 4 instances of win_cursor_plus.exe in the memory launched by deamon_plus.exe !

step 3 complete
message sent: menu_plus show stage
calibration finished
OpenCV Error: Bad argument (Input array is not a valid matrix) in cvPointSeqFromMat, file c:\builds\2_4_PackSlave-win32-vc12-shared\opencv\modules\imgproc\src\utils.cpp, line 54.

track_plus.exe has crashed :

"An unhandled win32 exception occurred in track_plus.exe [4760].
Just-In-Time debugging this exception failed with the following error : No installed debugger has Ijust-In-Time debugging enabled. In Visual SuStudio, Just-In-Time debugging can be enabled from Tools/Options/Debugging/Just-In-Time."

Still no pointing circle !

When you're blocked on ""message sent: menu_plus get toggles 1011005", just unplug your device and replug it to go on the process to "wiggle".

With a lot of difficulties, on win 7, i now get two little windows named "image_foreground0" and "image_foreground0" like two eyes of the touch+ which is seeing my hands in realtime.

But win_cursor_plus_fallback has stop and i got four menu_plus.exe running each time i run deamon_plus.exe.

Now i can go to the last step with keyboard but it block on hold on M key !

When you ask for update, you sometimes can get v0.56a which is the current version replacing v0.55b installed with "Touch+ Software.exe".

Unfortunately, for me it doesn't seems to change anything : on win 8.1, i'm blocked on console message "message sent: menu_plus get toggles 1011005, and on win 7, i'm still blocked on "wiggle" message.

The automatic update doesn't seems to work and you have to overwrite everything under "Touch+ Software"folder. Then the new calibration doesn't start and you must imagine to delete ipc folder and maybe userdata and then it finally restart. Sometimes, you must kill the task in taskmgr to make a new try.

So maybe under Windows 10, we will get this pointing circle !

Wassim, while the auto-emailing of everyone was extremely annoying, this recent news of "real" software is worth an email. I had no idea this was happening until I just came to check for updates here. Perhaps a one-time email notice would help folks that have long since given up hope? I'll have to dig into the release... It's extremely sad after all this they still don't release an update!

@touchhope
yse i already try that...
even on the other computer
i think it is really break down :(
has anyone trying to dismantle touch+?
any idea?

I will migrate all my computers to windows 10 as soon as possible !

As i was not able to make it work neither under windows 7 or 8.1 and as Alexandru has succeeded under windows 10 build 10240 getting calibration to the end and obtaining a pointing circle !

Under my windows 10 build 10240, i still get error message about msvcr110.dll and msvcp110.dll files missing or not in the good version !

@@Alexandru
Please, could you share your two dll ?

@Li Sung
I do have also often some issues on my Touch+ device detection : have you tried to plug it in another usb port ?
Anyway, don't worry because Lai Schwe did has just fixed device detection :

See :
https://github.com/sheley1998?tab=activity

sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 909fef8

Pointer precision update

9 hours ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 1b8c599

Fixed logic issue that led to tracking degradation

10 hours ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 545be99

Fixed device detection

hello everyone! I just got here
and want trying a variety of software
but my touch + does not work anymore
In the past ,it will flash when I connect to the computer
now the computer did not sense it
is anyone has this problem like me?

GRRR! This page sucks! Stupid double and triple posts...

@Andrew - take all the compiled code and overwrite it in the folder where you installed the software from Baidu. You won't get some of those windows staying open and software will still work.

@Andrew - take all the compiled code and overwrite it in the folder where you installed the software from Baidu. You won't get some of those windows staying open and software will still work.

@Andrew - take all the compiled code and overwrite it in the folder where you installed the software from Baidu. You won't get some of those windows staying open and software will still work.

@touchhope - you are right. Had a typo. Corrected title with 0.55b
Also, all I did in Windows 10240, I just installed the software, rebooted the machine and that was it. The 'secret' to getting the driver to work is to start the app, then KILL all the processes related to Touch+ (all EXE files found in Touch+ folder) then restart the app. It will then let you 'calibrate' the device and the touch pointer will work. It is SUPER sensitive on distance from camera and 'touch area' but it works...

@touchhope - you are right. Had a typo. Corrected title with 0.55b
Also, all I did in Windows 10240, I just installed the software, rebooted the machine and that was it. The 'secret' to getting the driver to work is to start the app, then KILL all the processes related to Touch+ (all EXE files found in Touch+ folder) then restart the app. It will then let you 'calibrate' the device and the touch pointer will work. It is SUPER sensitive on distance from camera and 'touch area' but it works...

http://screenshots.ryotsuke.ru/scr_3a4c3afb46f8.png

Updated code. No more crashes when pointing device up.
Calibration has new step: "Try pointing gesture"
Still no circle thing :(

The windows installer "Touch+ Software.exe" seems to have installed version 0.55b on my windows 8.1 system not v0.53b.

When i ask for update it says i got the last version (but v0.55b seems worse than v0.53b because i can't obtain any circle given that the calibration don't go to the end : just a lot of zero and the "wiggle" message).

@Alexandru

Hello,

Wow ! You get a circle !

It would be kind of you if you could share your msvcr110.dll and msvcp110.dll files on Windows 10 build 10240 because i don't know why but they are missing on my system ?

I've tried to install visual studio redistribuable 2010, 2012 and 2013 but without resolving this running issue for touch+ software on my Windows 10.

Thanks in advance.

Here's a video of the code working. VERY, VERY beta... more like ALPHA software, however it looks like a step in the right direction...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulFTmjiwmAA

I got the software from Baidu installed on Windows 10 10240. Got the calibration done and got touch control, however it seemed to be only moving from edge of the screen to the other edge and click always on. Looks like code is beta 0.53b. Software also forgets calibration and stuff every time it is restarted. Small baby steps :)

Compiled recent code. Finally was at least able to see my hands from device camera.
Calibration process did somethis and shows as "success", but no touch is enabled after that.
Also app crashes every time I move device too much (like point it to ceiling = 100% crash)

The windows installer "Touch+ Software.exe" says it won't run under all these windows versions :

"Windows XP x64, Windows Server 2003 x64, Windows Vista x64, Windows Server 2008 x64, Windows 7 x64, Windows Server 2008 R2 x64"

I've tried under windows xp sp3 x32 and it refuse to install saying the version is too old.

Indeed under Windows 7 x64, you get the installation error message but i have copied the entire Ractiv folder from my windows 8.1 x64 program files (x86) to my windows 7 x64 program files (x86) and it runs starting downloading and calibrating process even if sometimes win_cursor_plus.exe stop (this program seems to be needed some fixes) and i didn't reach out to get the circles (calibration don't succeed).

But either under 7 or 8.1, i have to manually starts the different exe in different orders to get it start working but either under these two systems i didn't achieved the end of calibration.

I also did installed "Touch+ Software.exe" under windows 10 technical preview last build 10240 and the setup works to the end but when trying to run you get error messages on msvcr110.dll and msvcp110.dll : is there a solution because installating visual studio redistribuable 2010 doesn't fix it ? (I also try to copy the two files in windows system32 but unsuccessfully.)

I also have a question about the keyboard : is english keyboard important ? I've tried "english" and "french" (qwerty and azerty) and it seems there's no better behavior for calibration process.

i found the Little Programm they provided via Facebook and give it a try.
and again no Picture.
now how can i get a Exchange or repair since the warranty is just six month

Hi,
I just downloaded the software from the link. I was able to install it, also starting the software is possible. But I can´t use my Touch+. There is no configuration window or something like that. I uploaded some screenshots for you:
http://www.directupload.net/file/d/4060/gbnvnbap_jpg.htm
http://www.directupload.net/file/d/4060/r2hrwdiq_jpg.htm
http://www.directupload.net/file/d/4060/xxinf88i_jpg.htm

Ah, and I´m running Win 8.1 x64 Pro.

I'm a buyer from China,here is a link of touch+ software http://pan.baidu.com/s/1pJ0zNfl
my computer os is win7 x64, the software can not be installed at all, anyone who want try it can download it and tell us what about the software
the link above is Lai Xue uploaded

My thought too... but, it's real movement forward at least and I already find it easier to use than my leap motion. I doubt we'll ever know what really happened with the software development.

If anyone is curious, I'm compiling on win7 x64 using visual studio pro 2013 on a mid2014 macbook pro. As soon as he's finished porting the OSX version I'll try that.

So basically it sounds like the software is in a state that it should have been when the campaign was going on like 2 years ago...cool

It's great to see something actually happening, it's got a long way to go before being properly usable though - accidental clicks/actions/etc are a common occurrence. And my one attempt at minecraft while the touch+ was still active was a study in motion sickness. I also cannot get the calibration screen to show up again (it did, a total of once). I'm calibrating from memory only (wiggle, point, 8, =, shift, m) and watching the text output for pointers as to what to do next. But it does work!

Sounds good. Hopefully we get a stable release from them shortly

@Dan:
No idea about that.

I have removed the linked binaries for now as there are daily changes from Lai Schwee.

When he has fixed the outstanding bugs and there is a proper version I will post new binaries.

I downloaded the source code and dropped the .exes into their proper folders. when i try and run dameon_plus, i get an error that the program can't start because it's missing msvcp110.dll. I downloaded Visual C++ redist 2012 update 4 per a google search but that doesn't seem to fix it. any suggestions?

@Andrew:
I encountered another issue where the click event wouldn't work unless I changed a boolean in the code. I would prefer if Lai Schwee properly fixed those issues and then I would post binaries.

@everyone, make sure to do the following:
1) Place the Touch+ in the center of your Laptop or keyboard so it is between 8 and =.
2) Switch to the english keyboard layout and number format in Windows if it's not set.
3) Tilt the Touch+ downwards so it's looking at the keys.
4) Run "daemon_plus.exe".
5) First step: wiggle fingers, 2nd step: make a pointing finger, 3rd step: press all 4 keys in order - then the calibration is finished and the cursor should appear and you can use the Touch+.
5) Right click on the tray icon and select "Exit" to close the program.

ok i played a bit with it
the device knows when ist out of range and the wiggle Screen starts over and over
but i saw at your Screenshots that your exposure is around 10 mine is at 1
the wiggle Picture has a gray Background and im not sure if it should Show a
Video feed
and @alexz what i would like to know in your calibration Screenshot the 4 Feeds are
they starting with the calibration or with the wiggle step?

hi there i think my device is broken
should there be an Image at that wiggle your Hands part?
because at this stage i stays there and the Thing gets quite hot

If Lai Xue is indeed finally answering, then I am thankful and it is encouraging. I am hoping that this is the start of forward progress for Ractiv and it's backers/customers. Many thanks to @AlexZ :)

AlexZ, may be you could post updated "unpack-and-go" archive with windows binaries to play around?

@AlexZ

A big thank you from us all for your help Alex !

Maybe Ractiv will finally officially communicate now on their blog !

Found the problem with the missing Touch+ circle. For the technically interested I posted the problem here: https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code/issues/2#issuecomment-123042113

It can be solved easily and I think Lai Schwe will do so in the next days.

Maybe a backer wants to post this on the Kickstarter comments page - we do have a working software now!

I'm on Win 7 SP1 x64, with an Nvidia graphic card. Calibration goes well, i DLed the most recent github project and tried again but i guess something is wrong with my environnement :)

Lai Schwe updated the code with the latest training data and the device works much better now. Scrolling a webpage, clicking and also pinch and zoom was working ok - still only in the VM, though.

7:00 UTC+2 that is.

Lai Schwe is actually responding and answering to questions on GitHub. He seems to be around this time of the day (UTC+2).

@Dan, please look some posts below on how to get it running.

@Jerry, great! Sorry, I forgot to mention that the Touch+ needs to be facing downwards, took me a while to figure that out myself. It looks like you have the same problem with something blocking the actual Touch+ control circle.

What OS have you installed? Nvidia/AMD? Any other extra input devices? Webcam?

I am on Win 8.1 and have already deinstalled a lot of software, like Leap Motion and Tobii EyeX and various other tools but it didn't help.

One thing I noticed is that I would get an OpenCV error when I had a Google Video Conference open while trying to start the Touch+. So anything that might be able to capture and control the desktop content might be the problem.

It would be great if some more people could test this, maybe with Win 7, to see if it works somewhere.

ok, my bad, my touch+ was just too high, now that it looks lower to my keyboard the calibration process works, but after that .... nothing happens :) no white circle to play around with xD : http://i.imgur.com/R9WaE1I.jpg

Nice progress there AlexZ !!
I made it all like you told us, wanted to test.
Downloaded the latest version of the GIthub project, downloaded your compiled files and pasted them in the build folder of the Github project folder. I added an "ipc" folder inside the build folder. Launched daemon_plus.exe, it downloaded some stuff, first try i ended up with a rectifier.exe error, 2nd try it writes alot of stuff in a DOS like window, but the track_plus menu keeps saying "initializing Touch+ Software", then it loads again alot of stuff in the DOS window, and it keeps going round like that forever. I can see briefly the touch plus control panel, with the two hands moving, but it closes fast. ANYWAY im happy someone is more angry then myself, keep up the good work/testing/tweaking AlexZ ;) Thank you.

alex-awesome progress! I wasn't able to get anything running on my pc though.

which exe are we supposed to run? I get error that opencv_core249.dll is missing when i run trackplus, sfml-network-2.dll is missing with dameonplus, and if i run either of the win cursor exe's, nothing happens.

Ok, my first impressions are pretty disillusioning but that my be related to the software running in a Virtual Machine (Win 8.1) and using not my own training data.

So I do have a white circle that I can move around the screen with my index finger and I can click stuff by tapping the finger down. Mostly, though, the circle is wildly jumping around the screen and performing click actions by its own. Looks like it's having a hard time tracking and recognizing my fingers.

If this is the actual status quo of the software, 9 months after selling the hardware I am speechless.

This is in no way comparable to those marketing videos that got us into backing or buying this thing.

Again, this was running in a VM, couldn't get it to work in my real operating environment.
If anyone wants to try it himself, here are the current compiled .exe files:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9_P3vD74EEvVTEzSS1DbDJYb2c/view?usp=sharing

You need to switch to the US keyboard layout to make the area calibration work.

It works!
Looks like there is something conflicting with the Touch cursor on my normal OS installation (Win 8.1), when I run the program in a Virtual Machine I have the Touch circle after the calibration and can control the OS.

So finally, a working software for the Touch+ !!

@AlexZ, awesome to get your updates! Great work!

Lai Schwe updated the source code yesterday and using an existing training dataset I was able to complete the calibration. I've asked on GitHub where to go from here.

I suggest not using the .exe files below anymore, as they are outdated now.

There are 2 commands that can be entered in the console: "set pose name" and "show pose name". Not sure yet what those are good for.

Unfortunately, no further progress on my end.

If anyone wants to try, here are the compiled exe files:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9_P3vD74EEvNUZaYi1tZVVlSU0/view?usp=sharing

You need to download the project on GitHub (https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code) and then place the .exe files in the "build" directory. Also add an "ipc" folder in this directory. The run "daemon_plus.exe".

It should connect to the device, download some stuff and start the calibration.
If anyone can get past the pointing gesture recognition, please tell me how :)

Andrew - sure, here is a screenshot of the area calibration:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9_P3vD74EEvb0Utc1F5ekVmR1E/view?usp=sharing

I'll keep you guys updated!

AlexZ, good job! Keep us informed on your successes and fails :) May be some screenshots?

Alex- awesome work so far! Wish there was something I could contribute but this is a little out of my league. Your efforts are greatly appreciated though!

Hi everyone,

Hope you are well. I am not sure if anyone saw my post about my Digital Inclusion Kickstarter. We have 12 days left on our campaign and we are at 84%, but as you know, this means that there is still lots to do.

So, I am contacting you in the hope that some of you would be able to jump on board this week- http://kck.st/1HyNLTJ.

I would really appreciate your help to reach our goal.

Best wishes,

James

2nd try, no crash, console says "Calibration finished". Still the device doesn't seem to work yet. When restarting it wants to calibrate again, maybe there's a switch in the code to avoid that.

Added a line to the source code to skip the pointer calibration. Now I get to the calibration of the area of interaction where I have to press 4 keys in order. The keys are 8, =, SHIFT and M. After this another crash, lol.

So the wiggle fingers thing sometimes crashes with "OpenCV Error: Bad argument (Input array is not a valid matrix) in cvPointSeqFromMat, file C:\builds\2_4_PackSlave-win32-vc12-shared\opencv\modules\imgproc\src\utils.cpp, line 54". If it's not crashing I get to the next stept where it asks me to do the pointing gesture with the index finger which it doesn't recognize or I'm doing it wrong.

Found the problem, win_cursor_plus.exe expected a missing folder called "ipc", added the folder and now it starts and the Control Panel works now.

Upon starting it now downloads calibration data, and asks me to wiggle my fingers for calibration. Then had another exception, maybe another folder missing.

Close, very close now :)

So I'm pretty sure now the problem is that "win_cursor_plus.exe" can't be started, I get an error on Win 8.1 - trying to figure out the problem.

I was finally able to compile the source code!
I can now start "daemon_plus.exe" which opens a console window where it connects to the Camera and then opens the Touch+ Control Panel.
The Control Panel does not react in any way and looking at the code I believe it tries to download something which does not work.

Looking into it further now..

Apparently, here is Corey's work on OSX driver (updated 16 days ago):
https://github.com/Ractiv/TrackPlus_OSX

@touchhope

The Community Version unfortunately is not compatible and won't load the project.

Lai Schwe has also recently "Improved stereo_processor with y weighting" :

Interesting, no ? Are they finick the first version of this so expected driver ?

@AlexZ

You should try the free community version of Visual Studio 2013 at :

https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-community-vs

Otherwise, Lai Schwe has "removed Training data" 7 hours ago : are we entering the final few hours countdown ? :D super excited !

We can dream : it is not forbidden to dream and we don't pay to wait as we're saying in french !

Has nobody else tried compiling it yet?

Indeed, it seems that Lai Schwe is actively working on the code source these days :

https://github.com/sheley1998?tab=activity

Is it a sign of a very soon official update after all this silent time ?

6 hours ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 636dfd1

Changed how laptop body borders are acquired

10 hours ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 c1c4e2b

Regular update

@sheley1998 3d99ec3

Regular update

4 more commits »

7 days ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 3b56e33

CTracker code removed

7 days ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 ad6f979

Permutation code removed

7 days ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 65abaf6

Regular update

7 days ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 1c873ed

Regular update

7 days ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 6dca4e8

Regular update

@sheley1998 39104fa

Regular update

3 more commits »

9 days ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 edc9e0f

Added tool_tracker class

9 days ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 20e50df

Experimenting with point tracker

9 days ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 916a81f

Unity demo project added

@sheley1998 77b7614

Improved IPC class

2 more commits »

10 days ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 ac885e9

Added active_light_processor

11 days ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 5b8e6a5

Improved motion_processor

11 days ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 3c77f54

Tool tracking mode added

14 days ago
sheley1998 pushed to master at Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
@sheley1998

@sheley1998 d0e5f12

Regular update

@sheley1998 7e8f52e

Regular update

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14 days ago
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Create README.md

I installed Visual Studio in a Virtual Machine so I could do something.

I included the missing dependencies (SFML-2.3.1-sources, opencv-2.4, found the Etron Header File here: https://github.com/Oriense/orsens/tree/master/include, the DirectShow dependency didn't seem required) and added the ones not listed in the Readme like TurboJPEG, fixed a header path to Dropbox to be a local link, installed half a dozen Windows SDKs to get "qedit.h" which itself now requires "dxtrans.h" which is included in the DirectX SKD from August 2007 which I installed but doesn't do any good.

Maybe someone else who is better at this can try it..

My Visual Studio 2013 test license has expired so I can't compile it. Maybe Matthew can help out?

@Martin Lee: that look's pretty good actually, i'll try to get something to run!

I found that https://github.com/Ractiv/touch_plus_source_code
Lai Schwe update the code 5 days ago. I can also see his activity at github.

@Dan
In a bottomless pit I fear...
But if Corey has received from Darren an installer for Windows...
Well maybe this could be a reason to have still hope...
Who knows with those jesters at Ractiv... (I don't mean of Corey of course who's so kind to give us some news when he can.)

Is Corey still around? Any updates? Would love to know where all our money went...

@Justin : For lack of a better alternative, I believe this is a good initiative. It will only work if at least each and everyone who subscribed to this forum does the same. 120 + 130 people is still not a large crowd, but it can definitively help. I filed a complaint following your link, as a buyer of 2 useless cameras for 195 USD (import tax to EU included)

i've submitted a complaint and refund request on BBB against Ractiv. If we could not put this fraud company into a lawsuit, at least we could make us heard on BBB. Please go to the link below to make your voice. http://www.bbb.org/upstatesc/business-reviews/computers-hardware-software-and-services/ractiv-inc-in-greenville-sc-90008134/

I was looking for a PC external device that enables me to use the mouse without fingers leaving keyboard. Since Ractiv has no software, I have tried different alternatives, including "finger mouse", a standalone touchpad and "ThinkPad compact USB/bluetooth keyboard with TrackPoint". The former two still require fingers to leave keyboard. The last one is the only device that satisfies me. The TrackPoint require one week or so to get familiar though.

I come from China, recently I found the Chinese website of Ractiv can't be reached, XL and Darren suck, and they two are shit. My English is not well, I don't know how to abuse them more, XL's sina weibo address is: http://weibo.com/p/1005052264203130, last weibo was sent at june 19th, let'say hi to him there @touchhope @Xavier @Dan @Wassim

lol...

For me, Windows 8 is a shit especially in terms of ergonomics and reactivity : it's clumsy !

Windows 10 can only be better and it would be absurd to deny it on the grounds not to fill use a driver that we eventually will never be available.

And in any way, nothing says it would not work at all under Windows 10 even without any adaptation.

@xavier- you're joking right?? You might as well install windows 3.1 because you have about as much chance getting that to work than any other OS...

Question to the Ractiv team :
hi Ractiv team, I wonder: will your driver soon be made Windows 10 compatible? I purchased your product almost 1 year ago, and since then I have been not using it on my Windows 7 PC. I'd like to upgrade to Windows 10 soon, so I wonder if I will be able to continue not using your product with Windows 10 - or should I better postpone the OS upgrade? Thank you!

Hey, XL !
What about coming to Paris with the pretty girl you met on chinese tv ?
You could invite her to eat at La Tour d'Argent, or Le Lido, or Le Moulin Rouge.
Drink Le Champagne to the health of your backers and buyers !
But you could fall on me asking you the ultimate question : "When would you deliver that fucking driver for your virtual baby : the touch plus device !

Hey, Darren !
Are you the technical director ? Well if you send the windows installer to Corey, maybe you're close to the goal now ? Would you be the 250th user of Wassim website to finally communicate around that pathetic project ?

Since of course Ractiv silent guys didn't answer my last email to [email protected] :

" time to tell
De :
[email protected]
À :
[email protected]
Envoyé le 09 juin 2015 à 17:33

Hello the silent guys at Ractiv,

Are you still alive ?

Just stop working hard and take the time to tell your backers and buyers if they can still hope to have soon now a first driver delivered for the touchplus device !

Best regards,

A french buyer. "


Well, i will try to make a good pleading for all these sad backers and buyers left in silence for months, since a professor told me when i was young that i should make lawyer studies (five years righteous and the rest awry as the french humorist Coluche said) though i would i've like to become a great programmer...

Indeed all this could end in a courthouse but it would not worth the trouble :

A group of young photogenic computer engineering students make a beautifull web site around a sexy concept of an ultimate mouse killer !

One of them had smart stereoscopic algorithms he develop on matlab !

But from matlab to c++ there's the great canyon !

Prototyping interactions between hardware and software is indeed much more complex than they thought !

BSOD, IRC conflicts, latencies and so on ! The days, the weeks, the months are passing by !

But in the meanwhile, celebrity goes on and it's so good to be under the spotlights !

Resolving the issues needs hours of engineer's skills and it cost on a $180000 budget from 2059 backers !

Well that kind of realtime computing is so exciting for the geeks : controling realtime hardware is indeed exciting and that's one of the reason we find your project exciting.

So why don't you communicate with us as you did until october 2014 ?

Silence is a non sense because solutions to issues are find faster with good brain storming !

And that's you will expect with feedback of users if only one day you deliver us something to finally test !

Sharing user's experience even in a critical phase of developing a so inovative and promising system we use to believe in !

Please finally keep out of silence and make us still believing in you and that was and should still be a marvelous project !

Dont't be contemptuous and ungrateful to those who used to support you and your young enterprise, and who would surely like to keep on only if you could finally communicate with us.

It's easy : you should start with "we apologize this too long silence due to our big heads but we haven't forgot you and we proudly present you our first version of that so expected driver ! (well not for osx now but soon !)

What do you say for your defense : nothing, again this unbearable silence, well you're sentenced to shame on you !

What did you expect with angry users if only you will need feedback one day from them ?

This lack of respect is disgusting !

Sorry for this froggy english cry from the heart but it had to come out (the pressure's too high after all this time) !

The Frog

9 months now..

@touchhope

Tell corey to share the installer

@everyone

Hello friends !

No, all hope is not completely dead !

Yes, they're apparently still working on drivers at Ractiv !

Indeed again Corey kindly did answer my last email but he's also a victim of Ractiv's silence :


Re: Time to tell
De :
[email protected]
À :
Christian LERICHE
Reçu le 16 juin 2015 à 03:49

Hi Christian,

Sorry about the one week delay on the email. I wish there was some news to give you. I'm kinda hoping that XL will come to Singapore so that we can work through the current set of issues. It tends to be that when he is going to show up, I get about a one day notice (sometimes just a few hours).

Darren did send me an installer for windows and the code base has been updated, but there seem to be initialisation issues with the Mac Port. For windows, one of the executables installed has an issue on my computer, but that may be somewhat specific to my computer.

I don't know what's up, I don't hear from Darren or XL very often.

Cheers,
Corey

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 11:34 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:

Hello Corey,

Any news, about a possible delay from now to obtain a first version of driver for the touchplus device, you could give our community of buyers and backers ?

We’re all so frustrated knowing there was so much work and hope on this software and now anything but silence!

Cheers,
The Frog

Hi everyone. Oculus news:
GamesBeat: There will be cameras built into those rigs to see the position of your fingers? How would it do that?

Iribe: Not in this generation. It has a gyro built in, as well as the constellation tracking system. That same external sensor is able to track that. We’re also going to be showing, at E3, multiple sensors that you can use. Imagine you could put two sensors in front of you and track an even wider volume. That’s what’s great about this sensor system.
In conclusion, I don't expect ractiv anymore.

not sure if it is interesting anymore, but here is another copy of the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BlIQrxy2Wg

I think we should press "LIKE" on the YouTube video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai8vxE_wIqc
so that they will think its popular to everybody, otherwise it will go "Private" again while they see what comment we put below...

I'll just leave this here...
Unrelated but relevant.

"In a first, federal regulators go after crowdfunding scammers"
http://yahoonewsdigest-us.tumblr.com/121297377849

+1 Justin Huang!

@Ian, there is another YouTube video for the show. check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai8vxE_wIqc

saw that this article went up the end of last month. I spoke briefly with the author as he was putting it together. Nothing really new and (no surprise) he was unable to reach anyone at Ractiv for a comment. http://news.asiaone.com/news/world/honeymoon-over-crowdfunding

Awe, looks like Lai Xue's youtube vid has gone private. I'd appreciate more vid links from backers in China and other resourceful backers, so that we can continue to congratulate him on his achievements!!!!

@Wassim，just a suggestion--you can add a thumb-up button below each comment, and do a ranking of thumbs-up， so that everyone can read the most useful comments.
how do you think about my suggestion

instead of waiting this dead project (personally i don't believe it will come back to life again. this is why i insist a lawsuit is the only way to win us something), the technique provided by Google is much more promising: http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326726

it might need some time before it gets into the hands of a customer, but who knows, there would be one day we use Google's radar-on-chip to browse this website (and that of KickStarter) and laugh with tears...

Congratulate Xue Lai on his vast achievments!!!
Please go to this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dOiD9hYgKg and leave some comments.

Hi,

My name is James and I am a backer of Haptix. Overall my experience of Kickstarter has transformed my personal and working life (with some notable exceptions such as this).

Because of that I am hoping that it is ok to share with you all my own Kickstarter, which I am launching on Tues June 16th at 11.30am GMT, to set up a Digital Inclusion Network in London for disadvantaged young people. This will enable them to explore the latest developments happening within technology. As a result, we hope they can Discover, Make & Create their Future and bridge the Digital Divide 2.0.

Please find a link to the draft preview page-
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1296514545/1467374576?token=9294570c

I am trying to use every available avenue to let people know about this, as we believe that this work is important for the next generation, so I hope people don't mind me sharing this on here. I apologies to anyone who feels that it is an inappropriate use of the page.

If, however, anyone is interested, then please feel free to email me at [email protected].

Best wishes,

James

Please go to this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dOiD9hYgKg and leave some comments.

Lai Xue seems to enjoy being a super star in China and forget about the voice here.
it would be helpful to speak out so that the world outside of this group knows what is actually happening

You're right Matthew, all this is absolutely pathetic !
We're all so fed up to wait !
Again I tell them : it's time or never to tell !
But there was this video on a protected area of their blog with a lot of details that make us curious : we want to see running on our computers what they really did or not !
Now how could they still pretend to get confidence of their backers and buyers ?

Somehow I find it oddly too ironic/coincidental that right as I was working toward a solution to do them dissapearing from reality they appeared with a employee that answered questions and seemed to be demonstrating the project was still alive and then everything goes silent again...

This is getting pathetic.

seems the guy (Schwe Lai) still alive and become famous in China https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dOiD9hYgKg
in short the show ("Super Speaker" in AHTV-1) says:
I got a planet name after me
I set up my first international company in my age of 21
I can speak so many languages
Einstein was wrong because working too hard and ignore his family.
I got a girlfriend, Yeah !

- on well, at least Einstein Mass–energy equivalence works !

- obviously he is not working on the drivers...

seems the guy (Schwe Lai) still alive and become famous in China https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dOiD9hYgKg
in short the show ("Super Speaker" in AHTV-1) says:
I got a planet name after me
I set up my first international company on my age of 21
I can speak so many languages Einstein was wrong because working too hard and ignore his family I got a girlfriend, Yeah !

- on well, at least Einstein Mass–energy equivalence works !

- obviously he is not working on the drivers...

What the fuck with this fucking mouse fucker ?
What the fuck with those unmannerly engineers who take the money and keep silent ?
Not you Corey but how long would they still be able to keep on paying your salary at Ractiv, because I suppose you don't work for free, don't you ?
What the fuck with this endless wait with the sound of silence ?

What the fuck is the problem with those two?
Where the fuck is the tracker?
Where the fuck is an official statement?
What the fuck where they doing the last 8 months?
What the fuck happened to the pen?
WTF

I have studied all the comment. Recently, I found that there have a company oculus. They do the same area by Touch+ and they are from kickstarter. Oculus will release in 2016 Q1 but touch+ have no any news. Um....

8 months without drivers now..

@Cmanders， where can I get the windows binary? what's your github account? while I install it, can the touch+ work?

You know what ?
I am not happy of waiting so long and then to spend the time I have removed the plastic !
I am sure that is the scratchy look of the plastic that is preventing the initialisation to work so well all the time !
Well I hope I won't remove my hair of waiting for an hypothetic update of these silent guys at Ractiv !
I am not talking of you Corey of course ! Again thank you for your news about the ultimate mouse killer that will be a reality in front of each of us soon I hope so.

Hi guys,

I put a compiled windows binary for the viewer on Github, in the the SDK directory. I know I said I would do this weeks ago, but it is there now. There are two sets of openCV dlls, i should have removed the older 2.4.8 dlls before uploading.

As for the status of the tracker, I wish I could give you an update. Darren and XL have not been communicating to me very much lately either.

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence

"Fools," said I, "You do not know –
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you.
Take my arms that I might reach you."
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

Much @cmanders, can you please ask Darren or XL to PLEASE update us on an official status of the product. Granted, they've destroyed almost any chance of anyone ever supporting them again, it'd be nice to hear from them for once.

@Cmanders
Yes, please (windows binary). I'm under impression my setup is not working very well for this device, as I have plenty USB devices attached and all needed. I would expect Touch+ to work in any environment, not just on fresh windows install with no devices :)

http://stofmt.blogspot.tw/2014/06/etrons-eagle-eyes.html
Hi everyone, I'm very interested in this product. I also found some video about esp870. After I saw the video, I believe that the esp870 have some problems but it enough to work.

Hey @Cmanders, is there any software we can test now?

I'm a Singaporean too. @Jeremy, why are you doing an article on Ractiv? Do you know if they are still alive?

Hi, I'm a journalist from a newspaper in Singapore called The Straits Times. I apologise if this post violates the rules of this forum. I am currently working on a story about crowdfunding that features Ractiv and am looking to talk to backers of this product. If you are open to being interviewed, please contact me at (jeremyau AT sph.com.sg) Thank you.

Hey Alex,

No real big updates. XL is making some update to the windows code. I'm optimising the Mac OS code, but a bit slowly (waiting for the updates to stabilise). I think I owe a binary for the windows camera control app, I have it, just need to post it. Sorry for the delay, I'll get that done.

Cheers,
Corey

Hello @Cmanders?

@AlexZ

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.

Well, I must have been too optimistic !
Following Ractiv's pace, imminent could be two or three months more of waiting with the sound of silence of course !
I'm gone reserve a room at the psychiatric hospital !
For those who had not the chance to read the protected containt of Ractiv's blog : here it is (I saved it on my pc.) :
(see at the end : Next Steps : We will be releasing updates weekly!)

Protected: Setting Up Touch+
Protected: Setting Up Touch+
Apr 132015


Hi Touch+ owner! You can get started with your Touch+ alpha unit with the following steps.


Touch+



First, download and install the right Touch+ driver.

Download for Windows

Download for OS X

Second, watch this video on what to expect after you’ve installed!





Or read these instructions on setting up Touch+:



After successfully installing the driver and restarting your computer, you should notice a Touch+ tray icon.
Double-click the icon to pull up the Touch+ menu.
On the first run, the software will perform the following actions
Download calibration data for your specific Touch+ unit
Detect your hands when you move them around (Note: Results are best when your hands don’t overlap.)
Identify your finger and the keyboard tracking area
After that, things are good to go! You can point your index finger to click with the cursor, and you can also pinch to zoom.
You can check out other options in the menu, which contains these three tabs:

Settings
Visualise
Support


Settings

Launch on startup: Choose whether you want Touch+ to launch automatically when your computer starts.
Power saving mode: Turn this on to lower tracking performance to get better battery life. (by reducing processing power)
Check for updates: Select whether you want the Touch+ driver to automatically check for updates and alert you when an update is available. You

can expect updates weekly.
Touch control: Choose whether you want to turn on cursor control, which is activated when you show a single finger. The single-finger cursor

allows you to tap on the surface to control your computer like a touchscreen.
Toggle table mode: This section is grayed out because Touch+ currently only supports keyboards and certain types of surfaces.
Detailed explanation: Touch+ automatically detects the 3D orientation and distance of the surface to use for multitouch by analyzing the

surface. However, on surfaces without any texture or features (such as all white or all brown), Touch+ is unable to perform this automatic analysis.

We will be releasing an update shortly to allow for “table mode”, which includes much more thorough analysis. To use Touch+ on tables at the moment,

you can try placing your hand flat on the surface during the Refresh Capture function.


Visualise

This section shows you what Touch+ sees (the detected shape of your hand).

Segmentation Image


Support

This page is especially important. As Touch+ is currently still in its alpha stage, we need your feedback to make it better! This page allows you to

send us a message when you find that Touch+ has problems tracking on a specific surface or in certain conditions, or if you have any comments in

general.

In the email address field, fill in your email address so that we can contact you to follow up.
In the message field, briefly describe what problems you face.
Click on send message. This will perform two actions: it will send us your message, as well as raw data from your Touch+ (at the time of sending)

to help us diagnose the problem.
Once it has completed sending, you’ll see a message sent confirmation.
If sending fails, you can try again on a different Internet connection or contact us via email (using the contact details below).


Features

Detects hand shape and surface. (shown in the Visualise tab)
Detects single finger posture, which activates the touch cursor mode. Users can then use a single finger to touch the surface to control their

computers like a touchscreen.
Detects thumb and index fingers to enable pinch to zoom.


FAQ

What is supposed to happen when I plug Touch+ into my computer?
You should see three red lights flash to show that it’s turning on. If the Touch+ software is unable to find the device or if the three red

lights remain on even without the software running, you can try plugging it into a different USB port on your computer.
Is Touch+ detachable from the clip?
Yes it is! Check out our unboxing video for more details.
What if my hand isn’t tracked properly?
You can try resetting tracking by simply tilting Touch+ up and then back down, which will let you go through the initialization process

again. If that doesn’t work for you, please send us a message through the Support tab.
How can I check for updates?
If you have turned on the option to check for updates in the Settings menu, Touch+ will automatically check for updates and inform you when

there is a new update to install.
Can I tilt my laptop screen when Touch+ is on it?
Yes, Touch+ will detect the tilting movement and recalibrate.
What can I do with Touch+?
You can use Touch+ to control your computer like a touchscreen on your keyboard. So instead of moving your hands back and forth between your

mouse and keyboard, just type on your keyboard and then switch to a single finger to tap like a touchscreen.
How does Touch+ work?
Touch+ only uses two normal cameras to see your hands. Our one-of-a-kind algorithms analyze the images to identify unique objects, like your

hands, and detects the 3D positions of both your hands and the surface beneath them.


Next Steps

As this is only the alpha version of the software, you can expect it to improve tremendously over time. We will be releasing updates weekly! Here’s

what we’re working on, which you can expect in future updates soon. (in order of priority)

Linux support
SDK (will give you access to images, hand segmentation, and finger coordinates)
Multitouch gestures (pinch to zoom, two-finger scroll)
Table mode (manual calibration on untextured surfaces)
Improved tracking performance
Faster performance (including SSE and GPU acceleration) and lower CPU usage
Gesture learner (so you can teach Touch+ to recognize different gestures to activate different functions)
3D hand model


Contact Us

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or feedback about your Touch+!

For hardware-related enquiries: [email protected]
For Windows-related enquiries: [email protected]
For OSX-related enquiries: [email protected]
For all other enquiries: [email protected]

what a joke...

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a streetlamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

Hello, darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

@everyone

Hopefully some of us had the chance to see that software installation video !

Be optimistic !

Yesterday Ractiv made some changes on their blog :

http://www.changedetection.com/log/ractiv/setup_log.html

View changes: 2015-04-24 15:35 0 new words, 4 deleted words, 1% change
... the plastic! Information Setting Up Touch+ © 2014 ractiv.

I am sure it is imminent now !

They could not have been so far and give up at this point with a setup program ready to get...the first alpha or beta release ?

Let's see on Wikipedia :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle

Pre-alpha

Pre-alpha refers to all activities performed during the software project before testing. These activities can include requirements analysis, software design, software development, and unit testing. In typical open source development, there are several types of pre-alpha versions. Milestone versions include specific sets of functions and are released as soon as the functionality is complete.
Alpha

The alpha phase of the release life cycle is the first phase to begin software testing (alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, used as the number 1). In this phase, developers generally test the software using white-box techniques. Additional validation is then performed using black-box or gray-box techniques, by another testing team. Moving to black-box testing inside the organization is known as alpha release.[2]

Alpha software can be unstable and could cause crashes or data loss. In general, external availability of alpha software is uncommon in proprietary software, while open source software often has publicly available alpha versions. The alpha phase usually ends with a feature freeze, indicating that no more features will be added to the software. At this time, the software is said to be feature complete.
Beta
"Beta Test" redirects here. For the upcoming film, see Beta Test (film).

Beta, named after the second letter of the Greek alphabet, is the software development phase following alpha. Software in the beta stage is also known as betaware.[3] Beta phase generally begins when the software is feature complete but likely to contain a number of known or unknown bugs.[4] Software in the beta phase will generally have many more bugs in it than completed software, as well as speed/performance issues and may still cause crashes or data loss. The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing. The process of delivering a beta version to the users is called beta release and this is typically the first time that the software is available outside of the organization that developed it. Beta version software is often useful for demonstrations and previews within an organization and to prospective customers. Some developers refer to this stage as a preview, prototype, technical preview / technology preview (TP),[5] or early access. Some software is kept in perpetual beta, where new features and functionality are continually added to the software without establishing a firm "final" release.

Beta testers are people who actively report issues of beta software. They are usually customers or representatives of prospective customers of the organization that develops the software. Beta testers tend to volunteer their services free of charge but often receive versions of the product they test, discounts on the release version, or other incentives.

Are we supposed to be surprised that it is gone?

The password protected blog entry seems to be gone now and the YouTube video is now private ...

Place is pretty dead again without forced poking people in emails, lol

BTW not same technology but same name weirdddddd????
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXCpVz-EAnE

@AlexZ
You could say nine months and the baby is trying to walk but it is too soon : he is just trying on his knees and he is falling (initialisation doesn't work so well all the time).
I am like you : I become mad of waiting, even more after I have seen the software installation video on Ractiv's blog.
The frog is hoping from the beginning to forget his mouse having its fingers naturally set in front of the screen (they just want to be free from the mouse !)
I think we are very close from the third type encounter now : the ultimate mouse killer ! TouchPlus from Ractiv's smart compagny (but not kind compagny with this long silence ! except for Corey naturally)

@Cmanders
Again thank you so much Corey for your kindness. Without you we would be still knowing nothing about that is going on.

@Wassim
Thanks very much to you also Wassim for having us talking together with this web site (it was down for hours today and I keep watching it often).

@Ractiv's webmaster
Could you please remove this from the FAQ :
"Do I need custom apps for Touch+? No, Touch+ doesn’t need any custom applications to work. Straight out of the box, you can use it as a touch/mouse replacement for any program! You can also create or install extensions that enable more functionalities in other programs, such as gesture shortcuts."
It is so ridiculous ! Plug and Play, I beg your pardon ?

The frog jumping of impatience ! We are entering the final countdown ! (as Lai Schwe said the 16th of november 2014 :D super excited)

So, anything this week after 7 months of waiting?

@Cmanders, yes put viewer binary :) I have troubles with making C# port see my Ractiv at all, so I am curious if it sofware issue and if 'native' viewer would work correctly.

@Andrew
My part was really the camera interfaces (Windows, OS X, Linux) like the SDKs. I also am responsible for porting XL's tracking code to OS X. If I put up a binary, right now it would only be the viewer. Like the one that I have put up for OS X.

@AlexZ
One thing that is true is that code development of anything substantial goes on even after the initial release (saying something is "done" just wouldn't happen). XL's tracker works quite well in many lighting conditions, but it seems the initialisation doesn't work so well all the time. XL is working on that now.

So "final testing" ...

@Cmanders, you only seem to mention OS X porting recently, is the Windows code done?

@Wassim, I found the email notifications useful, can you enable them for me?

@Cmanders
Could you post some built Windows binaries to play around for ones who have troubles compiling from source codes?

@Cmanders thank youu!
@All http://www.changedetection.com/log/ractiv/setup_log.html

Hi guys, not sure why Darren and XL still haven't responded. But, I just now updated the SDK on github. In porting the hand/finger tracking code from windows to OS X, there were some issues discovered with using the SDK to turn on/off the IR LEDs, as well as issues in adjusting the color channels. I am currently resolving some speed issues with the OS X version. The tracker runs quite quickly in windows, but the frame rate is much lower in OS X. So I'm doing some optimizations right now. What's happening outside of that, I'm not very sure.

Guys, really sorry for the flood of emails! Wasnt here to fix it, I disabled it now.

@Marc lol just trolling and having fun I have been here forever and nothing's happened
btw I think we should find another use for this camera while we wait because I want to expirement with this this

Sorry to you all to have to send yet another notification, but yeah there's no way to shut them off and no way to delete my account here... Messages coming in at 3 in the morning is getting extremely annoying

@Wassim
Turn all email notifications off ASAP, please

1. Noone ever subscribed to them. Who wants it will enable in settings.
2. There is no instant "unsubscribe" link in emails that does not requires logging in
3. Removing checkbox in settings does nothing

This is like 100% spam.

@Wassim: What's going on with the email notifications? If have them set off in the settings, but still they are coming in.

@Owen: Dude...really? You need to watch less movies...

I would like to see it on a positive side, that they are actually entrepeneurs who care about their product. Hopefully we will hear something from them soon. Maybe Corey can pitch in?

it appears as though they are preparing to finally release drivers
http://www.ractiv.com/blog/
password is "password" but the download links aren't active yet.

Dear backers and buyers I have a belief that this is a setup they are testing us to see if we can crack the code either on the website or create a program just like this I may seem like a conspiracy theories but think about cicada a group that recruited top programmers and left one message "we'll be back" so please take this into consideration maybe look at the websites code and try loading pages

@Wassim can you email [email protected]

hey guys, try to setup a filter (if you use gmail), from
[email protected]
label something, skip inbox
thanks for all you guys working on this

>Steve Hogan Backer 13 hours ago
>Hey. I opted out of email notification a couple of days ago.
They started coming again this morning.

Same here.
Could we get them switched off?
Thanks.

We ve come a long way it seems in a very short period , might be hope out there

@Renato D: That's correct.

Ok, so there is this ''password'' protected page, but the link to download drivers are not working. Is that right? Or I am doing something wrong?

All sarcasm aside, I think it was because they were promising some release date only to miss it, again and again, until they decided to simply not say anything any more.

I've always thought the reason why they closed all official communication channel is that they want to avoid any return/refund. We have 100% right (as buyers) to get refund, but they simply don't want us to do it.
None of this justify their behavior of course, just saying..

pretty interesting and encouraging. But again, the million dollar question is- WHY WON'T THEY ISSUE SOME SORT OF AN OFFICIAL UPDATE?

@Christopher thanks, I thought I had tried that but apparently not :) It worked this time.

@Roger the password is "password".

@Christopher if you know the password why not share it with the rest of us. Apparently I am not as good a guesser as you are.

Hey. I opted out of email notification a couple of days ago. They started coming again this morning. Can you stop them please? thanks.

Wow, that video actually looks like a nice product might happen afterall. Granted then again it looked that way last year about this time... Perhaps they took a 6-month vacation on the drivers and then decided it was time to finish it?

@Jerry nice find! The page behind the 'password' request was created on the 13th April, so it looks like they're actively working on it again!

@Jerry the 'password' for that page is extremely easy to guess, i got it on the first try, it has a links to download drivers but they are dead atm but does have a youtube video with instructions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG6h1NPk1Uw

Ok some strange password protected page on Ractiv setup web page appeared : http://www.ractiv.com/blog/setting_up_touchplus/

@ZoomZoomLuke, I am awfully sorry for that mistake... It was just on the first email because I was experimenting with this stuff... I switched to BCC as soon as I figured out the mistake...

A daily and/or weekly digest option would be most appreciated. Thanks for your continued effort!

Hi Wassim,

I'm a little upset that you felt the need to share my email address with 219 people by putting everyone's email address in the "To:" field of the recent and sudden onslaught of emails. A "BCC:" would have been more appropriate.

It would be great if you could include the whole message in the mail, so I don't have to go here all of the time.

So @Everyone, I added a "User settings" link next to Logout, it will allow you to change passwords and disable email notifications!

@Wassim, it's not annoying in my mind, at first I just didn't know what those e-mails mean, I think it's OK, I can get the progress immediately, thank you for reply me, I can not provide any help but just wait, I hope those guys can make some progress.

Hearing from corey@ractive breathes a new hope in getting this project eventually working we should try and get some more help and interest ? ,

I'm a backer with no programming skills. I appreciate the time and effort you folks are expending trying to bring the Touch+ to life. Thank you . . .

@Xiangyu, it's not an update to the software, it's just that I have set up email notifications when someone posts here so that it reaches everybody. If that's somehow annoying, I'll add the possibility of disabling the email notifications soon. Now, about the software, please refer to Cmanders post just before yours, he says he'll be releasing a new version tonight.
@Cmanders, thank you for this awesome work, I'll be waiting to try the new update! (Not sure whether it'll work or not since I am getting the ESPAEAWB_RET_REG_READ_FAIL error like other members here with the current software) However, were you able to contact other members of the Ractiv team to see the progress on the "official" software?

I received few e-mails from [email protected], is there any progress? the e-mails said "There si an update on the Ractiv Software", where can I download it? @Wassim

Hi guys, I am contactable at [email protected]. Here is an update on what I have been doing...
Last week I was working with XL to port the tracker to OS X. I did see the tracker running in windows, but may have some issues with different lighting conditions. I think XL is working on that, and will merge his code with mine soon. Aside from that,while porting the code to os x, there were some issues detected with the os x sdk. Specifically, there was an issue with turning the IR LEDs on and off as well as adjusting the R G B color gains. Those issues have been corrected, and I will try to update the SDK on github later tonight.

Also, is there any progress on the github coding?

Is cmanders replying on your emails? Did he contact Lai and Darren?

Ok, guys so what are our options? I bought this device and stays unused, sadly. The only way we can make it work is to find more devs on github who are wiling to develop further under the open source umbrella.Otherwise, this proj. is doomed to disapear into oblivion. It is doomed anyway hence there isn't a follow up model, and the comunity is almos inexistent. Who of you here are C/C++ devs, with linux background?

Garbage... it's baffling that even after Corey popped up and basically said it is still an active project that these guys still won't provide an official update.

@Wassim, thx so much for get us together, this thought was brilliant and good, thank you so much.

I haven't had a lot of time to work on my code base with work starting to pick up. Coupled with Cmanders posting I'm hoping they are going to be releasing something. But eventually I'll get back to my project if they don't. It's truly sad they don't seem to understand the need to keep their community informed.

I don't think so! Nobody is talking about this issue anymore

any updates?

I fell like an idiot! I don't even know if I still want to see my Touch+ working...or just want to get my money back.
There is any solution to make it work? Any position from Ractiv's employees?

Glad to see there is finally some action on this.. Can't wait to actually finally have a working Touch+, this is going to be momentous.

GordonWalker, fair enough
Even if that's the case, Etron must be applying some kind of correction to the images, even if normal lenses are used, because the final images are never perfectly aligned. Therefore, if those correction matrices could be identified and changed, we could very well use the native hardware depth mapping capability of the device.

I wish you all well in your endeavours to make the systems in you hands actually work.
It was a product that carried a lot of promise (unfortunately more it seems more in the rhetorical sense than the physical).

We remain vitally interested but it would need to be a commercially available system for us to adapt our software systems to make use of it.

Wow! It's really awesome to see that things are moving!
Thank you Corey so much for taking time to reply here and help with the code! I hope Lai and Darren do the same and post an update or just make the current code open source.

Gordon, Ractiv's own FAQ seems to corroborate the USB 3.0 requirement for hardware depth mapping. From http://www.ractiv.com/faq.html:

How does Touch+ connect to a computer?
Touch+ very easily connects to the computer with a uniquely designed USB 2.0 cable. You can also use a USB 3.0 cable if you wish to try our beta functionalities, such as depth mapping.

Papadoma, about using the depth map from the Etron chip, I think you can only access that through USB 3.0. I did find a press release on the Etron website here, http://www.etron.com/en/pr/latestnews2.php?ID=341 and although it's a bit vague I think what it's saying is that the USB 2.0 output from the chip only gives compressed stereo images. For uncompressed images and the depth map you need to be using the USB 3.0 output. Also, I don't know much about depth map calculation but I suspect the reason the Touch+ might not be able to use the Etron depth map is the wide angle lenses. If the Etron chip creates a depth map by comparing the left-right position of objects seen by the two cameras that will work for normal lenses, but wide angle lenses distort the image so you'd have to compare the position along a curve, or else stretch the image out at the corners first.

Matthew, new results for you
I've started a virtual machine on same PC on same USB port with Windows 7 too
And I have touch plus init OK
http://screenshots.ryotsuke.ru/scr_70a5d96315aa.png

No picture though.

Pressing disconnect shows an error http://screenshots.ryotsuke.ru/scr_a80ce20eb10c.png

Original Ractiv Viewer
http://screenshots.ryotsuke.ru/scr_50ca907f1171.png

So I still think it is SDK/DLL/software issue

Ideally you would like to have something similar to this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEXmJpz5A3M

Recognising gestures is one thing. I suggest we should firstly focus our effords into having a nice depthmap that can be used for all sorts of things, not just gesture recognition, e.g. small scale robotics.

@ Matthew,
I might be able to help you with that. In order to acquire depth data through OpenCV's block matching algorithm (or SGBM for the semi-global one, which is much better) you have to:
1)Know the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of the stereo camera
2)Rectify the input images of the camera. That means that any kind of distortion has to be corrected and the images have to be shifted accordingly so that points rest on the same horizontal plane (the algorithms search only horizontaly, applying the principles of epipolar geometry)
3)Get the resulting disparity map to be translated into coordinates of the WCS (World Coordinate System) using step's 1 results (mainly the Q matrix)

Step 1 in OpenCV is explained here http://docs.opencv.org/modules/calib3d/doc/camera_calibration_and_3d_reconstruction.html
Step 2 is done through the function remap() and
Step 3 using function reprojectImageTo3D()

Also have in mind that OpenCV's disparity map comes scaled by 16, so in order to get the "real" disparity values (i.e. how many pixels differents between the two cameras) you have to divide by 16 (dont remember the reason really).

According to that scope, I really cannot understand why can't we use Etron's hardware generated map. For starters, having the depthmap ready and not relying on OpenCV is a huge bonus; disparity generation is really computationally heavy. If we get rid of a portion of the computation of the disparity map through that, then we have more resources for the rest of the stuff that need to be done (retouching of the depthmap, analysis, segmentation, classification etc). If the lenses are the problem, then calibrate the camera. Every stereo camera, no matter how much attention you pay during its fabrication, has slightly different parameters. To calculate these parameters is something really trivial. If we can pass them to the onboard hardware somehow, then its done!

Hey Matthew,
I did get a chance to check out your code yesterday. I did have quite a few problems with it. At first it didn't match the camera name against my touch+, which I could solve. Later, it was crashing on the stereoBM call. This is likely due to some issues in the emgu libs. I realized that may take some time. But I've got some other related work I need to get done first :) also, if you can compile the SDK code, all of this should be working and adding an opencv stereoBM to the viewer that is included should be quite easy.

I have just send an email to [email protected] :

Hello Nick,

I am a french buyer of Ractiv's "Touch Plus" device, a stereo camera driven with Etron eSP870 3D Depthmap chipset supposed to replace mouse for controling a computer.

Unfortunately the company did not communicate for months nor with its backers neither with its buyers since they sold a first batch of that device but without any software until now.

Few days ago, one of the Ractiv's developpers named Corey has published a sdk for the touch plus though apparently without their gesture recognition code :

https://github.com/Ractiv/TouchPlus

I emailed Corey and he answered me, though he don't know much about Ractiv's plans, but he is ready to help developing an open source software for the touch plus device.

He has started helping Matthew porting on csharp

https://github.com/shadowmite/TouchPlusCMDR

Umar's access code to the device

https://github.com/umarniz/TouchPlusLib/tree/master

on Wassim's web site forum for backers and buyers and interessed people :

http://gharbi.me/ractiv/index.php

Seeing your work on internet,

http://www.nickgillian.com/software/grt
https://github.com/nickgillian/grt

I wonder if you would accept to help too even a few.

Thanks in advance even if you unfortunately don't have time for this.

Sorry for my bad english.

Best regards,

The frog (touchhope on Wassim's web site forum)

Hello,
I might not be able to support the ones working on a solution by their own, but I just wanted to make myself and all other with similar intentions noticeable.
The interest of backers and buyers is not as extinguished as it seems.
Nowadays only a few seems to be active in this forum or on the comment pages of Kickstarter, but only due to the long lean period without news. This doesn't mean the project and its founders are forgotten.
Most of us just check for updates only once a week and more seldom every month but it stays in our minds nevertheless. So, low forum activity doesn't mean the dust has settled. Those like me, that can't solve the problem by ourselves are simply waiting.

Maybe, time will help in forgiving Darren and Xue Lai for apparently deserting us but not in forgetting. There is no way to sit this out.
They have to justify themselves someday, finally. Why not now? Otherwise they will be hunted by Touch+ and its backers/buyers until the end. I promise.

I just wanted to make you know, that there are still many of us, who are pretty interested in finding a solution, even though not everyone is speaking up.
Thanks

Thanks Corey. I agree that it's more appropriate for Darren to post but this entire situation is absolutely bewildering and almost even more so now that we find out that the project has still apparently been active all this time. You do not seem to be involved in any of the politics and that's fine-you seem genuinely interested in helping the community and that's huge. But for the life of me (and most probably everyone else with a touch+ sitting on their desk collecting dust), it's frustrating and confusing that rather than provide backers and buyers with some kind of update, Ractiv has opted to remain completely silent without even providing a clue as to what is going on. The assumption was of course that they had given up or ran out of funds but that doesn't appear to be the case. As you can see from this page, there's a number of people that are actively trying to make this work and if Ractiv had run into bugs or major issues, I'm positive that the community would be willing to lend a hand where they could provided they were actually kept in the loop. I can't imagine a worse business strategy... Again, none of this is directed at you whatsoever but as of now, you're the only person that's actually interacted with us from the company.

Thank you Corey, an update from Darren or XL would be most welcome.

For Matthew,
CVGet2D may be misleading you by its name. It is actually a function to get pixel values from a 2D array. That being said, the "pixel values" you get from the output of a block matching algorithm are disparities. The difference in x location where two patches were found. The algorithm basically works like your eyes and the way our brains process depth. If an object (or patch of pixels) is far away, it will show up in similar x locations in the two images. If the difference between the location of the object is a lot, it means the object is close. The are some formulas for taking this, and with some calibration getting distance for a particular unit of measure. But, likely you don't really need this process. Usually you can just threshold on some depth/disparity plane, or do something like use the smallest disparity in the depth image as a guide. In opencv the maxminloc (or it's name is something like that) will do this for you. What can throw off this process are noise and errors in the disparity map.

Hey Dan,

I do have regular contact with Darren and Xue Lai. I have been working with them for over a year now. I can say things are moving. I'll ask Darren today if he can post something today, it's really more appropriate for him or XL to update the progress.

Hey Matthew, I'll check out your code tomorrow. For Andrew, there may be something wrong with the firmware. I can talk to Darren and XL about getting some fix for that.

Hi Corey-

If you wouldn't mind, is it possible to give us a little background about how you got involved with Ractiv? I get the sense that you were brought on after a lot of the issues started happening? Do you still have regular contact with any of the original founders like Darren Lim or Lai Xue? I know you said you don't really know what their business plan is or why the aren't communicating with backers but just trying to get an idea of if there's even any activity on their end?

Thanks for your support-it looks like some good things may come out of this after all.

@Cmanders - Thanks, the C# port is mainly since I knew I would have to tinker and it's a excellent language for rapid prototyping without dealing with the windows complexities. Once I get something working I can always port back to C/C++.

Indeed I do have it partially working, if you'd like to take a look at my code and example, it's at: https://github.com/shadowmite/TouchPlusCMDR

It's already compiled if you dig into the bin/debug directory. It's not a bad implementation right now, but having never worked with this before I feel like a newb and welcome suggestions. Perhaps it's working better than I expect, I need to figure out the depth calculation, which I believe is something with CVGet2D according to some googling. Any hints on that calculation?

For Andrews issue, my SWUnlock function is correct, and on everyone's elses Touch+ is returns 0 (OK), but Andrew gets a -21 which thanks to your code tells us that is a read fail. Sounds like a hardware issue to me. He indicated this init fail occurs on the actual Ractiv Camera Viewer application as well.

@Andrew, sorry to hear you gave up the c++ compile. For C# I can't really help you much. Can the unlock function from the posted code help at all? If you got the C++ code to compile, you could just use the unlock function in there. But, my experience in c# is very limited.

@Matthew: Totally understand the tired of waiting thing. Honestly I can only do what is in my own control. I can try to help with your virtual mouse. For finding fingers/hands, I don't think there is much of an option except to make some assumptions. Also, having been involved in problems like this for a while, there are usually a bunch of avenues to try, and usually, I (and I believe almost everyone else) get stuck trying just one.

One thing is to make sure your segmentation prior to detecting the hands/fingers is good. There are really a number of ways to do that. The stereo camera can give you depth, the background is generally static, the IR lighting can help etc.

Another way is to start from the other direction. If you just want cursor control, start moving the cursor around just using some segmentation and something like the segmented point closest to the screen. I generally like the idea of getting something working, and then playing around with it.

Cmanders, I actually gave up on compiling code. I'm not C++ developer, I just wanted to see if original sources will work for me. With C# port I'm stuck at getting ESPAEAWB_RET_REG_READ_FAIL and ESPAEAWB_RET_REG_WRITE_FAIL on SWUnlock() function. Do you know why these error can appear?

I don't mean to imply the ractiv design is off, I meant off from the reference spec of ETron's chipset. If that is required to detect the hands at the range they designed it for so be it! We haven't have communication with Ractiv in so long that we expected the worst (problem that couldn't be overcome).

I am just working to write my own version of an application to make the Touch+ a virtual mouse since I got tired of seeing it gather dust for the past 6 months. I have no formal training in computer vision and am slowly learning what can be done. I'm generated a disparity map (StereoBM) but haven't yet determined how to calculate depth from it. Working on that now. Although my current blob detection technique is lacking, it's very inaccurate. Any pointers how you would find the hands/fingers?

Hey Matthew, I'm not sure if the GetZTable will work at all. The Etron chip was not able to deal with the lenses that were appropriate for the end goal of detecting hands. I think the code I posted has examples of getImage and get2image, but the pHandle is a void pointer that gets passed into an init function, pSerial was not implemented yet by Etron, nor was enablePostProcess. The only time I saw GetZTable work was on a test module provided by etron, which used two pinhole cameras. Honestly, the depth results look exactly like opencv' stereo matching results that use patch matching algorithms. The benefit is that it is implemented in hardware.

It's really unfair to say that the Ractiv design is off. The design is quite sound for detecting hands. The Etron chipset will only function in a very narrow set of instances. Any mis-alignment in the y-axis will break it, and lens distortion also has a bad affect on the results. I don't really know, but you may be working on a problem that doesn't have a great solution no matter what. Have you compiled the code I posted?

Corey, for me I could really use some examples of the function prototypes from ETron, specifically:

int ETRONDI_API EtronDI_GetZDTable(void *pHandleEtronDI, char *lpDesBuf, int BufferLength, TABLEINFO* ptableinfo);
bool ETRONDI_API EtronDI_GetImage(void *pHandleEtronDI, BYTE *pBuf, int *pSerial=NULL);
bool ETRONDI_API EtronDI_Get2Image(void *pHandleEtronDI, BYTE *pImageLBuf, BYTE *pDepthBuf, int *pSerial=NULL, int *pSerial2=NULL);
//
void ETRONDI_API EtronDI_EnablePostProcess(void *pHandleEtronDI, bool bEnable);

I'm stuck trying to determine blobs in a reliable way and how to determine depth in a reliable way. Those functions might help with the depth part, unless the Ractiv design is so far off the ETron chipset can't function properly?

Hey, I'm the Ractiv developer who posted the SDK + viewer code on github. I'll help answer any questions about that code. I'm helping Andrew get through the process of compiling that code right now.

WOW! This is probably the most promising news we've gotten in months. Even though it's not the promised software everyone has been hoping for, at least it's something and at least now it looks like we've got some contact with a person associated with Ractiv. Here's hoping to some progress! Although I don't have any coding ability really, I'm more than willing to help out testing where I can and providing feedback on bugs and other issues.

I confirm that Ractiv is not dead yet : here is the fast answer of Corey to my email :

Re:Time to tell

Hey Frog,

For most of your questions, I really can't answer them. I'm only a developer with the company, and don't know much about their plans or business. I put this email address in the code so that I could help fellow developers.

I think some software was delayed because Xue Lai needed a lot more time to get some code working than he expected. I'm not exactly sure why they haven't been responding to their backers. My preference would be to move to make all touch plus software open source.

If developers need help with the posted code, or need help porting the code, I'm happy to help.

Cheers,

Corey

Also, can anyone comment, what is https://github.com/Ractiv/TouchPlus
It has 3 days ago commits. This repo contains anything new and usable?

I'm now getting errors as expected http://screenshots.ryotsuke.ru/scr_70fa3b1beb91.png
Which is kinda better silently doing nothing :)

Hello Friends !
I have just send a mail to [email protected]. The title is "Time to tell".
Here is the containt :
"Hello Corey !

Happy to see that there is still someone alive at Ractiv !

We all were thinking that Ractiv was dead.

What did you expect publishing the touchplus sdk on github few days ago ?

Creating a developers community ?

Well, thank to Matthew's efforts there's now a beginning porting on csharp.

Your code publication will certainly give him some answers to some of his technical questions.

But the main issue about Ractiv is his silence for months.

I suppose you regulary meet the boss at Ractiv.

Well please tell him that's enough waiting to communicate !

Me as a 5th of 2014 august french buyer, was so enthousiastic about leaving my mouse, controling my pc with my fingers !

I think, backers and buyers are now ready to forgive Ractiv's silence if only you could quickly give us explanations.

Come on guys !

The spring is there and flowers are blooming !

The Touchplus must tell us if there is still hope to get even a buggy first software or if it's definitly dead !

What did happen ?

Did Ractiv runs out of money ?

Did you made a mistake designing the hardware not integrating depth's map calculation ?

Your efforts making computer calculation create too much latency and the software is unusable at this time ?

Did Lai Schwe is still working on his more than 30000 lines of code ?

When will start the next final countdown to get a first thing ?

Is there an issue with keyboard relation ?

A journalist did saw your system working on a pc but was it a different hardware ?

If you wish to create a real developers community around touchplus, please please tell the boss to communicate right now

with his backers and buyers !

Please be kind now to give us explanations and we will forgive your long silence !

A still hoping buyer (my nickname is touchhope on Wassim'site).

Sorry for my bad english.

Best regards,

The frog
"

Argh, someday I'll get it right. Appearently even though the new code identified it as an error my main form function never checked those errors. So I fixed that and now it should properly toss up some errors and NOT run the viewer form for you. As a side note, I'd imagine this is what limited your ability to connect to the one working camera. Once the unlock function is called it allows one connection in. At least that's my guess here. Good call on adding a error event handler, I added that with a simple messagebox when it occurs now.

I've opened code and set few breakpoints. Looks like no FinalVideoSource_NewFrame is called at all, though no errors are produced either (I've added FinalVideoSource.VideoSourceError += FinalVideoSource_VideoSourceError;)

FinalVideoSource.IsRunning = true
FinalVideoSource.BytesReceived = 0 :(

I have no idea why this happens

Matthew: "Connect" button log http://screenshots.ryotsuke.ru/scr_985764700501.png
"Unlock only" http://screenshots.ryotsuke.ru/scr_0883fcaf6c04.png
Accessing from Skype turns on IR leds, but no feed. Same effect as from "connect" button. http://screenshots.ryotsuke.ru/scr_eb32f33abc85.png

Interesting. The ETron chipset does seem to work with the camera feeds seperately, it's possible one of your two is bad from what you describe. Since I'm accessing it via Directshow as a combined feed that might be why it's a little different. Regardless I've updated my codebase this morning to now utilize the errorcodes (since Ractiv just 2 days ago released their SDK on github I now know what they mean). Try this or possibly also try the unlock only function to see if it makes any difference. The ETron library seems to be able to manually adjust color and gain on separate cameras but I don't know if you can access them separately. At least I haven't seen a way to yet.

Original CameraViewer was failing to init video stream as well, but when it was launches I was able to observe single camera stream in Skype. Unfortunatelly with ported version I'm not able to get stream in Skype. It may be related to amount of USB devices including cameras in the system.

Interesting, according to the defines in Ractiv's SDK, that's:

#define ESPAEAWB_RET_REG_READ_FAIL -21

Does it work with their original Camera Viewer app for you? Almost sounds like a hardware problem or loose connection?

Matthew, just tried your project. It is very cool that you have ported it to C#, but I don't see picture from cameras when I plug it in and "connect"

Console is not showing any errors, IR leds are on. But no picture and IR toggle is not working. http://screenshots.ryotsuke.ru/scr_bde32267601b.png

Well, I've got some work to do on it. But by running theory is who cares if it matches perfectly if we have detected finger like structures! I'll commit the code at this stage and pick it up some other time.

http://www.shadowmite.com/img/hulled2.png

Great Matthew!

What the ... ? : https://youtu.be/d7Gu-cIPR0E looks like etron guys are working better than Ractiv guys xD BTW well done Matthew !

Ok, project is a little further along, you can now see some of the filters I've been tinkering with applied. Not sure how to proceed from here right now. What I've tried to far to "identify" the hand was terrible, so still tinkering. Would love any suggestions or comments.

And of course the app is compiled in the TouchPlusCMDR/TouchPlusCMDR/bin/Debug/ directory if you just want to run it once you download the zip...

https://github.com/shadowmite/TouchPlusCMDR

papadoma, good to see someone who might be able to help. Basically I ported the unlock and video feed extraction to c#, because that's what I know. I'll try to get the code up on github or something to have a repository we can work from. I assume you are either a c or c++/# guy? sounds like you might know more about how to do this than me... my next thing was to adjust thresholds of the difference images to positively ID the hand and then try corner identification to get the points. z depth I haven't thought about much yet.

By the looks of it (judging by the DLLs in his folder) Touch+ was designed to use opencv and more specifically the modules of video capturing, OpenCL, object detection, machine learning, image processing, clustering, feature extraction, 3d calibration and CUDA. OpenCL and CUDA could certainly help with the creation of the disparity map, although that would mean that a) it wont support this type of acceleration in every PC and b) hogging resources otherwise used for gaming (if someone would like to use touch+ for that)

Matthew H. Fogle is trying to make Touch+ work and has succeeded in getting the raw feeds from it using this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9qGTuITjG0_eTh0RzkxQTVkb2c/view?usp=sharing

Now, when he releases his code, I would be more than happy to try and create the disparity map from the two feeds, as I've done it before. The problem is that I was using OpenCV, not a really quick solution to it. It would be much faster using some sort of internal calculations on the device itself.

Hello everyone !

Found an interesting link about unreactive Ractiv :
https://markbaillie.wordpress.com/2015/01/09/ractiv-inactive/

Seems to me that the simplest thing to do would be to reach out to the Attorney General in the state of Washington where ractiv.com is registered.

Meanwhile they read our comments and smile, they have nothing to fear, they don't feel the need to negotiate with us.

We backers are 2000 and have no legal leverage on them.

But for you buyers (estimated to be more than 1000) it's a different story you paid for a product but you did not get it. You are in a position to start a legal action and we backers will (many of us) support you.

If a legal action is started then they might feel the need to negotiate.

At this point I completely agree with what Dan said.
I think the only way to get a response though, is to actually catch one or more of the Ractiv guys in person. Polite discussion, mind - they've screwed up and the point doesn't need to be made over and over, we just need some sort of information pipeline from them to us and to impress upon them that we are still here and not going away.
_If_ they have hit a wall and are completely stuck and we as a community don't want to walk away then we would need to negotiate with them to let us either continue with the software development as a community effort or possibly assist in some way.
So, what can we do to organise this? Do we have locations for them? Are there any backers or buyers nearby or can someone try to set up a meet of some kind?

seems as though it's become somewhat of a lost cause. I hate to say it, but realistically, there's no shot at any legal recourse whatsoever so that leaves 2 options-get in contact with these scumbags or take on the project ourselves. Many contributors have made various efforts in contacting the creators or even anyone loosely tied to them in hopes of garnishing a response. Others have tried to seek out potential open source drivers or software that may be used but I've got a low confidence level that no matter what someone's skill set is in this community, without taking this on full time they won't be able to develop cohesive software that replaces what Ractiv should have provided long ago. Whatever their reasons (which i still believe are completely inexcusable no matter what justification they believe they have), up until the point in which they completely cut off communication with us I do believe a significant amount of effort was being put into the software and based off of some communication we've received from Etron, they may actually still be working on it (Trust me, I'm not trying to sound optimistic in the least bit). Basically, my point is, if any of us were to spend any ounce of effort with this project, I believe it would be best spent in trying to get a response from Ractiv.

So guys, where are we at? Seems like Ractiv is still working on the driver but no way to garantee that they'll release...

New user here, but backer on Kickstarter... It's very disappointing that Ractiv has basically disappeared.. I hope we can either get software for it, or get our money back.

I bought 8 of these things for Schools for the mentally challenged. Thought it would be an amazing project for them to start using PCs, well sort of.
Hope something happens with this and i don't end up with allot of useless junk.

Matthew-the January date is simply the date that the patent was issued. I'm actually a bit surprised it was issued as quick as it was-typically the patent process is a multi-year long endeaver. In any matter, the issue date doesn't really have much to do with Ractiv and there would be nothing holding them back from releasing hardware or software without a fully issued patent. Were there any IP concerns on their end, the filing date is really the only thing that would have mattered. Plus the fact that they've demoed their software to the public for quite some time and also released hardware would mean that most of that is already public knowledge. (But again, in terms of protections, once a patent is filed, they would have legal protections from that date provided the patent is granted).

Notice the interesting part about the patents they hold is the most recent was issued January 8, 2015. This indicated potentially this is not a dead project but rather they didn't even have the patent yet?

Actually they have four patents covering this:
http://patents.justia.com/inventor/lai-xue

There have filed a patent application:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20150012891.pdf

Thanks Arnie. Hopefully they could give you something.

These guys did the PR work for them. http://www.dynamopr.com/blog/post/dynamo-launches-touch-turns-surface-trackpad/ I have asked if they have any contact details they are willing to share to track them down.

@touchhope thanks for spending the time finding related code. I appreciate your effort.
I hope someone would be able to get something out of them.

However, personally at this point I don't care too much of getting Touch+ to work anymore. It's Ractiv's responsibility.
Did anyone have any update on pursuing a case legally?

Hello Folks !

I think that at this point we need to find c++ genius people who could have technical opinion about to make a nice combination between these two guys coding works :

Umar Nizamani
https://github.com/umarniz/TouchPlusLib/tree/master

Nicholas Gillian
http://www.nickgillian.com/software/grt
https://github.com/nickgillian/grt

Is there anyone with good knowledge on c++ ?

Thanks in advance for your technical opinion.

Maybe someone could contact them to explain our problem around the TouchPlus device with missing software and get their technical opinion on feasibility ?

I feel pretty unfortunate now. They did not even reply to my email.

I checked in with the contact I have at Etron again and he emailed Ractiv-this is his response:

"Hi Dan,

I checked with the Ractiv operation manager in Asia again. The answer is pretty much the same as last time.
He mentioned that he tries to push for early release of the software even before the final optimization is done.
However, only US development team can make the call on early release. This is all the information I got so far.

Best,"

So I guess the good news is apparently they are still actually working on the project but the bad news is there doesn't seem to be any end in sight and who knows what's going on internally with the company considering they can't even manage to provide backers with an update. I hate to keep bugging a 3rd party and this guy has been nice enough to reach out for me twice already so I probably won't keep pushing for more info...

@sensaurabh, there is no "beta software that they had release earlier". It does not exists.

Any access to the beta software that they had release earlier?

Samuel, they also received funding from a US based accelerator fund as well. I can't remember the name off the top of my head but I have contacted all 3 companies at some point. Red dot ventures did respond to me initially saying they would try and reach out but I never heard anything. The US company as well told me that they tried to contact Ractiv without success. I would encourage anyone else to email them as well but unfortunately, there's only so much they can do. I was encouraged that the guy from Etron had claimed to have been in touch with Ractiv but it's been quiet ever since.

Here the contact of NRF
http://www.nrf.gov.sg/about-nrf/nrf-headquarters/contact-us

Baseed on Dan article and Jun Wu comment, Ractiv had receive funding from Red Dot Ventures (www.reddotventures.com/portfolio).

They also got funding from National Research Foundation (NRF), Prime Minister Office of Singapore.
http://www.nrf.gov.sg/innovation-enterprise/singapore-science-technologies-showcase/interactive-digital-media/touch-

Since it involve funding from the government agency, is best to try to get the NRF to get pressure to them.

Hi to everybody from Italy. I've nothing to say than we're screwed... :)

bad link, sorry : https://www.facebook.com/ractivsoftware/posts/851891471509613

@keinhaar : this is what one of my Facebook "user" (Yu-Ta Lee) translated from this video :


---This video is more focus on Darren himself than the Ractiv team.

In the Touch+ demo section, Darren used Touch+ like Leap Motion and when one of the judges questioning about the accuracy of gesture recognition, Darren said that Touch+ normally should use like a replacement for touchpad on notebook. Therefore he took "few days" to modify software for this show and felt sorry about the bad accuracy of gesture recognition.

Other than that, Darren said the Ractiv team received fund from Singapore government and could hire people from the government research institution.

Darren also brought one of the co-founders who is from Korea to the stage.

He said nothing about the software delay, the anger of the backers and the customers all over the world. However he did shamelessly said they sell Touch+ for $75 in US---

https://www.facebook.com/ractivsoftware

The Video shows the touch+, but what is he telling? Can anyone translate?

Hi, just enter to hail all, tyvm.

A video from the ractiv creator...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ6YWG7SGdc

A video from the ractiv creator...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ6YWG7SGdc

@Philsta
No not yet but I'm going to try again after my exams. Good luck!! :)

Any buyers had any luck trying to reclaim their credit card charge??
Might head down that bank and try that tomorrow...

If I can I would be more than happy to send my useless paperweight to one of the companies developing similar products for them to have a play with.

I wrote the Structure Sensor team, this is the reply I received:
========
Hi Brian,
Thanks for your question, and I apologize for our slow response during the holidays!
While the Structure Sensor has been tested in the past for hand tracking (including fingers), there is no application available to allow this to happen.
With that said, if a member of the Touch+ backer community wanted to pursue a project like that using the Structure SDK, we'd certainly support it.
Thanks!
The Occipital Team
=========
Happy new year to all !

@Dan
If that's the case it must have something to do with USB's bandwidth.
PS3 Eye could do 640x480 @ 60fps and that was more or less the upper limit for uncompressed video feed. If depth map is given as a grayscale image, I would think that they could easily do 640x480 @ 60fps grayscale. On the other hand, if the depth map is given as disparity (number of pixels) then I could understand the need for USB3.0, especially if they use higher resolutions (although I doubt they do or use higher framerates)

@papadoma- my understanding is that the hardware depth map requires a usb 3.0 connection (at least I believe that's what ractiv mentioned at some point when they were actually communicating with us) so I'm guessing they went the software route in order to be more compatible and perhaps more flexible? Maybe they were able to gain more control over the software depth map since they were able to right their own detection algorithms for it- who knows...they were planning on allowing access to the hardware map via a usb 3.0 connection but again, this was when they were actually communicating with us. I'm hoping that the mounting pressure will finally force them to update us but I remain cautiously optimistic as we've been promised many things over the past few months. Something delivered by the company that actually intended on providing the software would certainly be the best case scenario so hopefully they actually come through

@Dan
It seems we're getting somewhere.
If they decide to give access to both the chip generated depth map and the video feed, I believe that would be optimal. Generating the depth map using software consumes valuable resources while combining both could introduce a more versatile piece of software.
The only reason I refered to disassembling the device was to find out the components inside. Since we know its eSP870 based, that pretty much helps a lot.

@Dan
Thanks for the hope and all your efforts!
@ Wassim
I tried to contact them for a refund but as supposed, I didn't got an answer. I will wait for a week as Etron said and than starting emailing them everyday till they respond. Or are there objections to that? -then I won't do that :)
Happy new year to all!

So I contacted Etron based on the google+ link before and got a somewhat promising reply:

Hi Dan,

This is Etron PM Michael and my supervisor Samuel relayed your email to me.
After receiving your information, I immediately contacted Ractiv operation manager to understand the situation. He informed me that they are in the process of testing their software and shall respond to their customers within a week.
Meanwhile, let me clarify a few things from what I read from your website.
1. eSP870 is a stereoscopic depth controller capable of streaming synchronous videos of both sensors and a depth map
2. However, Ractiv used the synchronous dual video outputs from Etron eSP870 to generate a software-based depth map of QVGA size. Ractiv is not using the hardware depth map from the eSP870 controller
3. The product specification of the Ractiv module is not perfectly designed for the hardware depth map generation. So there might be quality concerns over the use of the direct depth map output from eSP870 controller with Ractiv's module.
4. We will be glad to help relay your questions and inquiries to Ractiv whenever necessary

If you have further questions, please feel free to send me an email.

Best,

Michael Nie
Etron PM

It seems they have somehow gotten in touch with Ractiv. Hopefully, this isn't simply the same line of BS ractiv has been feeding everyone else and we may actually hear back from them this time. Unfortunately, it looks like any assistance we might have received from 3rd parties probably isn't going to happen since they are relying on a hardware depth map while Ractiv is doing a software based one...

Thanks Gharbi to help people to join forces.
My beautiful piece of plastic is getting dust. Before Ractiv disappear I could contact them many times...Now im part of the no-drivers backers and buyers.
When they said in their infamous "setup page" the remove the drivers for download I think it means the drivers were published at least once.
Did someone download or recieve a beta copy of drivers on previous stages?
happy new year for everyone...even Ractiv.

@Scherady I searched for his (and ractiv's) news in Chinese. One report said the young CEO and CTO believes the biggest issue is actually lack of money, not communication. We already knew (from the previous article) Lai works remotely in Shanghai. I guess he has to go to SF for some serious business.

@Jun Wu: great! thank you, the picture looks like him. A selfie from his iPhone 6+ with his mother on December 20, somewhere in Europe, Austria ?
What makes you think his is trying to get investment ?

Hi, finally had some time to register here. What is the latest status with the Ractiv mess?

No response from tmtpost. I found a weibo account weibo.com/maschinist, which is likely to be Xue Lai himself. If so, he is probably in SF trying to get investment.

I've taken it apart before- very simple to do just take an exacto knife and pry up the front plastic. It's just held in by some adhesive

Even if we manage to get the raw depth data out of this device with the help of Hsueh Samuel or anyone else, that would be plenty.
I personally bought this unit just to have a small device that can deliver depth maps. To be honest, I don't really know if the depth map shown in one of their videos is real and extracted from the unit itself without any external processing, so I would really like to know. Maybe someone should dissassemble the device and find out what's inside (I may do it myself in some point)

Jerry-I don't think anyone posted that link yet other than you so it may be a new avenue to try-great find! I will contact him

I understand developing has risk, but i just not satisfy about zero response, talk is cheap

@Dan : the link was given here on, don't remember who shared it. https://plus.google.com/107414035407354334983/posts, this guy seems to know a lot about the Etron chip, if i'm not mistaken. I'm sorry Dan, but you can be aware of my catastrophic english just by reading me, i think it wouldn't be a good idea for me to try to reach poeple that could help us, a native english speaker seems more appropriate to be listenned to seriously.

The cameras appear to be almost level with the surface but either way-it's what we're trying to ultimately get-Jerry have you tried reaching out to the creator of that video?

this looks interresting : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Gu-cIPR0E&feature=autoshare

As someone once said... No man is an island. Thus no great things come from someone who cannot communicate with their fellows as they remain forever doomed as legend in their own mind only. An inability to deliver on anything, promises, product etc. leads to further isolation. Seek first to understand before trying to be understood. Be of service to others ahead of expecting rewards for empty words. From the short interview text below you could drive a bus through the perceptual issues/potential roadblocks associated with this insular approach. I now formally abandon all hope of seeing anything from this venture. The smartest people in the world are usually sunk by their inability to communicate.

@wassim Yes, 13 days ago, unfortunately.

I appreciate your efforts on this page, thanks.

@Jun Wu, comments look a lot cleaner now, thanks for noticing :)
Also "Will try to complete the driver this weekend" that was 13 days ago?

@Jun Wu @Dan Thank you so much for your efforts
@Jun Wu I'll do that :)

The artical is orginally posted at http://www.tmtpost.com/176253.html on Dec 11. I have sent a PM to the publisher IT Times. Waiting for reply.

@wassim could you preserve the line-breaks in comments, or pre-process them using something like Markdown? Thanks!

Thanks Dan for various kinds of efforts!

The translation looks too long and is a bit confusing. Here are the key points from a native specker's point of view:

Summary:
- The article is mainly about kids born in 90s doing startups in a "crazy" way not being understood by the elder generation. Xue Lai is just one example.

Xue Lai:
- Tried and failed to get money from big investors in the US. Therefore turned to kickstarter
- Works remotely in Shanghai, due to lack of money to rent offices in Singapore
- Works 100 hours a week himeself, which is pretty crazy
- Likes to work on his own and thus sometimes forgot to talk with colleagues
- Will try to complete the driver this weekend
- Works with people in 40-50s. Xue Lai *had* difficulities in communications with them
- Is trying to improve the situation by trying to treat all staffs equal

I guess the the software is by far mostly written by one or two very experienced key staffs. Other staffs (including Xue Lai) can hardly make a significant progress. Maybe the key staff didn't feel profitable, or lost interest, or felt too tired, or changed the view of life?

@wassim-i think we'd probably need someone fluent in reading and writing chinese to first determine who wrote the piece and then craft a response.

@Scherady-don't forget on top of the money raised for kickstarter they had separate funding from 2-3 other places. Red Dot Ventures, The Iron Yard, and Darren had received a grant from the Theil foundation. They raised close to $1mm if not more

How much money could have made?
Let's assume things are linear and our ratio of Buyers/Backer is a good statistical representation of the reality; for 58 Backers we have 46 Buyers then, for 2000 Backers there could be about 1600 Buyers. At $75 per unit it would make $120,000 in addition to what ever could be left from $180,000 ... Not bad!

@Dan any way to contact him ? :/

Found an article that appears to be from dec. 18th. Here's the translated text:

　　In the vast galaxy, there is an asteroid named after him, Xue Lai

Xue Lai, born in 1992, founder and CEO of technology company Ractiv. In the vast galaxy, there is an asteroid named after him, Xue Lai.

At the age of 16, he and Lin Chen-Yang, Li Xianji "inspired by multi-touch interface for data transfer" technology won the Intel international science and engineering fair. That year, still a high school student's three smaller partners did not venture idea they put $ 1000 bonus reserved for patent research funds, while the remaining $ 2000 fully donated to the earthquake-ravaged Chengdu.

The following year, the "2009 World Chinese Award" on the stage, he along with Qian xuesen, born Briton who stood on the podium. For he who likes to leave research, the best choice is to go to a large platform to concentrate on scientific research.

College entrance examination that year, he put on hold to go to United States schooling opportunities is designed to save annually thirty thousand or forty thousand dollars in tuition, reducing the burden to my family. So he decided to stay for one year gap year, cast resumes for Intel Corporation, smoothly into the Intel Asia-Pacific Research and Development Center in Shanghai, he is the only one without a Bachelor's degree full-time employees.

A year later, living in Singapore's Lin Chen-Yang also finished military service, Lin Chen-Yang Xue Lai said: "we run a company. "Xue Lai said," fine. "The two men hit it off, Xue Lai gave up her studies and abandoned the Intel platform when both parents did not support their business.

They held handmade products touch+, at his own expense to buy the United States tickets, ran as a family investment company. Way back when when Xue Lai on the forehead wearing a homemade device with a Scotch tape adhesive behind, carrying a ThinkPad laptop, opposite the Kinect and threw up his hands and make the end action of the teapot.

　　"The United States venture capital are very smooth, and he did not vote for you, nor you, tepid detour. " Then they turned all the way to raise, did not think this akin to fretting and Leap Motion, eliminates the hand moves back and forth between the keyboard and mouse gesture controls, first 3 days on the Kickstarter had raised $ 100,000. Later, in the Singapore venture got red dot $ 500,000, but due to higher hardware costs, now that investment is not enough to sustain them in Singapore rent a decent Office. Under pressure from cash-strapped, home of the Xue Lai returned to Shanghai, via Skype and fellow long distance collaboration Office.

A teenage CEO, with a mean age of 40-50 years ' uncle, Xue Lai had to communicate and get along with confusion. "I am slowly changed, I think that as long as employees as partners, and with concepts of Classless equality with them. "He said.

Behind the seemingly impulsive choice of venture, Xue Lai worked 100 hours a week of crazy way to do things for myself, "already wrote 200,000 lines of code, but not yet, will drive out for this weekend. "Xue Lai told the the times of IT," I always like to bury myself to do things, sometimes unable to communicate with your colleagues. ”

original site is here. It seems to be a series of stories about young entrepreneurs
http://finance.jrj.com.cn/biz/2014/12/18094218558567.shtml

Thank you for creating this. It's been frustrating that my only source of information (Kickstarter page) didn't allow me to communicate because I wasn't a 'backer'. I specifically bought this thing from their website at full price so I would get a *working* product quickly and without a hassle. I thought an "alpha" product meant that it would still arrive *complete*, but would maybe have some glitches.

This lack of communication is beyond unacceptable. I don't know how they do things in China, but we need more transparency in the West. They need to hire a manager whose sole job is to structure and maintain the timeline of this 'project' and communicate with stakeholders. I'm sure they have a friend in b-school that would do this just to put it on his/her resume. What a bunch of amateurs.

/rant

As received here are the reply/questions from GESTOOS/FEZO, please help respond:
======
Hi Brian,

I just took a look at the gharbi website. As someone says, it would be super interesting to have a raw video of the camera. Just to see which kind of depth map it is delivering, amount of noise, etc.

Also, we would like to know how do you think you can keep the project alive. If you find the proper developer, are you planning to go into Kickstarter again? Private funding?

Please, keep us updated!

Best regards,

Xavier Suau

fezoo labs
computer vision + interaction
www.fezoo.cat
======

Super! Thank you Wassim.
Surprising, almost as many Bayers as Backers !
If we continue at this pace, we will soon be a sizeable community.

@Sherady I've just added it :)