Cyclops

In order to track the remote controlled cars so a 'trail' can be projected, I originally thought infrared LEDs would be a good way to go (See 'The Presentation Post). Mounting the LEDs in a specific configuration on top of the cars would give the camera somthing to track and allow a trail to be projected along the path the car had taken. This setup would depend on a couple of things however. The camera mounted above would need to have a high enough resolution to distinguish the LED configurations and the cars themselves would need to power the LEDS, so more battery juice.

With abit of advice from Mr. Durrant and some research, Colour tracking would suit this project a little better. Painting the roof of the R/C cars different colours would allow the camera and Max MSP to track the cars without the need for LEDs or extra battery power.

After having a look on the Max Object website, i found an extension to analyze greyscale and color information from a live image. The plug-ins called Cyclops, which allows the resulting Cyclops data to control MIDI, audio, video and anything else that you can do in Max. Bad thing is that it costs 99 American Dollars, but i seems to do what we need. Well partly.

http://www.cycling74.com/products/cyclops