DIY Head Tracker For A Tenner

brumster

brumster
FYI, Rob has done the usual stellar job and updated the sketch to v2.20.5 with a small but useful revision to the auto-centering that makes it much more subtle - particularly for opentrack users. Be good if people can try it and report back how they get on - opentrack or otherwise. I gave it a good play yesterday in both Arma 3 and ED and couldn't see any negative effect....

On the website as usual...
 

Blairvoyach

Blairvoyach
Just tried the latest sketch in DCS A10-C and it has certainly cleared up the autocentring which was causing the tracker to become unusable. Since I am only moving my head 10 degrees either way scanning instuments, it was impossible to concentrate on anything on the main console, much better now. The only slight problem I am seeing is the tracker not returning to dead centre after looking to the left, it always seems to return a degree or so away from centre and slightly rolled right necessitating a manual centre after approx each minute of use. Still, much better than before. I will give it another go in Elite as soon as my miserable internet connection has updated it to V1.06

Thanks for all the hard work done on this.
 

SentineI

SentineI
As it seems like I have to reset my EDTracker every few minutes, I've been trying to recalibrate it... and now that someone pointed it out, it's become very obvious that the main problem with drift is due to temperature variations:

Despite my EDTracker being in a sealed Maplin box, left running for a long time, and used in a room with windows basically shut, I am seeing temperature variations of at least 5 C, depending on where I use/calibrate & the time of day. These temperature changes appears to lead to large changes in drift.

I imagine the temperature variations in various drift parameters could be approximated with a simple linear equation (Y=M*X+C) used on the EDTracker. The tricky part of working out the constants M & C would need to be done by the Java software - it would need to record drift parameters for different temperatures & then perform linear regression to get the constants M & C. The most difficult part would be knowing when to discard older drift parameters taken at similar temperatures (perhaps you could say a temperature within 0.2C would discard the old drift parameters?).

I'm just thinking out loud. Maybe there is a better way to do it?
 
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peterbbb

P
Win 8.1 and EDTracker

woodstok said:
I dont have win 8.1 but it might be cool to post your solution here for those that do :)
Click to expand...

Have spent some time getting EDTracker to work with Windows 8.1. The problem is essentially that windows 8.1 insists on having a signed driver or it will not play properly. It 'forgets' a driver than you can load by any other method than the one I am going to try to describe here.

The situation needs more if you have a store installed version of windows 8.1, which I had.

I'll describe the second phase of the solution first. If you have a disc installed version of win 8.1 then this might be all you need to do.

ALL NEED TO DO: You need to force windows 8.1 to allow unsigned drivers. A simple Google search will show you how to do this. Don't worry when it says you have to do a reinstall. It is not as drastic as that seems, or seems to me. Follow the instructions and it works easily.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-can-i-install-hardware-with-unsigned-drivers-in-windows-8/

Then you should see under device manager--com ports the device arduino indicated. Right click it and install the driver that is found on the EDTracker website. I am assuming you have this small folder already on your desktop.

Then you are done and windows should remember the driver on subsequent restarts of the computer.

SHOP INSTALL NEED TO DO: If you have a shop installed version of windows 8.1 then the bios needs altering. This is not as scary as it seems. But the setup from a preinstalled version of win 8.1 will have some kind of security setting that stops the above, ALL NEED TO DO, from doing anything. So you must do the bios reconfigure first. Again the instructions for this are easily found using a google search.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/1pp8sf/installing_unsigned_drivers_to_surface_propro_2_w/

You may need to do a search for your own computer as different machines have different ways of accessing the bios.

Hope that helps.
 
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n0ahg

N
peterbbb said:
Have spent some time getting EDTracker to work with Windows 8.1. The problem is essentially that windows 8.1 insists on having a signed driver or it will not play properly. It 'forgets' a driver than you can load by any other method than the one I am going to try to describe here.

The situation needs more if you have a store installed version of windows 8.1, which I had.

I'll describe the second phase of the solution first. If you have a disc installed version of win 8.1 then this might be all you need to do.

ALL NEED TO DO: You need to force windows 8.1 to allow unsigned drivers. A simple Google search will show you how to do this. Don't worry when it says you have to do a reinstall. It is not as drastic as that seems, or seems to me. Follow the instructions and it works easily.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-can-i-install-hardware-with-unsigned-drivers-in-windows-8/

Then you should see under device manager--com ports the device arduino indicated. Right click it and install the driver that is found on the EDTracker website. I am assuming you have this small folder already on your desktop.

Then you are done and windows should remember the driver on subsequent restarts of the computer.

SHOP INSTALL NEED TO DO: If you have a shop installed version of windows 8.1 then the bios needs altering. This is not as scary as it seems. But the setup from a preinstalled version of win 8.1 will have some kind of security setting that stops the above, ALL NEED TO DO, from doing anything. So you must do the bios reconfigure first. Again the instructions for this are easily found using a google search.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/1pp8sf/installing_unsigned_drivers_to_surface_propro_2_w/

You may need to do a search for your own computer as different machines have different ways of accessing the bios.

Hope that helps.
Click to expand...

I just use the signed Arduino Leonardo drivers which have been available since January!
 
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Antmax

Antmax
n0ahg said:
I just use the signed Arduino Leonardo drivers which have been available since January!
Click to expand...

That didn't work for me with my ProMicro 5v Arduino clone board in win 8.1 64bit either. Tried a whole bunch of drivers and the advanced reboot for unsigned drivers was the only way that worked for me too.

BTW I found that an old Standard size servo case makes for a nice EDTracker case if you dremel out the insides.

P1010347.jpg


P1010349.jpg


P1010351.jpg


It's a very tight squeeze lengthwise. I also ground out the back of an LED to leave some lens to stick in the servo pinion hole in order to capture some of the light from tracker LED's. Unfortunately the tracker board obscures about 1/3 of the hole or it could be cleaner.

It's a pretty nice fit over all. A slice of that fiberoptic plastic rod would probably work better than the LED lens but that was all I had at short notice.

PS. NEW v2.20.5 Edtracker Firmware works VERY well!!

Thanks guys.
 
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Shinedown45

Shinedown45
Having Recently Got myself the track ir I now have an edtracker surplus to requirements, It's in TicTac box with a 3 metre usb cable, All calibrated and working 100%. PM me for details.


No Longer Available, Thanks All.
 
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Antmax

Antmax
n0ahg said:
They have been included with the Arduino IDE (both stable and beta) since January.
Click to expand...

Those were the first I tried. Couldn't flash the Edtracker till I:

1)Advanced reboot,
2)Opened device manager com device,
3)Pressed the edtracker reset button at the transition between compiling and uploading. At which point my device name changed,
4)Install the promicro drivers

Voila. All is good from then on, have to repeat for each USB socket you want to use.
 

n0ahg

N
Antmax said:
Those were the first I tried. Couldn't flash the Edtracker till I:

1)Advanced reboot,
2)Opened device manager com device,
3)Pressed the edtracker reset button at the transition between compiling and uploading. At which point my device name changed,
4)Install the promicro drivers

Voila. All is good from then on, have to repeat for each USB socket you want to use.
Click to expand...

The pro micro drivers aren't signed. The Arduino Leonardo signed drivers work perfectly with the Arduino-compatible Pro Micro as long as you haven't messed with the boot loader as it is a Arduino Leonardo clone! Also be careful you don't install any drivers from a none official site as they might have stolen USB IDs allocated to someone else :-/

Info here http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/ArduinoLeonardoMicro?from=Guide.ArduinoLeonardo
 

Antmax

Antmax
n0ahg said:
The pro micro drivers aren't signed. The Arduino Leonardo signed drivers work perfectly with the Arduino-compatible Pro Micro as long as you haven't messed with the boot loader as it is a Arduino Leonardo clone! Also be careful you don't install any drivers from a none official site as they might have stolen USB IDs allocated to someone else :-/

Info here http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/ArduinoLeonardoMicro?from=Guide.ArduinoLeonardo
Click to expand...

I bought mine ready built from the Edtracker guys and used the official Arduino drivers you mentioned. They seemed to work in that the edtracker was originally recognized as an Leonardo but on uploading sketches it changed id to promicro and failed..

The steps I mentioned were the only ones that worked with 8.1. I heard that prior to 8.1 the latest official drivers worked fine.

It was a very common problem with the pro micro a couple of months ago. I didn't build my tracker though, so I don't know how it was originally flashed. Not in Win8.x though.

Works fine with the steps I mentioned and have had no problems since.
 
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NeilF

NeilF
brumster said:
FYI, Rob has done the usual stellar job and updated the sketch to v2.20.5 with a small but useful revision to the auto-centering that makes it much more subtle - particularly for opentrack users. Be good if people can try it and report back how they get on - opentrack or otherwise. I gave it a good play yesterday in both Arma 3 and ED and couldn't see any negative effect....

On the website as usual...
Click to expand...

OK, I'm confused... I've look backwards and forwards over the site and can't seem to see what I need to download. ie: Nothing is dated this month?

"Now available on the update tools (select EDTracker2 as your image - check the version number, which should be v2.20.5) and also on the GitHub source code page, if you work via the Arduino IDE." - Can't quite work out what this is saying either?
 

Skeeter

S
Hi all.

I have my new pro micro board as last one i messed up with soldering badly. 2nd time the charm i hope.

Anyhow, i dont have it soldered or built as head tracker yet just the board so plugged it in to usb used the audrino software to flash the blinking led program on to test if it worked and had a boot loader etc and the flash worked the leds are blinking the green and orange ones.

But when i try using edtracker util v2, sometimes it hangs loading properly. Other times it works but always saying cant detect on com 1 or 4, the board is on 4. So cant use the gui to flash anything as ive tried, i duno if its cos i put the blinking led program on or what. I dunno how to remove the led blinking pro either so its like when i bought it.

Any ideas, or just wait to do all this after i have assembled the edtracker fully. I just wanted to test the pro micro before i bothered to solder it all up u see so that it was flashable for the software needed.
 

Skyflyer

S
I downloaded opentrack but I'm not sure if I have the correct version. When I select Joystick as Main tracker and click on Settings button I do not get the same settings window as I've seen in Brumsters video where you can select axis. For me it only looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/VjjBiez.png

I got to https://github.com/opentrack/opentrack and clicked on the link to the Windows binary builds (the drop box link) and downloaded what seemed to be the latest file opentrack-win32-20140919.tar.xz.

Is there another link that I may have missed? Or do I need to configure the program somehow to enable these settings?
 
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