Under the heading of "If I'd known it was going to turn out so well, I'd done a better job."

I built this three-point clip for use with trackir, or whatever headtracking software you use, and it was so easy and quick.

The basic shape is made of a piece of black plastic coat hanger, heated with a candle just right till it would bend smoothly. I then drilled a couple of small holes into the end and out the side for the IR LEDs, which are so cheap online.

I bent another small piece into an L shape, drilled into the end and through the LED holder to hold a tiny nail for stability and superglued it to the side.

Hooked up all the wires, wrapped it in electrical tape, stacked three button batteries together with hot glue, attached whole thing to headphones and voila... works like a charm.

All tolled, less than 10 bucks.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zUgdZbxQewk63KiBI5UoIpg89Qm37KEb/view?usp=sharing

John

Edited December 13, 20187 yr by jtwhite
wrong pic link

You've revived my interest.  Several years a bought a clip from a guy in the UK.  A beautifully made thing with three LED's and wired for USB.  I also have a P3 camera so, other than knowing what to do, I guess I'm all set.

I believe you could also hook it into to the 5 volts from a USB port.

Anyway, love the idea!  I'll consider it if I ever break my TrackIR Pro Clip!

 

Many thanks!

 

Thanks for the responses...

I wanted to keep the number of wires to a minimum, and I could have used a little less electrical tape. Now that I know how it all goes together, I think Ill make a more streamlined version taking into account all the things I realize I could have done differently.

John

Innovative and cheap ... Nice!  How fragile is your version?  The original I bought from natural point has broken so many times (mine repaired almost looks like yours lol)

Ihttps://drive.google.com/open?id=1i1yhE0T1XUow25PN6AmuEvFsh6GDhiKN

I think I could drive nails with mine, yet it's really lightweight. The pics above show the basic construction. Notice how I drilled small holes on the end of each arm in order to separate the pins and make soldering them easier.

You wouldnt really need to put electrical tape around it, just sand it down and paint it, or however you want to hide the wires.

 

Edited December 14, 20187 yr by jtwhite
change text

By gosh. Found a use for all those plastic hanger that just...hanging around!

When I use headtracking, I use an Aruco tracker, which costs pretty much nothing at all.

Example videos:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=opentrack+aruco

 

 

There are a few alternative Track IR wireless LED emitters on the market now, such as Track Hat Clip, that are much sturdier than the flimsy original. As an aside, if one doesn't mind a coarser head track, set the camera to Standard in the Track IR app. This will cut down substantially on the amount of data transmitted on the SimConnect channel and improves performance if one has marginal hardware. If your CPU is of recent vintage, you might as well use the default camera setting of Precision, as you won't see a difference in either framerate or smoothness.

Humpty Dumpty has yet another alternative !  And he loves it... Maybe he can give some insight here at this thread?

Hey Humpty? Are ya Dumpty?

You can use EDtracker Wireless , i have made one myself, but mine is Micro usb based , EDTracker has 3Dof but by using opentrack one can make all the axis work to give you 6dof and the best thing no Camera or IR thing and its very cheap.

Do check it out. 

 Used an Arduino Pro Micro with MPU 6050 but i will be honest i  still haven't got it to setup the axis as of now but will be testing later next week

Edited December 16, 20187 yr by HumptyDumpty