What counts as really big news in my special technology world is, I’ll admit, a little different than everyone else. But it’s tough to really convey the special love affair I have for the Sony PS3 Eye camera – just as it was hard to explain to the local GameStop employee that, no, I don’t actually have the PS3 game system.
So the big news for me today: rocking out new Windows drivers for the $40, computer vision and augmented reality and high framerate and capture-capable PS3 Eye camera.
Previously, the Windows driver for the PS3 Eye could be either blazingly fast, or blazingly not actually working at all. If you followed our instructions for the PS3 Eye on Windows only to find the camera randomly freezing, we’ve got good news – it’s fixed. (Hey, it was a from-scratch driver written by one person.)
The new driver is performing beautifully. I’m using it in Processing with the aid of GSVideo. Updated in this release:
- Improved driver stability (this relates to the freezing of the camera image on some machines)
- Overall CPU usage was greatly reduced by optimizing the critical code. This code is now implemented using hand optimized MMX/SSE instructions.
- Various fixes in PS3Eye.ax direct show component. This should improve compatibility with many programs that use this feature (i.e. Skype, MSN, Flash)
- Direct show applications can now use full set of PS3Eye camera frame rate capabilities. Here is the list of supported formats: 320×240 @ 15, 30, 60, 75, 100, 125 fps and 640×480 @ 15, 30, 40, 50, 60 fps
- Full XP/Vista/Windows 7 support
In fact, to me this gives the driver near-parity with the Linux version (though it’s still easier to install GStreamer on Linux), and makes it worth running in Windows if you’ve got a Boot Camp install on your Mac.
Grab the new version at the very bottom of the ongoing page; 3.0.0.0825 at press time.
Sony PS3Eye Camera DirectShow Capture Source Filter *Update* v3.0.0.0825
Previously:
This image is hilarious. What else do you need to know, really?
