This Week
Eye Tracking [1][2]
I was able to set up live-video eye tracking locally on my computer with the help of the research I did last week [1]. I did so by copying over the code [2] and ensuring each step worked with my personal computer/set-up.
I extended some extra time to this process to make sure I understood what the code was doing, because we expect to have to modify some of it to integrate it with our user interface. Also, there was some debugging necessary to get the program to perform as expected, and I needed to modify the code in some places for testing.
I did run into some trouble setting up the threshold (a value to manage differences in lighting) “track bar” that was in the original project, maybe due to the fact that the cv2 library could have changed this functionality since the article and code were published in 2019. During testing, I changed the threshold value manually in the code, but I believe that I should be able to set up a track bar (or some other type of user input) while implementing the user interface.
There were a few differences I noticed while setting up the code. For example, the author of the article suggested that we cut eyebrows out from the eye block detected by the computer, but when I was testing with my face, the eye-detector did not include my eyebrows in the detection area. I wonder if different face structures produce different results in this area, so I would like to test the design on more people in the coming weeks.
Design Review
In preparation for the design review, I made a block diagram for the software side of the project, because I wanted to make sure that there weren’t any facets that were missed in our planning that we would later need to implement in a rush because we forgot. There are a lot of moving parts in the software side of the system.
After making this diagram, I realized I needed to reorder and redesign my tasks in the Gantt chart and to better fit the dependencies and difficulty of each task. Here are my new tasks for the next five weeks:
I was fairly busy this week, so I didn’t get as much coding done as I wanted to. However, I think that refining the software layout was a helpful first step towards the coding process.
Next Week
Based on my new schedule, I want to start working on the frontend next week. I have already done some preliminary research on GUIs in Python this week, but haven’t decided which library (of the many available) will best fit our needs, so that will be part of the process.
One of the most important parts of this step is to identify the coordinate ranges for each command to set myself up for success in the week afterwards, where I want to make the code convert coordinates to commands.
Another thing happening next week is the design presentations. After we get our feedback, we will review it and determine what changes we want to make while writing the Design Report, which is due at the end of Week 7.
[1] Filonov, S. (2019, Mar 22). Tracking your eyes with Python. Medium. https://medium.com/@stepanfilonov/tracking-your-eyes-with-python-3952e66194a6
[2] Filonov, S. (2019, Mar 22). Eye-Tracker. GitHub. https://github.com/stepacool/Eye-Tracker/blob/No_GUI/track.py