[Noisebridge-discuss] Replicator Wednesday tonight at Noisebridge, 5pm to 9pm.

Thu Sep 22 00:41:45 UTC 2011

Re: obtaining code - sometimes it works if you write to the authors
personally and ask them for a limited non-commercial license to share the
code. Tell them you will sign a paper and fax it to them declaring you are
using the code for research only non commercial will control its use to
within your research group. It might help if you agree to share your results
with them !

I have some codes I have such licenses to for other things. But the software
may not work for you ! In the process of science often cool results are
found but are difficult or impossible for others to duplicate, it may be
easier to start from scratch maybe. Sometimes there is a fine line between
heuristics fudge factors and cheating. Other times a method works really
well for some data and terribly for (possibly most) others.

On the other hand a big part of the rationale for open source is to avoid
excessive duplication of efforts. If you are Microsoft maybe you can afford
it financially. To work with MS I think you would have to agree to give them
exclusive, possibly free in perpetuity, access to your results at least for
marketing purposes. Certainly they have always had beta testers for their
commercial products.

If you want to develop good relations with upstream developers / inventors I
think you need to be able to give detailed feedback, and to try out
suggestions they make and report back again, to help narrow down the sources
of problems. They DO greatly appreciate to know that people like their
software and want to use it, as long as one is at least semi-professional
about relating to them, and they do appreciate also help with the more
mundane details of creating a useable, distributable product. The need for
volunteers is great in Open Source projects, someone has to do it, and if no
one volunteers it will not get done ! And it is a great feeling to have been
a part of something even if in a small way.

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 4:47 PM, Taylor Alexander <tlalexander at gmail.com>wrote:

> Yeah, I had a lot of issues with RGBDemo losing track of where it was and
> building another point cloud at some arbitrary orientation from the original
> point cloud.
>
> RGBD-6D-SLAM was supposed to be better, but is bet run under linux, and by
> the time I got all that set up, I was kind of over my initial project.
> Didn't help that I don't own a kinect so I had to go to his house to borrow
> it. And then, dealing with point clouds is a pain.
>
> When I find a *good* solution, I'll totally buy a kinect. Not interested in
> it for the gaming though.
>
> I just wish MS would release the dam source for that new demo already. As
> best as I can tell, they have said NOTHING about it except what they showed
> at SIGGRAPH.
>
> Also, total aside, but have any of you guys seen what they're doing on the
> Ultimaker mailing list?
>
> Someone posted this today:
> http://i.imgur.com/rmZGK.jpg
>
> I'm not that familiar with this DIY 3D printing, but as far as I can tell
> that blows most everything else current out of the water! Of course please
> correct me if I'm wrong.
>
> -Taylor
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 4:40 PM, David Rorex <drorex at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> In my experience, whenever you see a really amazing software in a research
>> paper, the source never gets released. Probably because they are researchers
>> and not software developers, their code is buggy / user unfriendly / uses
>> expensive proprietary libraries / only works well in specially controlled
>> conditions that the average person would consider cheating? I dunno.
>>
>> Usually you have to wait for someone else to look at the research, and
>> then implement it from scratch (this someone could even be you!). Which
>> could be anywhere from a couple weeks to never, probably depending on the
>> complexity, usefulness, popularity of the research, and how well the paper
>> actually explains it.
>>
>> RGBDemo already has room reconstruction like in the microsoft kinectfusion
>> demo, and is open source, unfortunately the speed & quality is nowhere near
>> the kinectfusion one. Hopefully it continues to improve, it's still fairly
>> new.
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 4:09 PM, Taylor Alexander <tlalexander at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> There is also:
>>> http://www.ros.org/wiki/openni/Contests/ROS%203D/RGBD-6D-SLAM
>>>
>>> And, as I said before, some really promising work done by microsoft, that
>>> has yet to be released.
>>>  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quGhaggn3cQ
>>>
>>> There's also these guys:
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH58u_057Ac
>>>
>>> But I e-mailed them months ago and all they said is they "may" release
>>> the code. Of course, I haven't checked, its possible they have by now...
>>>
>>> Unfortunately I'm not on all these mailing lists, so I *can't* reply to
>>> everyone. I should sign up for them though... I recently decided to buy an
>>> Ultimaker (yay!) so I'll have a much more functional interest in this stuff
>>> soon.
>>>
>>> If someone could forward this to all the lists that are not NB Discuss,
>>> it would ensure everyone got it. Clearly though I should get on the others
>>> though...
>>>
>>> -Taylor
>>>
>>> On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 4:02 PM, David Rorex <drorex at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I've done a little playing with the kinect for 3d scanning. Can get a 3d
>>>> model of the front half of something pretty easily, for example here's me:
>>>> http://davr.org/uploads/meshlab.png
>>>>
>>>> Getting a full object scan requires either:
>>>> A) Manually taking a couple scans from different angles and merging them
>>>> in meshlab, eg:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.instructables.com/id/Using-Meshlab-to-Clean-and-Assemble-Laser-Scan-Dat/
>>>>
>>>> B) Using RGBDemo room constructor mode with a special box around the
>>>> object to fake it out into thinking the kinect is moving, eg:
>>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7LthXRoESw
>>>>
>>>> I've collected useful kinect links at the bottom of the page here:
>>>> http://wiki.acemonstertoys.org/Kinect
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 5:14 PM, Taylor Alexander <
>>>> tlalexander at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I've just been waiting for someone to release good code for using a
>>>>> Kinect. Seems like by far the best solution using current tools, aside from
>>>>> the lack of available code.
>>>>>
>>>>> Surely you've all seen this:
>>>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quGhaggn3cQ
>>>>>
>>>>> I just hope they release and open source that. But its Microsoft, so
>>>>> who knows...
>>>>>
>>>>> -Taylor
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 4:42 PM, Brian Morris <cymraegish at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> My bookmarks for 3-D scanning:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://code.google.com/p/structured-light/wiki/ofxStructuredLight
>>>>>> http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=1014
>>>>>> http://www.kylemcdonald.net/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/arts/design/makerbot-is-a-new-3-d-printer.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Brian
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 9/15/11, Peter <peter.b.harrington at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> > I will come next week if you guys are still doing it.
>>>>>> > I am going to bring my bot so I can get some expert advice on the
>>>>>> effing Z
>>>>>> > stage.
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
>>>>>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>>>>>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
>>>>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>>>>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
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