i series urgent question

[Thane Pullan]

i have purchase a separate eyex for a desktop computer but also own the i series and want to install the software i’ve made for it. Would it be compatible and would I just install the software in the setup area. Coding is complete. I also don’t want to muck up the i series with tobii communicator in case my software doesn’t go smoothly. can you advise how to proceed?

[Jenny [Tobii]]

Hi Thane,

Did you end up using the Gaze SDK or the EyeX SDK? I do not think it would work to have the EyeX Engine and the Tobii Communicator software running simultaneously on the same machine, since they would each assume themselves to be the only software responsible for providing eye-gaze based interaction and also for doing the configuration of the eye tracker (screen setup, calibration, firmware upgrade, and so on).

[Thane Pullan]

so it’s impossible to run them one at a time on the same operating system?

[Jenny [Tobii]]

If you are dependent on your I-Series as a communication device I cannot see a way it can be done reliably for continual usage. I talked to a couple of developers from Tobii Dynavox who have actually tried installing the EyeX Engine on the I-Series, and they pointed out a problem I hadn’t thought about initially: the EyeX Engine screen setup assumes that the eye tracker is placed as a periferal on the frame of the computer monitor and immediately below the screen and in a certain angle. This is not how the eye tracker is placed on an I-Series, where the eye tracker is integrated into the frame of the screen. This means that the EyeX screen setup and the screen setup used by Tobii Communicator is different and that the calibrations used by the two are based on different screen planes. Starting and stopping the different applications/runtimes would result in interference and likely mixups of screen planes setups and calibrations, where the EyeX screen plane could be loaded on the eye tracker but the Communicator calibration used with it resulting in strange offsets. Based on this, it might be possible to experiment using the EyeX Engine on the I-Series, but only to do it temporarily and then uninstall the EyeX Engine and restore the I-Series to factory settings to make sure it is still usable as a communications device. This experimentation would have to be done at your own risk.

[Thane Pullan]

Thanks for the clarification Jenny, this is not good news but at least I know it will work eventually. I can’t attached the desktop eyex toanother computer for quite a while, slows me down considerably.
Could the gaze sdk and fix such a problem if I implement it as an alternative? I am developing ways to calibrate anyway.

[Jay Beavers]

Thane, we’re following the same path. To date we haven’t found a good answer. The approach we’re working on right now is to use the Gaze SDK for both the I series and the EyeX. However the results of the eye gaze data we’re receiving on the EyeX devices through the Gaze SDK is significantly inferior to what we received when using the EyeX SDK.

We did try running EyeX applications side by side with the PC Eye Go environment (also Gaze SDK based, sensor is very similar to the I series as I understand it). This worked somewhat, but we got reports back from our beta users that the quality of the eye gaze decreased in the PC Eye Go applications while an EyeX application was running. Once the EyeX application was exited, the quality would come back to ‘normal’. Our conclusion was that this wasn’t going to be a feasible path.

– jcb

[Thane Pullan]

i don’t need them to be running at the same time, just installed on the same machine running at separate times. If we can’t do this this may affect my profits in a negative way, or not. I don’t know. Alternatively I’m happy to look at more integrated partnership opportunities.

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