Self-mixing

— interaction prototype, one input signal, three synchronized renders

The prototype mirrors the pipeline where a thermal camera senses heat in the environment, tracks the hottest point in the live image, and maps that hotspot's u/v onto a pair of servo motors' x/y rotation angles, creating a device that follows heat, which in practice usually means it follows human presence.

Here, the browser canvas and cursor stand in for the physical space and the tracked hotspot.

The full system is a physical installation built from a thermal camera unit, an LCD display, Python running on a Raspberry Pi, TCP/IP signal routing to an Arduino, servo motors, laser diodes, and an analog circuit that converts the diodes' self-mixing current directly into sound through current-to-audio conversion, with no digital audio stage in between. Full case study in README.

Laser Trace
Prototype — Three.js scene · full rig mesh geometry from CAD assembly · ying-chen joyce lin · https://github.com/yingchenjoycelin
01 · Thermal Tracking — Canvas 2D u 0.00 · v 0.00
move your cursor — the cursor represents the hot spot tracked by the thermal camera
02 · Servo Close-up — dual WebGL cameras x 0.0° · y 0.0°
a second camera in the same three.js scene — converts u/v coordinates into the servo rig's x/y rotation