blackbelter Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 My experience with freetrack so far hasn't been good, chiefly because the viewing angle of the LEDs i could find is not wide enough. I am sure you can imagine how frustrating not being able to view freely during a dogfight is... I live in Singapore, a small city, where I have very remote hope of finding the Sfh465xx LEDs recommended in the manual. After consulting the manual, I came across the method of increasing the viewing angle of the LEDs by "filing the lens tips down flat". But I have no idea what that means... Can somebody please enlighten me on this, please? Or do you have better methods than this? I really appreciate it... Thanks in advance! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boberro Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 LED method is old and not effective. You have to put much work to get good results. This sentence: filing the lens tips down flatmeans you must file down bulb almost to the this metal thin rod. Get a nail file from your woman and do it by this way :) I'd recommend you get flash stripes. It is much better because you don't care about angle of view. You only need IR camera - camera with in-built IR leds, which will light your cap on your head. I have such construction: As you see I don't have solid frame. I can move my strips to the better positions on the cap. No power source, no wires, no metal frame on my head :) When you make stripes round - you cam make them visible at angle of 270 - you gain freely look and comfort. Reminder: Fighter pilots make movies. Bomber pilots make... HISTORY! :D | Also to be remembered: FRENCH TANKS HAVE ONE GEAR FORWARD AND FIVE BACKWARD :D ಠ_ಠ ツ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KLR Rico Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Take some rough sand paper, file, or other implement of destruction. File the LED's so the tips are flattened. The idea is to diffuse the light from the narrow beam they're usually setup with. Other than that, you can play with the camera settings to help out with the detection. i5-4670K@4.5GHz / 16 GB RAM / SSD / GTX1080 Rift CV1 / G-seat / modded FFB HOTAS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ED Team BIGNEWY Posted February 10, 2012 ED Team Share Posted February 10, 2012 with the home made led setups I have used I did flatten the heads down and they are very effective. I recently decided to take the plunge and order a trackclip pro to use, just waiting for delivery :) http://forums.eagle.ru/album.php?albumid=607 Forum rules - DCS Crashing? Try this first - Cleanup and Repair - Discord BIGNEWY#8703 - Youtube - Patch Status Windows 11, NVIDIA MSI RTX 3090, Intel® i9-10900K 3.70GHz, 5.30GHz Turbo, Corsair Hydro Series H150i Pro, 64GB DDR @3200, ASUS ROG Strix Z490-F Gaming, PIMAX Crystal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blackbelter Posted February 10, 2012 Author Share Posted February 10, 2012 Thanks a lot guys. Will be trying out tonight. So excited! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blackbelter Posted February 10, 2012 Author Share Posted February 10, 2012 Well, things didn't quite work out... I flattened the front part of the LED glass. The viewing angle didn't increase much, if at all. Now it is not bright enough. From my usual sitting distance, the camera (ps3 eye) sees the other two LEDs, but not the one that I have flattened. I have to be very close to the camera in order for it to see all three. It is completely unusable now... Help... Please... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ED Team BIGNEWY Posted February 10, 2012 ED Team Share Posted February 10, 2012 (edited) are you using a filter over your ps3 camera or have you removed the IR filter from the ps3 camera? or do you just have the camera as is using some used negative film from a 35mm camera you can filter out a lot of natural light. Edited February 10, 2012 by BIGNEWY Forum rules - DCS Crashing? Try this first - Cleanup and Repair - Discord BIGNEWY#8703 - Youtube - Patch Status Windows 11, NVIDIA MSI RTX 3090, Intel® i9-10900K 3.70GHz, 5.30GHz Turbo, Corsair Hydro Series H150i Pro, 64GB DDR @3200, ASUS ROG Strix Z490-F Gaming, PIMAX Crystal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blackbelter Posted February 10, 2012 Author Share Posted February 10, 2012 Hi BIGNEWY, I have removed the IR filter inside my ps3 eye. Now I suspect it is because the battery is dying. I am now gonna buy some new battery. Will update you asap. Thx. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ED Team BIGNEWY Posted February 10, 2012 ED Team Share Posted February 10, 2012 Hi BIGNEWY, I have removed the IR filter inside my ps3 eye. Now I suspect it is because the battery is dying. I am now gonna buy some new battery. Will update you asap. Thx. No problem, let us know how you get on, I also started to use the batteries up, so made myself a usb version of the headtrack clip, no worrying about running out of juice now :) Forum rules - DCS Crashing? Try this first - Cleanup and Repair - Discord BIGNEWY#8703 - Youtube - Patch Status Windows 11, NVIDIA MSI RTX 3090, Intel® i9-10900K 3.70GHz, 5.30GHz Turbo, Corsair Hydro Series H150i Pro, 64GB DDR @3200, ASUS ROG Strix Z490-F Gaming, PIMAX Crystal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blackbelter Posted February 10, 2012 Author Share Posted February 10, 2012 No, it's not because the battery is dying... The light emitted now goes in all directions... If I use a reflector at certain angle, but not any other angle, I can see the LED... Sigh. I think I might need to rebuild it, using a new LED... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ED Team BIGNEWY Posted February 10, 2012 ED Team Share Posted February 10, 2012 Thats unlucky good luck with your new build Forum rules - DCS Crashing? Try this first - Cleanup and Repair - Discord BIGNEWY#8703 - Youtube - Patch Status Windows 11, NVIDIA MSI RTX 3090, Intel® i9-10900K 3.70GHz, 5.30GHz Turbo, Corsair Hydro Series H150i Pro, 64GB DDR @3200, ASUS ROG Strix Z490-F Gaming, PIMAX Crystal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prok Posted February 11, 2012 Share Posted February 11, 2012 Also u can use freetrack with display lamps. It works fine, better then diodes. No any problem with angles and very easy to build. Also you should not to delete IR filters from camera. http://www.ukrfalcons.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2288 ★★★ ★★★ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
momashi Posted April 3, 2012 Share Posted April 3, 2012 (edited) Wide Angle LEDs Also u can use freetrack with display lamps. It works fine, better then diodes. No any problem with angles and very easy to build. Also you should not to delete IR filters from camera. http://www.ukrfalcons.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2288 Very good link and tutorial but I'm not very big on display lamps. I don't know about you guys but I have projector at home and I play in a dark room. I personally would find the glare of the visible light from the side of my head to be annoying. Edited April 3, 2012 by momashi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
momashi Posted April 3, 2012 Share Posted April 3, 2012 Your main problem with the view angle of the IR LEDs stems from the fact that you are probably ordering random no-name ones from eBay which have typically view angles of 50 degrees. After doing doing a bit of research I found some IR LEDs that have view angles of 180 degrees made by Panasonic: Model LN152-ND: http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&itemSeq=112869699&uq=634690579595502559 They're a little more expensive (about 2$ per diode as opposed to 4 diodes for 2$ on eBay) but who care (you only need 3...). If for any reason, you're viewing this posting several years later and this model is off the market, digikey has a great search engine (where you can filter out the view angles you don't want and list by unit price). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boulund Posted April 4, 2012 Share Posted April 4, 2012 (edited) As many before me have already said, to improve the viewing angle of cheaper (non-wide) LEDs you can file them down using something like a nail file. I think it is visible in some of my pictures of my FreeTrack cap how I did (there are nice whiteish marks on the cap from my inaccurate filing :) ). http://forums.eagle.ru/album.php?albumid=315 Have a look if you're still looking for help. FreeTrack works great for me! The LEDs I used were some random no-name cheap LEDs from my nearby electronics shop. I've been using that very cap with great success without any issues at all since late 2008! Sturdy construction ;). Probably something like 10-20h gaming with the cap every week for the last 2-2.5 years. Edited April 4, 2012 by Boulund Core i5-760 @ 3.6Ghz, 4GB DDR3, Geforce GTX470, Samsung SATA HDD, Dell UH2311H 1920x1080, Saitek X52 Pro., FreeTrack homemade cap w/ LifeCam VX-1000, Windows 7 Professional x64 SP1. FreeTrack in DCS A10C (64bit): samttheeagle's headtracker.dll Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laidback Posted April 7, 2012 Share Posted April 7, 2012 After you filed your LED down, you have to "gloss" it so the scratches are gone. There's a nail filer that comes with two sides. One is the sandboard side to file, the other side is smoothe to gloss. [sIGPIC][/sIGPIC] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sholtz Posted December 6, 2012 Share Posted December 6, 2012 LED method is old and not effective. You have to put much work to get good results. I'd recommend you get flash stripes. It is much better because you don't care about angle of view. You only need IR camera - camera with in-built IR leds, which will light your cap on your head. I have such construction: What the heck are flash stripes? I currently use LEDs on my Freetrack setup and would like to get away from the batteries and aforementioned narrow angle problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sholtz Posted December 11, 2012 Share Posted December 11, 2012 What the heck are flash stripes? I currently use LEDs on my Freetrack setup and would like to get away from the batteries and aforementioned narrow angle problem. Anyone? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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