Sourcing hardware and components:

Okay, so if you read our proposal slides, we have researched the best hardware and components for our system. We decided to get the IR LED’s ordered first as there was a limited amount left in Australia.

The LED’s:

The model we needed was “Osram SFH485” and upon learning that there was less than 500 left in Australia at the price we wanted, we stepped into gear and bought 70 of the little suckers at $1 each. We figured that just ordering 16 for our system would be a bad idea as if we broke one or ten of them, we would be screwed. However, we ordered them, picked them up two days later and all was good.



The Acrylic:

We decided to use Acrylic for our screen as it is far more durable than glass, and if someone accidently knocked the system over, it would not shatter or snap in two.
We needed the piece to be roughly A2 size, and it had to be 8mm thick to be able to trap the IR light correctly. Due to bad communication and human error, the first piece of acrylic we got was only 6mm thick, which would not be sufficient as it was almost the same height as the LED’s were thick, so light would not flood properly. We sent it back, and although it took some time, we had the correct sized piece the next week.
The actual dimensions we are using are 595mm X 420mm X 8mm.

Web Cam:

We ordered the web cam from eBay; the model is “Philips SPC900” however, it never got sent and payment was not accepted so we cancelled the order and will have to search elsewhere.