BugCamSmash – Motion Detection with Silverlight 4 Beta

At PDC09, we released Silverlight 4 Beta and announced one of the availability of, one of the most requested features, Web Cam Support.

Wanting to have fun with the new feature, I thought of a fun sample to create – smashing bugs with motion detection. First step was to get bugs to crawl across the screen. Next I added the WebCam with frame diff calculation, which was intensive so took advantage of the multiple thread support. And finally I added a little Mantis Boy avatar to visualize the smashing of the bugs.

Over the next few days I will post about how the code works and improvements made for performance. You can check out a video to see Mantis Boy in action, run the demo or download the source.

 

• Watch the video
• Run the Demo*
• Download the Source
• Learn about more new features in Silverlight 4 Beta
• View a few Screenshots 

Learn how it was written:

• Dissected part 1 – Smash a Bug
• Dissected part 2 – Make the Bugs Crawl
• Dissected part 3 – Give the Bugs Brains
• Dissected part 4 – WebCam and HitTest on a different thread

 

*(warning this is Silverlight 4 Beta code, if you’re not currently setup to run the beta stick with the video)