Unboxing, very jittery

[eyezeeu]

Hi there, hope you're doing great.

I just got my TET unit - very nice.

I hooked it up and calibrated. Having a very hard time getting a reliable calibration. No more than 18 inches away.

When I use Mouse cursor control, the cursor jumps all over the place. It'll be somewhat centered on my gaze for a moment, then jump 300-500 pixels and back in an instant. Cycle repeats about 3 times per second.

Not sure if it's related, but I was looking at the raw video output of the device, and I noticed it's quite glitchy: periodic tears in the picture, horizontal scan lines.

Another thing is that it gets extremely hot.

Last, it shuts down every few minutes, at which point I have to restart the EyeTribeUI.

Any troubleshooting steps you can recommend? Is it possible that I received a defective unit?

Thanks for the help.

[Javier]

The issue with the cursor jumping is related to the image tears and horizontal scan lines. We are working hard to fix that issue, which only happens on some machines and not all the time.

The temperature of the device is high when in use, but it is designed to operate at such high temperature. The aluminum casing helps dissipate heat, with the "disadvantage" of feeling hot when touched

[eyezeeu]

OK, thanks for the response. So you're saying the issue is related to the specific computer, not the specific TET tracker?

Not sure if it helps, but the machine is a Macbook Pro Retina 15", 1st gen.

I also noticed that I'm getting occasional audio glitches from my external speakers, that seems to possibly correlate. The speaker plug and the USB cable for the TET tracker are directly next to each other.

Appreciate your help.

[Javier]

Thanks for your feedback.

We have experienced the issue on some machines. A temporary solution we found is to log out of your OSX account and log in again.

The audio glitches may be due to an interference between the USB port and the audio plug. Not sure we can do much about that.

[trishume]

I recently received my tracker and am experiencing the exact same issue. No matter how I calibrate it the result is always very jittery, centred around or near the point I'm looking at but jumping around in an area of about 300px wide multiple times a second.

I'm also using a 1st gen 15" retina macbook pro with a 22" (maybe 24" I forget) external monitor. But the same problem occurs if I put the tracker under my laptop display and use it with the 15" display. I'm running OSX 10.9.4. Most of my testing has been done with server version 0.9.40, I recently upgraded to 0.9.41 but have only achieved a working calibration once (and the same problem occurred).

Sometimes I will try calibrating many times in a row and every time it will either fail or give a 1 star result, and sometimes I can reliably get 2-3 star calibrations. I have never achieved a calibration result higher than 3 stars. I normally wear contact lenses but I have tried using both glasses and no lenses at all, no lenses and contact lenses give similar results and glasses give worse results.

I'm a programmer with some computer vision experience, so if there are any troubleshooting techniques you would like me to do I'd be happy and able to do them. I've already looked at the raw output using Photo Booth. I do occasionally get corrupted horizontal lines flashing across the picture but they do not occur often enough to explain the constant jittering. Here is an image captured from photo booth using the tracker https://www.evernote.com/shard/s9/sh/83 ... 414949f472. Is the noisiness and greenness normal?

Also note that accessing the tracker in photo booth causes the server to crash, leaving the LEDs on. The next time the server is started up it segfaults, and then leaves the lights off. The next time it works.

[dhornyak]

I can confirm the same issue of difficulty in calibration on the newest gen macbook pro 15 inch. I placed the device off the tripod below the screen near the laptop hinge. I logged out and logged back in and looked at the video in photobooth and it looked fine, and then it seemed to calibrate fine.

One minor thing: In my Mac OS X version of TheEyeTribeUI, the field is called "Mouse cursor control" rather than "mouse gaze redirect" like in the documentation.

One not-so-minor thing, I can't toggle it from off to on, even when I had a supposedly perfect calibration, so I couldn't test how good the calibration was.

[dhornyak]

OK, after quitting an opening and plugging and unplugging a few times I got the mouse cursor control working. So the only problem then is just the main subject of jitteriness.

[trishume]

I tried my tracker out on a friend's Windows computer and the accuracy was much better, so that confirms that my accuracy problems are indeed with the OSX software (or the computer I'm plugging it into) and not with what I'm doing.

[adcocklab]

I have been having the same issues--particularly the ones described by trishume.

I've tested the tracker on a friend's PC and it worked well, but on my mac the calibration succeeds only very rarely. If a calibration is successful, it almost always just gets one star (once I got three stars, but I haven't been able to replicate that.) Adjusting the calibration parameters (16 vs. 9 points, faster or slower sampling times) doesn't seem to make any difference in success rates. When I can get a calibration to succeed, the mouse cursor control is extremely jumpy.

Additionally, I've noticed issues with connectivity--spontaneously, the eyetracker will lose its connection and need to be unplugged and plugged back in. Sometimes, an error message will say that I need to update my firmware, but my firmware is already up to date.

I'm using a Macbook air running 10.9.4 and using server version 0.9.41. I've tested the tracker using external screens and with my macbook's display, but I'm seeing the same issues for both.

I'd be eager to try any troubleshooting steps anyone could recommend. Thanks!

[dmkndr]

Hello everyone. I'm having the same issue - very jittery pointer (most for left-right movements). Mac OS X Mavericks. MacBook Pro 15 inch with Retina. Somebody knows is it software (OS/drivers) or hardware problem? May it help if i will install Windows on my Mac (don't want but what else todo)?

Addition: i found interferences in TET's raw video output - most of them are in the bottom of screen (just small line) - is it possible to crop them programmatically? TET-server is open-source?