Meatbags is a people tracking software developed for use with the Hokuyo UST line of LiDAR sensors. It was developed to support Memory Planes, a responsive AV piece that I'm installing for the 2025 Currents New Media festival. It is meant to be used as companion software to creative coding applications with a focus on reliability, performance, and ease of use.
Features include:
- sensor fusion, can support a collection of sensors at once
- OSC communication, detailed blob, filter, and logging data
- intuitive mouse controls, for easily modifying the orientation of the sensors, filters, and view
- seamless integration, auto loads saved settings and connects quickly on reboot
- headless mode, highly performant, minimal CPU load
- cross platform, tested on both macOS and Windows computers
This project implements the SCIP 2.0 protocol to collect LiDAR data from a collection of sensors and uses a DBSCAN algorithm to cluster that data in real time. A custom blob logic was developed for creative applications of people tracking.
OSC messages:
- /blob index x y width height laserIntensity filterIndex1 filterIndex2 ...
- /blobsActive index1 index2 ...
- /filter index isInhabited blobDistanceToCentroid
- /generalStatus sensorIndex status
- /laserStatus sensorIndex status
- /connectionStatus sensorIndex status
Created by artists, for artists. This software is provided free for artists to use in their art installs and free for educational purposes. The license is provided on my GitHub page.
For commercial purposes email me at ericheep@gmail.com to discuss a license agreement.
