Wand Tracking with Harry Potter

Fake Snow

Today it was all about “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter (tm)”. It’s all very well done. Although a lot of the scenery just reminds me of York.

This man says that your wand chooses you. I’m not sure I’d want the kind of wand that would choose me.

We did the “Wand choosing experience” which was great fun. Then we went out and waved the wand at scenery to make it react. This worked super well, once we got the hang of wand waving. I constructed a careful theory of a digital wand packed with motion trackers and accelerometers which decoded “spell” movements and then sent a spell message over Bluetooth BLE. But it turns out that the wand just contains an infra-red led which is tracked by a camera in the attraction. Which is much simpler and cheaper. I’ve resolved to make the wand work when we get back home. It should be possible to use a little camera to get the tracking information I need. Watch this space.

They had some very nice sweet shops

Dragon based bank security

In the afternoon, for a change of pace, we went to see the movie Hoppers. Going to the cinema in America is around half the price of the UK, the seats were powered recliners and presentation is great. The movie was good too.