Hi, I am very new to PD and I am thinking of using it in a final project for my college smart art class. My problem is that I don't know enough about PD to know what is possible for me to finish up in 2 weeks having limited experience with the program.

My idea is to use my laptops built in camera as a motion tracking device. When movment takes place in a certain part of the camera, I want that to trigger a sound.

I would like this to create a layered effect..after the person discovers the area that they have to touch, it plays a sound, and then another part of the screen is set to trigger another sound to play ontop of the rest of the sounds

Does this make sense? My professor said that it is possible to trigger a sound to play by determining an xy coordinate in the gemwindow and using an if then statement, but I'm not sure how I might go about doing that..

any advise?

I don't usually use GEM, but, if you can read the RGB values of an area of the GEM window, then you could look for a change in the values. This is assuming that the person is the only thing moving. If the values change then the trigger happens.

EyesWeb is a program that can be linked to PD through (I believe) through open sound comand (OSC). vvvv is another free, to non-commercial entities, program that can be linked to PD through OSC. Both could be set up to look for RGB changes if GEM cannot.