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Some background: a little while ago I built a library called "Checkboxland" at the Recurse Center for rendering stuff into a checkbox grid. I recently made an update that lets it render arbitrary images and video. The video feature supports HTML MediaStream, which is what powers the webcam demo.
This is brilliant. Amazing work. It even caught my ceiling fan running in the background.
This is really fun! I'm not sure of the practicality (particularly with the QR demo, my boxes don't turn bright blue like yours apparently do, so its pretty invisible to a scanner) but if it looks cool then that's reason enough in itself
Yeah, the boxes are bit brighter by default in Safari, so that's the browser I tend to use for screenshots and video.
I was there for this! I actually use this as an example of a perfect mini-batch project to anyone who's skeptical of what they can get done in a week.
Recurse Center for Rendering Stuff into a Checkbox Grid, 1 Checkbox Drive, etc.
There's no way to change camera input. Shame I couldn't try this demo.
Great / stupid project… nice work!
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should."

(Just kidding, that's awesome!)

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the demo was exactly what i expected when i've read the title
a rare pleasure from a bygone era..
To nitpick a bit, my first thought was "how do HTML checkboxes detect light"? It'd be more accurate to call it a checkbox video renderer that uses a webcam as input.
Oh wow. My hat is off for you. Don't bother with the why's! Doing this for fun should be a good enough reason!
The latency on this is really low, meaning good! Well done!
No repo? Curious on a high level how it works, averages nearby pixels or something, or just makes the video really low resolution and each large block is a checkbox?

Would think title should say "webcam video output" or something

There is the minified demo.js

This is great! It would be better if it dithered though.
Dithering is quite a tough problem, especially video.
I took a stab at a basic Floyd-Steinberg dither, but at the low resolution and with even really subtle video camera noise, the result was not great.

Until I took my glasses off... with just a bit of blur, the effect is pretty cool. Probably doesn't make sense to push a feature though that only works when you squint at it!

Hah, this is like a video with contentEditable = true
Doesn’t work for me on iPhone.
Gotta love the "back to CheckboxLand" link
Your were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn't stop to think if you should.

No, but, seriously this is hilarious.

What a complete waste of time. I love it!!!
I think if you hide the video and just show the checkboxes it will be freaky cool.. still is though.
you made a whole page of checkboxes that i can't check AUUUUGHHH