Does this work with the tobii eye tracker 5?

[eitol]

Does this work with the tobii eye tracker 5?

[ifl0w]

Hello!

For me, the Eye Tracker 5 basically worked out of the box on Arch Linux after converting the tobii_config and tobiiusbservice packages in this repo with the tool "deptap".
Only the USB service kept crashing. It tried to create a PID file in /var/run/tobiiusb but the "tobiiusb" folder did not exist.
After creating the folder manually, and running the service as root I was able to run the tobii_config tool for calibration.
You can use strace -f tobiiusbserviced to see whether the child process exits with an error.

I also tested the stream engine SDK from this repository in my own project and subscribing to the gaze position worked fine. Subscribing to the head tracking however failed with a "not supported" error (it obviously works on Windows though).
Also, the tracking on windows seems to be a little bit smoother and better.
I guess, the stream engine and/or the tobiiusbservice are simply too old and do not fully support the Eye Tracker 5.
I did not try the example from this repo though.

Hope this helps someone :)

[betaboon]

For all those interested, i figured some things out.

My work can be found here: https://github.com/betaboon/python-tobii-stream-engine.

In a nutshell:

• The publicly available Tobii Pro SDK contains libtobii_research.so.
• libtobii_research.so (even tho undocumented) contains all the exports that libtobii_stream_engine.so has.
• the contained stream_engine has version 4.24.0.33.
• header-files for the stream-engine exports are not available.
• documentation for stream-engine is available: https://tobiitech.github.io/stream-engine-docs/
• together with tobiiusbserviced this results in the device working.

I haven't gotten a recent version of TobiiProEyeTrackerManager to work and detect the device tho.
Which forces me to still use tobii_config for calibration.

maybe @derdrdirk has some insight on this?

PS: feel free to hop over to my repo for further discussion.

[nl3v]

Also very interested in getting Eye Tracker 5 working w/ Star Citizen (via Lutris/Wine). I'd guess SC is using tobii_streams but I'm curious how tobii_streams could find the tracker when running through Wine...

Seems like on Windows, SC uses IPC to talk to the Tobii Platform Runtime (via tobii_streams) in order to communicate with the tracker, so I'm wondering if there is a way to make it "know" to talk with tobiiusbserviced instead. Not familiar with how Wine handles IPC. Also wondering if in SC, tobii_streams is looking for a particular process name for the platform runtime and just not finding it.

[betaboon]

some more news on the tobii_config TobiiProEyeTrackerManager situation:

@derdrdirk has reported success using TobiiProEyeTrackerManagerwith version 2.0.0.

i can confirm this works.
i can confirm up to version 2.1.2 the Tobii eye tracker 5 is being detected and usable for calibration.

starting somewhere between 2.1.2 and 2.3.4 the device is being detected but not being offered for calibration.
so it seems like they removed support for the tobii 5.

luckily, this can be reverted:

      cd /opt/TobiiProEyeTrackerManager/resources

      asar extract app.asar app.asar.unpack
      rm app.asar

      sed -ri "s/TPSP1/IS5FF/g" app.asar.unpack/main.*.js

      asar pack app.asar.unpack app.asar
      rm -rf app.asar.unpack

this way i got 2.3.7 and 2.6.1 recognizing the device and allowing calibration.

[betaboon]

fyi, the most recent version of TobiiProEyeTrackerManager can be found here:

• https://connect.tobii.com/s/etm-downloads?language=en_US
• https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/tobiipro.eyetracker.manager/tobiipro.etm.linux.html

the second page redirects to the most recent release.
which is at 2.6.1 right now:
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/tobiipro.eyetracker.manager/linux/TobiiProEyeTrackerManager-2.6.1.deb

[xDShot]

Curious as well

[jblaszczyk]

sort of... I managed to calibrate Tobii Eye Tracker 5 with tobii_config
but can't run TobiiProEyeTrackerManager due to broken dependency:

(TobiiProEyeTrackerManager:5188): Pango-ERROR **: 22:41:47.895: Harfbuzz version too old (1.4.2)

this is a widely known problem with electron-based apps, not the driver itself

[Kn0rk]

Did you manage to get the main running?

Did you manage to get the main running?

No not yet unfortunately

[Kn0rk]

When I boot into Windows and use the eye tracker and then boot to linux the example works. When I reconnect the eye-tracker it does not work anymore.

[derdrdirk]

I got the TobiiProEyeTrackerManager running with the Tobii Eye Tracker 5 by installing an updated version, which can be found here https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/tobiipro.eyetracker.manager/linux/TobiiProEyeTrackerManager-2.0.0.deb.

The manager can be used to calibrate the eye tracker. After the calibration the example ./main script runs fine.

[quantum-booty]

Hello!

For me, the Eye Tracker 5 basically worked out of the box on Arch Linux after converting the tobii_config and tobiiusbservice packages in this repo with the tool "deptap". Only the USB service kept crashing. It tried to create a PID file in /var/run/tobiiusb but the "tobiiusb" folder did not exist. After creating the folder manually, and running the service as root I was able to run the tobii_config tool for calibration. You can use strace -f tobiiusbserviced to see whether the child process exits with an error.

I also tested the stream engine SDK from this repository in my own project and subscribing to the gaze position worked fine. Subscribing to the head tracking however failed with a "not supported" error (it obviously works on Windows though). Also, the tracking on windows seems to be a little bit smoother and better. I guess, the stream engine and/or the tobiiusbservice are simply too old and do not fully support the Eye Tracker 5. I did not try the example from this repo though.

Hope this helps someone :)

Hi, I'm interested in developing a vim plugin that can use eye tracker. Do you know if the Tobii eye tracker API has the ability to give me the coordinate of a "box" from where I'm looking at?

[skewty]

@quantum-booty did you get anywhere with the VIM plugin?
I'd like to use it to control JetBrains IDE scrolling and active window/pane.

[dkbast]

@quantum-booty @skewty looks like this is the thread for likeminded people - I'm also looking into exactly this for vim and maybe VS Code. Did either of you make any progress in that regard?

[ifl0w]

@quantum-booty The API documentation is public and can be found here. So you can check whether everything you need is supported. You can get the point on the screen at which the user is looking and the position of the head or eyes relative to the monitor.

A Vim/Nvim extension would be super cool; I'd love to try that! And sorry for answering so late 🙈 !

[thenom]

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/tobiipro.eyetracker.manager/linux/TobiiProEyeTrackerManager-2.0.0.deb.

Do you know if there is an RPM version of this or is there a listing anywhere of whats in this S3 bucket?

[LitBoiBoris]

Hi does it work in games like StarCitizen?

[JustCryen]

Hi. I haven't yet bought the device but I'm trying to figure out if either tobii eye tracker 4C or 5 actually work in games on Linux.
I have in mind wine support, not native, how are things looking right now? If the windows version of the game supports eye tracking, how well if at all it translates through wine?

[betaboon]

Hi. I haven't yet bought the device but I'm trying to figure out if either tobii eye tracker 4C or 5 actually work in games on Linux. I have in mind wine support, not native, how are things looking right now? If the windows version of the game supports eye tracking, how well if at all it translates through wine?

i happen to have two games in my steam library that are supposed to have tobii support (namely "offworld trading company" and "stranded deep").

i tried with the usbservice running and having calibrated the device using manager.

the games do not detect the tracker and i couldn't find any options to enable it.

so i guess the answer to your question: it's not looking good.

[minecrawler]

Hi. I haven't yet bought the device but I'm trying to figure out if either tobii eye tracker 4C or 5 actually work in games on Linux. I have in mind wine support, not native, how are things looking right now? If the windows version of the game supports eye tracking, how well if at all it translates through wine?

No luck on my side either. It's a dead brick on Linux. Expensive, but dead. If you want to use it, you'll have to use Windows.

I have the feeling that we'd need Wine support for it to work, or some kind of translation of the game's DLL API calls to the Linux engine (just like they did for some of the NVIDIA APIs)... Or pray that Tobii releases some kind of official Linux support. But I think they even deleted the Linux thread from their forums (I can't find it anymore), so I give up on anything official.

[JustCryen]

I guess both of you use Tobii Eye Tracker 5, right?
That's a shame but maybe at least the 4C version is actually working. Anyone can confirm that?

[minecrawler]

Sorry, yes, I'm using Eye Tracker 5

[JustCryen]

I know it's not a "general discussion forum"… but I feel like this fits here more than anywhere else. I can buy a "Tobii Eye Tracker" from a disassembled Alienware m17 R3. Part number R3VR8.
Since it's basically an OEM part I can't really find any information about it but honestly, the price is not that bad.
(It should be using an internal USB connection so this should be easy to change to a normal USB plug)

I also don't want to buy a paperweight so the question is, has anyone tried using an eye tracker from an Alienware device on Linux?

It would be ideal if it at least partially communicates with the current driver implementation but even if it doesn't, do you think it might be useful for testing the driver and hopefully, improving support to at least some Tobii products on Linux?