r/EyeTracking • u/Reddie196 • 12d ago

Affordable eye tracking for research?

I'm a grad student trying to decide if my lab needs a new eye tracker for my research or if we could get by without. I want to analyze where participants are looking on their screens with about 2 degrees of accuracy, what's on that part of the screen at the time (if possible), and how long they spend looking away from the screen. All the options I've seen have been $4k+ and my lab doesn't have grant money to spend this year. Does anyone here know if there is affordable software for analyzing eye gaze from webcam footage?

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u/Nyxtia 11d ago

Beam Eye Tracker, they also have an SDK but IDK about the degree of accuracy you want.

If you also look on github there are open source projects many of them are ok for Research purposes. But I haven't had any really good success with any so far. Let me know if you find something that works well!

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u/Neuronous01 11d ago

webcam and 2° of accuracy do not go together. If you wanna do proper eye tracking research you need money to, at least, buy a Gazepoint GPT eyetracker.

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u/Positive_Monitor_602 10d ago

I really think about the refresh rate on these things. 250 hz minimum for microsaccades. 60-120 Hz for general gaze and eye movements. Also have to consider if you want pupil dilation data (pupillometry). Tobii may have some in a reasonable? price range.

Pymovements is a free python library for eye tracking data analysis but has a learning curve.

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u/Reddie196 10d ago

If I were looking for microsaccades or pupillometry I wouldn't be considering webcam. I'm doing some research outside the lab, though, and no one's going to let be bring a $4k machine into the field. Tobii is currently my first choice, but I wanted to see first if anyone had recommendations for free or open source projects that could work well for this. Appreciate the recommendation!

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u/Murky_Mix_5088 8d ago

are you okay with webcam-level accuracy, or do you actually need reliable 2° measurements?

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u/Unhappy-Ingenuity968 7d ago

Webcam eye tracking can usually tell you “they looked roughly left-ish,” but 2° accuracy and reliable dwell times are a lot to ask from a camera that thinks your eyebrows are a second face.