🎭 Emoji Reactor

A real-time camera-based emoji display application powered by MediaPipe to detect poses and facial expressions.

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📖 About

Emoji Reactor is a computer vision application that creates an interactive, real-time emoji reaction experience. It leverages your webcam and the highly efficient MediaPipe framework to detect specific body poses and facial expressions, instantly displaying a corresponding emoji in a separate window. Whether you're smiling, throwing your hands up, or creating custom gestures, Emoji Reactor brings your expressions to life on screen!

✨ Features

• 🙌 Hand Detection: Raise your hands above your shoulders to display the "hands up" emoji.
• 😊 Smile Detection: Show your pearly whites to trigger the "smiling" emoji.
• 😐 Default State: Keep a straight face to maintain a neutral emoji.
• ⚡ Real-time Processing: Experience zero-lag live camera feed tracking and instant emoji outputs.
• 🎨 Custom Emojis: Includes custom additions like a jawline emote (jawline.png) and the 67 Clash Royale emote (67clashroyale.webp).

🛠️ Tech Stack

• Python - Core programming language.
• OpenCV - High-performance computer vision library for camera capture and display.
• MediaPipe - Robust machine learning solutions for Pose and Face Mesh detection.
• NumPy - Fundamental package for numerical computing.

🚀 Getting Started

Follow these steps to get a local copy up and running.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.12 or newer.
  • macOS (Homebrew): brew install python@3.12
• A functional webcam.

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/sandeepannandi/Emoji-Detector.git
   cd Emoji-Detector

2. Set up a virtual environment:

   python3.12 -m venv emoji_env
   source emoji_env/bin/activate  # On Windows, use `emoji_env\Scripts\activate`

3. Install dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Prepare Emoji Assets: Ensure the following image assets are present in the project directory:

   • smile.jpg
   • plain.png
   • air.jpg
   • jawline.png
   • 67clashroyale.webp

🎮 Usage

Start the application by running the following command:

# Option A: Using the helper script (macOS/Linux)
./run.sh

# Option B: Running manually
source emoji_env/bin/activate
python emoji_reactor.py

How It Works

Upon launch, two windows will appear:

1. Camera Feed: Your live view with detection overlays highlighting identified landmarks.
2. Emoji Output: The blank canvas where your real-time emoji reactions will appear.

Controls:

• Raise your hands above your shoulders → 🙌
• Smile → 😊
• Express other custom gestures like jawline flex or the 67 meme movements!
• Press q to quit the application gracefully.

Detection Priority Hierarchy

1. Hands Up - Overrides facial expressions.
2. Smiling - Activated when the mouth aspect ratio exceeds the defined threshold.
3. Straight Face - Fallback default state.
4. Custom Gestures - E.g. Jawline flex, 67 Emote.

⚙️ Customization

Tweak Smile Sensitivity

To fine-tune smile recognition, edit the SMILE_THRESHOLD constant in emoji_reactor.py:

• Decrease (e.g., 0.30) to make it easier to trigger a smile.
• Increase (e.g., 0.40) to reduce false positive smile detections.

Swap Image Assets

Easily replace the default images with your own by over-writing the corresponding files (smile.jpg, plain.png, air.jpg, etc.) with files of the exact same name and extension.

🔧 Troubleshooting

macOS Camera Access Denied

If you receive a "Not authorized to capture video" error:

1. Open System Settings > Privacy & Security > Camera.
2. Toggle permissions ON for your Terminal / VS Code / iTerm.
3. Restart your terminal completely.

Detection Issues

• Visibility: Ensure your face and arms are clearly visible within the frame.
• Lighting: Bright, even lighting significantly improves detection accuracy.
• Camera Index: If the app uses the wrong camera, edit emoji_reactor.py and change cv2.VideoCapture(0) to cv2.VideoCapture(1) (or another index).

📄 License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.