Harley Pebley wrote: > > > Wired's new issue has an input device for $US80 that is a > > ring device with > > motion tracking and RF. It uses a USB device on the computer and a > > finger-worn ring device (but rather large) which is battery > > powered. You > > move the "mouse" by moving your finger, and click by tapping > > your thumb > > against the ring. > > Sounds similar to something I tried about 4 to 5 years ago that used ultra- > sonics and a serial port. Seemed like a great idea but turned out less > than stellar for most computer work. To move your finger around in mid-air > requires gross motor control that, for most people, is not too well refined. > To move mice and trackballs requires fine motor control which is usually > highly precise. I tried it for about a month and kept clicking on the wrong > menu item, selecting the wrong object on screen, etc. Finally gave up on it. > > OTOH, the coolest thing about it was it detected z coordinates as well as x > and y. It came with a couple games that utilized that feature. It worked > pretty well for things like ring toss, but I wouldn't want to try to virtual > sculpture with it. > > COOL. I don't know how hard this is to do since I'm not much of a hardware hacker. But I came up with a notion of replacing keyboards and mice by using a pair of ultrasound emitters and sampling the echo reflections with 2 or more tiny mikes. A strip of such could be mounted on a conventional monitor or any surface or the two or more sets of components could be embedded in clothing. Synthetic aperture algorithms could be used to process the signals and give highly detailed mappings of objects and movement within a few feet of the sensors. I see that there would be a potential problem with mis-typing and mis-clicking. But that is a training exercise also. It would be fun to write software to allow training a thus equipped system to understand your own idiosyncratic position/movement/expression patterns. Finally. I can do real work by mere hand waving! Can such a thing be built and reasonably cheaply? I would think it could be a real boon in some applications, especially games. - samantha -- Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" toWear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.blu.org
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