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Tilt Sensors For Palm Pilots
lowlevel writes: "This site has been updated with plans
for a 'dongle' version of the tilt sensor hack, which does not require you
to modify your palm pilot. There is new code/drivers as well.
After adding this to your palm pilot, you can play
MULG which is the Palmpilot + tilt sensor equivalent to the timeless classic frustrating box with knobs and a marble that so few of us could
master... (Note: there is a color beta version, too!) "
Yes, one way is to solder an additional chip into your pilot, the other way is to make a small thingy to plug into your serial port (yes, the port's there!) and use a small software hack to mimick the behaviour of the internal solution.
greetings,
Reinout
Reinout van Rees
Hey, it's the Magic 8-Ball interface!
Just junk food for thought...
I bought a tilt sensor controller for my PSX, but I ended up returning it because the response was so poor. Admittedly the device had some design flaws that meant that when you move your hand/arm the sensor tended to bounce around and the rumble-pack was in the same enclosure as the the motion sensor. But I do tend to think that the system itself is a little underdeveloped. Also I can't see it as being particularly useful in a Palm, unless you're skydiving or something. Can anyone give and example of the usefulness of such a device, outside "Mulg"?
A tilt sensor would make a rather interesting UI design. Imagine that instead of scrolling up or down while reading etextz, you'd just rock the palm up and down. Or rock it sideways to pan. The Compaq Itsy has a feature similar to this, except that they use "yaw" motions instead of "pitch" motions (borrowing the terms from pilots).
I don't know beans about solid state accelerometers (I'm assuming that's what they are using...) so I can't comment on the sensitivity. Device like that though must have some sort of discriminatory circuit. Afterall the human hand does not actually stay still, it shakes a bit (more so if you are on a caffiene high 8-) ). The really difficult part would be to discern background motions (such as reading on a bus, etc).
Still an interesting hack though.
-=- SiKnight
Yes! Yes!!!! I love it! Why stop there? Add more stuff! How about a Trimble TANS Vector system, 4 synchronized p-code GPSes spaced about a meter apart which gives you x, y, z, course, speed, yaw, pitch, and roll in real time... dang... hey, are you married? Oh never mind, I am already. ;)
"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off."
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
Yes, indeedie doo, and there have been ports of David Flater's Xtide harmonic tide-prediction program (I know of one for the PalmPilot, so a Palm one is probably not far away), so your little PDA is now your compleat navigator's assistant... God I love this stuff... John Walker, please port Home Planet, so we can do celestial navigation too!!!
"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off."
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
I was at an electronic music festival/show thingie at the Cube at MIT, and some people there had set up a device on the flor about 25 feet square that was pressure sensitive - it could basically tell where you were standing. then they hung a projector from the ceiling and projected a picture of the tilty-bok-with-maze-and-ball onto this rig, and you could play the game by standing on the pressure plates and running around.
(good to see someone made a smaller version for the palm.)
So I wonder; doesn't the Palm have any external ports ? The Psion has a 'full blown' serial port on the back which can be used to attach nearly anything, even devices which are officially meant for PC's.
I know the Palm has been profiled to be more like an organiser then a palmtop (correct me if I'm wrong please) but I'd say that the serial port could be quite essential. Especially for stuff like this.
2) Do they have a tremor dectector yet? Et Voila - a seismograph.
3) Hook it up to your PC and use it as a joystick.
4) ... ;)
hmm - I'm at work and should be doing some - fill out the rest yourself
http://harridanic.com
I have installed the ADXL202 in my Palm Pilot. It works reasonably well (especially for something like MULG, which I also never mastered). The modification isn't too difficult if you're electroniclly savvy, but if you've never soldered before, don't even try. Soldering SMT components is a bit tricky. An external module would be nice, but I can't imagine that it would sell particularly well (but then again, who thought people would pay money for a TaleLight). To answer a few questions: 1) The device is useful for things other than MULG - The fact that the ADXL202 is an accelerometer means that you can do cool things like use it as a pedometer, etc. Carry it on roller coasters with you to look like a real gadget-head. I've tried to use mine to measure rock angles (strike & dip). 2) The chip (ADXL202) is a MEMS (I think that's Micro Electrical-Mechanical Something) chip. From what I understand, each accelerometer is effectively two plates separated by a tiny spring (and i mean *tiny*), and it looks at the capacitance as the spring is compressed/decompressed with accelerations. That sounds fragile, but since it's so tiny, the chip specs at a max of 1000g (thats survivability, not measurement range). 3) Accuracy - Mine isn't all that accurate, because I didn't quite follow all the instructions on the mod page. I've got lots of noise/ripple in the signal. It resets its value(s) to zero when you first turn the Palm on, so if you turn it on upside down, all values will be relative to that.
You will allow you to turn it over and clear the screen by shaking it...
...some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant...