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Linux Kernel Module For Nintendo Powerglove
antistatickid writes: "I've dusted off some schematics for a simple parallel interface to the nintendo powerglove (circa 1990), and have written a linux kernel module for the device since none of the old code works anymore. I'm hoping to generate some interest in homebrew vr: the gloves are cheap, and can be used for things like controlling midi synthesizers with the wave of your hand (a demo of which I've included on the project page)."
You can use this for interactive gaming pr0n!!
Too bad it doesn't have tactile feedback.
Wow, some interesting things could be pulled off with a few synthezers, a Thermin and a Powerglove. I wonder if the Thermin and Powerglove would react badly together. This could be cool for playing guitar as well. Trigger odd sounds, or patch changes with your pinky...
Best of all, think of the applications for singers. No longer is them moving their hands around in the air pointless and retarded looking, but it could actually affect thing such as lighting and tempo even (of MIDI tracks)...
I can't wait to get a powerglove on Ebay now... but there will probably be a rush of powerglove bids now too
Tibbon
tibbon.com
I really had a hard time using the Power Glove for its intended purpose. I have an equally hard time believing that this particular piece of hardware will produce a pleasant experience in its new role. Anybody else remember how terrible these things were?
Has this been tested with the nes emulators yet? Punch out time baby! Props to anyone with such great potential to advance the emu community.
More information on the glove and its applications on the computer can be found at http://www.cms.dmu.ac.uk/~cph/pg.html
Screw synths! You should be playing Black & White!
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Or, make it wireless and use it as a remote for a TV. Imagine waving your hand to change the channel, volume, etc.
Connect it to your stereo in a similar fashion.
Use it to steer the lawnmower around the yard--just move your hand and fingers, while sipping daquiries from a lawnchair.
Think of the possibilities! It's almost like being a jedi!
Just like Mouse Gestures, one could have Motion Macros, move your hand in a specific pattern while typing, and have it insert predefined text. Depending on sensitivity, one could do really cool stuff while typing with the Power Glove on.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
I was beginning to think we wouldn't have any stories that invited obligatory porn comments today! :)
I've come for the woman, and your head.
I wonder if there is anyway to mod the Powerglove even more to make it wireless? (I am thinking of performance live)
Just hack open a wireless Nintendo controller? And use the insides of it? Use batteries to power the glove?
Electronics on the compenent level isn't my type of thing, but I feel that it's possible. Is it?
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Seanbaby has some rather amusing remarks about the Power Glove (and other useless Nintendo peripherals.)
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
As I recall, the original hack was done by Steve Ciarcia, who was working for Byte Magazine at the time. Now he runs an equally interesting magazine/website Circuit Cellar Inc. (http://www.circuitcellar.com/)
Steve has a number of projects that the average lay-person could do, including a touch screen for computers (used the parallel port). He also has a crapload of funny stories about "one-up'ing" his neighbour in some of his older books.
Beware TPB
if you can get it to read in the different ways you wave your hands around, then voila! a great method for 'printing' sign language. even if you didn't need sign language, you can still learn it and type papers by the motions of your hands and now know how to communicate to a whole world of people...
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
There isn't anything to circumvent (although I am sure that Nintendo would try to make some issue), so there isn't anything to violate either. And it doesn't lead towards anything 'evil' in their minds (DVD copying, Nonregioned DVDs, PS hacking, etc...)
Tibbon
tibbon.com
That's true. The NES really had alot of different input devices (some absurd, some cool). Alot of them were made with the disabled in mind (guess they don't play games these days...) Things I remember:
Something you could blow into to make the NES work (for disabled people)
Exercise Bike mod (or was it a whole bike?)
Running Pad (PowerPad?)
Thing that you put your hands and and moved them around in mid air
Arcade style controllers
Shoulder mount gun thing (made by Nintendo)
There were all sorts of cool things, but alas, we are too 'safe' now in making of devices for gaming systems.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Very cool! I built this hack in like 1993, and it was hard to find a power glove even then. Now, it must be rather impossible.
A tip for hax0rs: The power glove is very SMALL (even the large one). I completely dispensed with the original glove that came with it to make mine. I took the control pad off and put a simple belt clip on it. Next, i extended the hand part and the ultrasonic sounders away from the controller with some 15 conductor cable. Finally, I sewed the finger bend sensors onto the fingers of a golf glove that went on the right hand and had the fingertips cut out (the original power glove is a lefty device.) Anyway, the idea was to get rid of the bulky garbage of the powerglove in order to make a little dataglove that i could still type while wearing.
I still have it here. Heck, I still have the monitor with the velcro on it! I'm very excited to break it out again and fiddle with this.
~GoRK
YES! I've been waiting for power glove and power pad support in linux. /. but neways I was able to get gamecon.c from the linux joystick driver to do my NES/SNES (and soon to be PSX and N64) stuff and for the actual MAME parts of course I'll be using a keyboard hack and real controls.
You see, I'm building a mega-mame, and if I ever finish it I'll try to get a plug of it up on
Now I can add a powerglove! I dunno how I can get it to work with the games, but it'd be a heck of a cool menuing system selection device...
THANK YOU l33t KERNEL[MODULE] DEV'S YOU'RE MY HEROES!
Sigs pose an operational security risk and help the baddies aggregate data. I guess commenting does too, oops.
Oooh. Now I can be just like Darth Vader! I can Force Grip rogue processes! :p
Someone please port this to Windows so I can Force Grip the whole OS.
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
Is it me, or would this work great for gestures in Opera and Mozilla? Move your hand left to go back, right to go forward, and up and down to scroll the document (not viable for pr0n).
It would sort of look like the video manipulation in Minority Report.
So now Linux is supporting the Power Glove. At this rate, I expect we'll see lightpen support by the end of next year. Heh.
"Derp de derp."
Hook ROB up to this and you have a glove controlled, MIDI device that can move small plastic pieces back and forth. This would be the ultimate in usless, nonworking crap wouldn't it?
Actually, the first thing I thought of would be to do a "Minority Report"-esque control system for X where you could move windows with the flick of your hand. Not sure exactly how you would do that code-wise (I'm no X11 guru), but it seems to have potential :-).
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
I had a hard time trusting Nintendo for its controllers. The PowerPad was a piece of trash... Nintendo tried to produce a pad that you could actually "run" on by jumping on its "foot" touch sensors. The problem was that the sensors did not work well with an 8-year-old 80 lb. kid. It worked for someone who was heavier, but then their foot actually would come in contact with more than one sensor (it was not really an adult-size power pad).
Another controller that was absolute trash was the wireless controller. It would only work if you pointed the thing point-blank at the IR sensor that would sit by the Nintendo. If you were about 2-5 feet away (and pointed the controller right at the sensor), it would work about 90% of the time (which, mind you, is not good to have, considering that the other 10% of the time always seemed to come right when you were right over a pitfall in Mario or right in front of the boss...I get really pissed when I die thanks to a controller that wouldn't work when I needed it the most). Anything beyond 5 feet would fade in and out too frequently to ever want to mess with it.
I never tried the PowerGlove, but knowing the history of other Nintendo controllers, I'm glad I never had the displeasure to work with it either.
The PS2 has less types of controllers, but it has some unusual ones like the vibrating neck massager for Rez.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
---snip
Shoulder mount gun thing (made by Nintendo)
---snip
This is one input device most windows users would love.
Top 10 Linux Adaptations
10) Linux Litebrite support
9) Linux dishwasher drivers
8) My Little Pony Linux kit
7) Linux on the Atari 2600
6) Linux bubblegum
5) A Tux vibrator (worked for Hello Kitty)
4) Linux for your coffee makers
3) Linux for Windows (Oooooh, that oughta do it)
2) Your Mom
And the #1 Linux application is....
(drumroll)
1) Linux for the Strawberry Shortcake Muffin Maker!
Damn, people, you've been a serious news rut. Doncha wish you could mod more than -1s? Kinda like I wish I could mod the freakin editors.
GOOD NIGHT EVERYBODY! I'll be here 7-12 Monday through Friday! Don't forget to tip your waitress on the way out ^__^
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I can then proceed to mod people up by virtually scratching my balls.
Good slashdot posts inspire thought, and in the words of Maynard James Keenan, "Whenever I get an idea my balls itch."
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
nope sorry - too much effort. Did you notice how big the arm and hand motions Tom Cruise was making in Minority Report? Geeks are laaaazzzyy - no way are we going to make it that difficult to scroll video files to the left - or open a new file....
small hand movements are much more likely.
All I remember is... "Whoa! The Power Glove!!"
I had forgotten all about this movie, this is great. From what I remember my favorite part is the competition at the end when they all play on the giant screen T.V. ... I may have to go find this one on DVD.
:)
If I had mod points I would use them on this one
man
No manual entry for
I have three powerglvoes, and one set of the trancievers...time to dust them off!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I use my Power Glove with this.
Why hasn't anyone built a *REAL* dataglove for the masses yet? The PowerGlove is a lame-ass mockery of a real 3-space input device and is only good for use in simplistic games or other 'toy' applications!
;-)
... this is emminently compressible data, too, should bandwidth prove an issue (though there's always FireWire and USB2.0, I guess)
... remember light pens? (They're the same thing as a mouse, in a 2D sense, and you don't see many light pens kicking around today, do you? =] )
... but no time to spend on implementation), give 'em my email.... f00Dave@bigfoot.com
Wow, that reads like a Flamebait.
What I'd really like to see is a cheap-in-volume 'glove pair' input device (say 100$ for the MS version and 30$ for the Logitech one, like mice or keyboards) that would stream the positions of the fingers and hands over a hot-pluggable USB connection. I have a bazillion applications for that sort of device, and even a good headstart on a way to produce one on my own for about 300$ per pair (and a whole lot of time I just don't have). I'm sure *someone* has already had similar thoughts....
For reference purposes, my (rather fluid) specifications are for a system that:
- spits out positions of the fingertips accurate to 1 cubic mm or so within a cubic meter in your 'work area' (ie: a volume sitting above a traditional keyboard's location at a desk)
- tethered or wireless, as the case may be (wireless is an extra cost, of course, but not THAT much extra - it's mainly the short battery life that sucks for this)
- 60 Hz or better refresh rate for each of the sensed positions
- serial or USB input stream, similar to a 2D mouse's, only with a LOT more coordinates
So, why should everyone have one of these? Well, I can't give away ALL my secrets, but people laughed at the mouse, didn't they? =) A 3D desktop metaphor requires a 3D interface device, and 'air mice' sort of suck. Wands are only good for limited applications
How would you like to type on a virtual keyboard, configured any way you want it to be, anywhere in space you chose to place it? How about a 20-DoF controller for videogames? Music synthesis with 20+ DoFs, each affecting a different component of the sound (left hand for timber and right for pitch, volume and sequencing)? Just as the mouse hardware drove the creation of a billion 2D applications, so will 3D 'glove' hardware drive a billion more.
But only, ONLY if it's CHEAP. If anyone knows an electrical engineer that wants to work on the hardware end of a project with me (I've got the hardware feasability, sample applications and reconstruction algorithms mostly worked out
God, that was a lot longer that I'd expected it to be. Must be the heat. =)
.f00Dave
I don't think the powerglove will affect the theremin at all (I play theremin, but have no powerglove or I'd test it first).m inworld.com/w w.e-bow.com/ .
The theremin reacts the your body's electromagnetic field. Touching a metal part of the signal chain (such as the case of a stompbox or rackmount effects box the theremin might be plugged into, or a metal part of the speaker cabinet). If the powerglove doesn't have any conductive surfaces making contact with the hand it's on, it shouldn't affect the tone. If it does, it might affect the tone a little, like shifting a specific point in the air a certain distance from the pitch antenna that's normally a C note up to a C#, or down to a B. I can get this kind of pitch shift by touching the strings of the Chapman Stick, a guitar-like instrume nt I play, when the Stick is plugged into the amplifier. I've tried using an E-Bow with theremin and it had no effect on the tone whatsoever.
links:
http://www.stick.com/
http://www.there
http://www.moogmusic.com/
http://w
Actually, you might be on to something there... given the popularity of DDR on the console, I wouldn't be surprised if a port to Linux would bring in a few people, provided it was easy to install and any hardware modification was easy to do and foolproof or purchasable...
Forget music and videogames. All you need to justify developing this is an application that cycles through images in a directory whenever the glove moves or and down. The online porn industry will love you for it.
We're talking about the era of 8-bit gaming here not the 21st century. The NES was one step up from the Atari, the video-game industry was still in it's infancy when these peripherials was designed. Sure they make MUCH better wireless controllers now, but where do you think the basis for these Super Peripherials came from? The shoddy NES peripherials of course! Sure the pads were a bad idea (which is why we don't see many similar ones produced today) but give them a break, they thought it would be cool so they did it. It wasn' so they dumped it. The people that created these peripherials were pioneers and innovators, trying out new ideas in a new market, which is why you can go out and buy a beautifully designed and implemented wavebird now :).
Of course I'm sure consumers would have been happier if the crappier of the peripherials (such as the pads) had never gotten out of the labs but we can't forget that this was before the days of the internet (well at least as a popular communication medium). If they wanted to see how people would respond to an idea (wireless controllers) they had to make them and see how well they sold, I'm willing to bet that the profits from those shoddy peripherials went into the R&D of better versions which leads us to the 21st century and all the neat toys we have now.
In short, yesterdays peripherials may have been bulky and error prone but they paved the way for the light and near-perfect ones we have today. Just my $.02
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article
Hmm... I keep thinking of the video navigation system from Minority Report actually. Still, same page, different book.
It figures, just as soon as this comes out, all the powergloves on eBay start getting 5-6 bids apiece.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Correct me if I am wrong, but... Why wouldn't this work with the standard kernel drivers? Vojtech Pavlik and Andree Borrmann have already written drivers for this, and it works with DB-9 or a DB-25. It works with NES controllers, PSX pads, SNES, and more. It works great. I have it working with my PSX pads at home. It even works with my homebrew arcade stick. Diagrams and Info are available here. This is a kernel module that comes with Linux by default.
Good, but crude instructions about using a gamepad in Linux can be found here.
It is important that you load a few seperate modules.
parport
gamepad
joyconsole
I think that there is another one. If anyone has any questions, just ask, and I will post what I have in my rc.modules file when I get home and have access to my machine.
Like I said before, some of the DoF are rather obtuse or tend to run 'coupled'. I know several people who can totally independantly control the final joint on their fingers, though. Even most 'normal' people can if they do this:
;-)
1) hold fingers out straight
2) bend at 'middle' joint, trying to keep the 'final' (third) joint straight
3) once there, try to bend the final joint (should be easy enough, since that's the normal 'grip' position)
4) play with it a bit and you should be able to demonstrate some rudimentary control over those last joints
Okay, now for the thumb....
Hooboy.
The Middle2 they refer to is a 'tilting' motion, similar to the one you mentioned between fingers. Make a gesture like you're holding a guitar neck. Now hold on to the base of your thumb, HARD, and try to move the rest of your thumb over as if you were operating a click pen. Move back and forth and you'll notice that there's about a 10 or 15 degree rotation orthogonal to the primary bending direction. In this image, there's a metal post through the middle joint of the thumb. That's the axis of rotation for this effect.
Keep in mind that, unlike the fingers, the thumb's base isn't fixed to the wrist, but has 2 DoF all of it's own.
So, we have one bend for the 'last' (distal) joint, one bend and a perpendicular tilt for the 'middle' (medial) joint, and two more rotational components for the 'base' (proximal): a roll to point your thumb, and a bend to open/close the whole thumb arrangement. That's 5 DoF. *phew*
Anyway, I'll reiterate: most of these DoFs are essentially useless for UI purposes. 10 per hand is plenty. The face has tons more, the shoulders have 5 each (vertical and horizontal translation, rotate out, rotate up and rotate the whole arm), etcetera. Humans have a ridiculously large number of ways to move. All I want is to tap into 16 or so of them at a time, rather than 2 or 6 continuous (mouse and SpaceOrb, respectively) or 108 discrete (keyboard) axes....
Of course, dancers, sculpters, musicians and so on will always want more, but they don't read SlashDot, do they?! =D
.f00Dave
Perhaps we could write a driver for that too?
Tibbon
tibbon.com
I have two different light guns for DC. Both work with House Of The Dead 2. Love splattering those Zombies. Love, love, love.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Because of the VPL (Jaron Lanier) patents. Most of what makes a good dataglove is wrapped up in those patents. These patents aren't due to expire for a little while, so we are unlikely to see anything soon. As far as I know, VPL doesn't exist anymore - I can't remember what company holds the patents (one of those "patents aquired for portfolio" shuffle things).
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Under 2.4, when compiling a kernel module, you aren't allowed to do a "-I/usr/src/linux/include" to include the sources - you need to have the 2.4 sources installed properly and change the Makefile to read "-I/lib/modules/`uname -r`/build/include" - then it will work OK (provided everything else is set up properly in regard to the sources) - plus, I had a problem with the last line in the pglove.c source (MODULE_LICENCE("GPL");), which was causing some kind of error - I just commented it out, not wanting to track it down, and knowing that it wasn't a crit piece for the source.
Once that was done, the rest went OK - I fired up the module, plugged in PG interface (that I had put together YEARS ago, and it was last used on a 486 back in 1994 with Rend386 in DOS), and started the raw reader (a.out - default gcc output bin).
It worked just great, as expected (well, I was actually expecting smoke - glad I didn't get any).
Anyhow, my kudos to the job this guy did - while I doubt it is going to "change the world" - it is a good hack, and I am glad to see it pulled off (as a homebrew VR part-time experimentor).
Reason is the Path to God - Anon