Gyroscopic Mouse

Aron Schatz writes "You've heard of wireless mice, but how about deskless ones? This baby doesn't need a suface of any kind to be used. This one comes direct from Gyration."

Comments

Logitech

[bigethespe]

Didn't logitech make something similar to this with a track ball on it? I think it was called the "surfman" or something like that - really cool... had like a 20' range from the reciever box.

Re:Logitech

[questionlp]

I remember setting up one of those in a conference room at work... the problem was that the range wasn't that great and that the trackball wasn't very easy to work with.

Logitech has something kind of similar to the pointing device in the article, just it's not a gyro based (optical though), it has a laser pointer, and it's based on Bluetooth rather than RF. It's called a Cordless Presenter, more info can be found here and it costs a lot more than the gyro mouse.

Not so new

[Spuffin]

I have a GyroPoint Pro sitting right here. It's a wireless as well as deskless mouse. Also it's from the same company, Gyration. Only thing that makes this one differ is when I searched for the date... 1995.

Uhmm

[Anonymous Coward]

The OPTICAL version is new... I have one of these with a mouseball.

this is not news...

[edrugtrader]

we've had one of these at work for 2 years now, they've been out longer than that.

slashdot should be ashamed of their blatent front page ads. was it really worth it taco?!

Re:nearly white on white text

[aronschatz]

The site and all of its user selectable themes have been Tested in Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, Konquerer and IE. What browser are you using?

Re:Gives a new meaning to mousepad upgrades

[Cynbe]

Actually, there's a track on/off button for precisely this reason, in midair use. Kind of nice for scrollbars sometimes, you can just put the cursor on the pagedown button and turn off tracking, then click down by pages with no worry about drifting off the widget.

Re:inertia and power and calibration

[tramm]

1. I thought gyroscopes had to have some mass in relation the forces applied to them in order to stay oriented. It seems like a light 'scope could easily be knocked out of whack easily in a handheld device.

It uses Piezo gyros that are angular rate sensors, not vertical references. There is no flywheel to introduce weird mass effects. Anyway, most flywheel gyros are mechanized in gymbals so that they do not exert any force; instead they remain stationary and can be used for a vertical reference.

2. These 'scopes would require lots of power to keep spinning.

They're solid state and have almost no moving parts. The Murata ENC05-E sensors used in the older ones draw 2 mA. The MG100 used in the new ones draws about 20 mA.

3. How do you orient this thing to begin with?

It only senses change in angular position, not absolute position. That means that there is no orientation required.

Gyration has more details on their technology online. I evaluated the gyros for use in my GPL autopilot project, but decided on the Tokin CG-16D units instead.

Re:Atari 400/800

[Nipok Nek]

I had one of those. It was just four Mercury Switches with a button on the top of the handle.

Re:Does it use a special driver?

[aronschatz]

I was wondering that myself, so I hooked it up to my Linux box (Mandrake 8.2). But I didn't know how to get a regular USB mouse working with it so I couldn't tell you. This is just an ordinary mouse, and if you can get usb mice to work with linux, you can use this with it.

Re:nearly white on white text

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. The guy complaining is on crack. Looks black-on-white to me.