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

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.

tiredness

[elizard2k]

I don't know about this. I can see my arm getting pretty tired after a while (LOTS of hours) of swinging and pointing with the mouse.
That's the advantage of a desk mouse, you can rest your arm.

Then again, lots of geeks wouldn't find this a problem due to the extensive use of their right arm, what's a little more going to do? :p

Re:Been around for a while?

[Mr Guy]

Silly man, those where "pucks". Entirely different. See, these are MICE.

Differences include what order they occur in alphabetically and number of letters.

Almost there ...

[Fehson]

Now once we get rid of the user too, we'll have the ultimate computer.

Wow!

[Anonymous Squonk]

Combine this with the one-handed keyboard and a pocket-sized computer, and you can look like a complete moron walking down the street!

mouse

[austad]

These have been around for awhile. We have them in some of our conference rooms, and we got them over 2 years ago. They're pretty cool for playing Q3 on the 12 foot screen. :) It's very easy to aim with it as you just hold down the trigger and point it at what you want to shoot, much easier than moving a regular mouse to aim.

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.