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Modding Nokia Cameraphone To Be Mouse
ozg333 writes "This guy had the very clever idea of modding a Nokia mobile phone to work as a mouse by using the built in camera.
It uses the phone's built-in Bluetooth to link to the PC, so cool! There is also a video of it in action. I can't wait to get one of these, it would mean one less device to carry when I'm travelling."
Next is a Wireless Mouse to Cameraphone
"It uses the phone's built-in Bluetooth to link to the PC, so cool!"
First time I've seen "dumb" spelled "c-o-o-l".
This might seem interesting as a DIY project, but it's a quite worthless gadget, while neat that it's possible, it shouldn't be big news.
Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it.
Boy, and I thought my 2xAAA bluetooth optical mouse had a short battery life! The CCD sensors are only intended for bursts of a few seconds, not for continuous clicky-draggy mouse motions. They chew up a large amount of battery power to amplify extremely small amounts of incoming light signal into usable pixel values.
[
http://www.metku.net/index.html?path=mods/loginoki /index_eng/ is another Mouse-Nokia-"Hack".
What a joker. This is as fake as it can be. The video shows Windows and then it shows him moving his phone about.
...is a total flame, typical of a Microsoftie who expects to jump headfirst into Slackware/Gentoo and understand everything in a week. When he doesn't, it's the fault of "the community."
What a tool.
OMG! Wau!
So, this video is supposed to prove that it 'works'?
Actually, I have the impression that some person is doing tricks with a real mouse, while another one moves the mobile phone. I would have loved seeing the window dragging and the phone movements in sync, however it seems that the author carefully avoided this...
I wonder which buttons are used for the click, hold and drag actions?
The combination of having to hold it 0.6cm above a surface, plus the generally poor battery life of cameraphones makes it a little impractical for normal use.
Although kudos to them for writing the software to do this.
Video Game cheats, hints a
"I can't wait to get one of these, it would mean one less device to carry when I'm travelling" ... between home and school.
I've just thought of something. If they used it on a glass table would the ambient light or perhaps a light shone at the mouse be enough not to have to "hover" it above a surface?
Video Game cheats, hints a
You get or need to make a call and... you want to use your computer while talking on your PHONE?
Basically its the same problem as when trying to use your phone as a PDA: Talk or type (or retrieve) but can't do both at the same time.
Forget about battery life. Answer me this either/or question first.
The guy is a total kook.
"I can't wait to get one of these, it would mean one less device to carry when I'm travelling."
Are you kidding me? Seriously using your camera phone for a mouse?
Don't even bring up the "one less device to carry when I'm travelling" crap. That is the stupidest-ass horse shit I have ever heard. You are a fucking faggot.
i sit at work with my cell sitting on the table next to the mouse. i mostly use the keyboard, and tend to reach to the mouse to click a button without looking at it. several times I've tried to move the mouse without the pointer moving for a few seconds, only to realize that I reached for the phone instead.
i guess i'm not the only one.
My blog
Watch your productivity soar as you program simple three-key combinations to bring up your favorite Windows function.
To remember which is which, you can just put a yellow Post-It note over the phone's LCD screen.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
..and converted my Rowenta steam iron into a mouse so I could surf
while getting the creases out of my shirts. The phone mod didn't work
out so good though, someone called me up and I burned half my right ear
off.
This is a cool hack, but i don't think it is "that" useful to replace a "laptop mouse".
:)
Laptops have builtin trackpads... I assume people who use a mouse because
1) they need a more precise + ergonomic device than the trackpad.
2) have a shitty trackpad on their computer.
In both cases, I wonder if my Nokia phone is really an improvement for problem 1 or 2...
The only "useful" application is to show of in front of your friends
As I am A Real Man, I would plug my digital video camera into my computer by firewire, and use it as a mouse. Better res, and way more manly to hold a 1.68 lb camera and power cables and my assorted arm weights 5 centimeters above the table.
It dosen't have programmable buttons. Oh well, the ones below my laptop's touchpad will do.
I have freaks! I did something right...
I see a lot of negative comments here... what ppl fail to understand is that it is not meant to be a practical solution but a project for the sake of doing it... I enjoy working on small projects in my spare time which do not actually solve anything but just keeps me engaged and the stuff this guy done is cool from that perspective..
You may recall this article, about guy turning his optical mouse into an imaging device. Now here we have another guy who wants to turn his imaging device into an optical mouse. Pity they didn't just think of doing a swap, eh? ;)
Oh no... it's the future.
This sounds like a really cool hack, but I don't believe a word of it.
I just took a sample shot with my 6230, and at 1cm, a printed page with 12pt courier on it shows essentially no structure at all, it's all too blurred. At closer range, the body blocks too much light for the camera to aquire anything. My wooden desk and various other things also didn't give any discernible shapes. Looking at the video and the mouse pad, I doubt the camera would see anything at all.
Even if it is possible to properly track the blobs, I doubt that you'll get high resolution from the typical phone camera. I believe typical optical mice have a resolution between 500 and 2000 dpi, and given the typical 640x480 resolution, you'd need optics to focus the camera on a rather small spot. The mice have these optics, the cameras won't (they're usually wide angle).
Im not to sure, he never shows the phone and pointer moving in step, but the buttons on the side of the phone where he has his fingers in the video throw off the "He couldnt click because he didnt have his fingers on buttons" claim to fakery. Anyway, major kudos if its real, if not, then someone make it real!
Tidy people are lazy, they cant be bothered to look for things.
You may recall this article, about guy turning his optical mouse into an imaging device. Now here we have another guy who wants to turn his imaging device into an optical mouse. Pity they didn't just think of doing a swap, eh? ;)
We could also give up and building our own computers to write OSS software on, go to an electronics store to buy some Voleware and a Dell box and have loads of new free time to go bowling or to play golf but that would kind of take the fun out of being a nerd.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
It's not supposed to be practical: it's just a cool hack.
Ii's sooooo fake! How the f**k could the phone see anything? It's completely dark under its lens. Bullshit!!!! FAKE!!
I`ll get hand cancer with one of those mouse
They show a screen with a window moving. Then show the camea by itself moving to the side of the monitor. Never do they show the two at the same time. I could have made this video and swapped out the camera for the mouse before the camera showed anything.
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
How about, you know, just not carrying a mouse every damn where you go?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I have been waiting for a couple years now for someone to put an optical mouse pickup on the back of a pda or a celphone as part of the user interface. I am surprised it has not been done yet, but maybe this slashdot topic got a few more engineers thinking.
A common objection is that the screen moving around as you drag the device would make it unusable, but most people do not move the mouse that far when navigating, so the eye should have no trouble tracking on the screen.
but concluded that it was impossible to do. Maybe the best solution would be for some mobile maker, just to shove an extra LED into one of their handsets and flog it as working as a BT mouse?
I mean how much extra could that possibly cost - and it'd definitely be one less thing to shove into my laptop bag (which is always a good thing).
Another thing on my wish list is just an extendible prong I could flick out of my phone that goes into a USB socket (not a proper usb, just a board with contacts on it, you can put it on an SD card, you can put it on my phone). Would hardly take any space and I could dump the synch/recharge cable from my bag as well.
There once was a girl on Slashdot Who'd talk dirty to make the geeks hot. She would speak 733T, to the guys in heat. They never guessed that she was only a spambot.
It is in some connection... this game for a mobile phone i know named wabbellab here http://people.freenet.de/hskopp/wabbellab.html using tha phone camera you move the ball on the screen & you get the 'gravity effect'. It is somewhat buggy on my nokia but it generally works...
My Sony Erickson K750i has this built in to it.
Uses the joystick thingy on it to control the pointer over bluetooth.
Why is it news that you have to use hacks on one phone to do something that is native on others ?
so this is my offer: ONLY 5 (Source Code included).
:))
http://stud3.tuwien.ac.at/~e0125565/DSCN1147.MOV
and on top of this 11 FREE cigs are included.
Its Kernel, not Kernal. Idiot.
I doubt this would be practical: it is inconvenient to hold the phone in the air, and having the camera constantly turned on would quickly drain the batteries. I think phone manufacturers should simply include a real mouse LED/sensor combo on their geek phones.
On the other hand, if the phone has a touchscreen, then it is possible to use it as a touchpad. Things like BlueRemote for Palm OS already do this. Of course, having another touchpad for your laptop is kinda pointless.