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Wiimote Turns TV into Touchless MS Surface
RemyBR writes "User interface project allows you to control objects on a display using gestures, working like Microsoft's Surface but without touching the screen at all. Inspired by Johnny Chung Lee's work, the system requires you to wear Minority Report-style gloves equipped with infrared emitters on your fingertips. A Wiimote on top of the display keeps track of these IR LEDs, while the software can read the motion down to two-finger pinching gestures for image zooming."
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Nintendo turns your televisions into a Microsoft product!
I saw this video three weeks ago when it came out and went around the web alongside the video and mocking version of the Microsoft Surface. Why are we waiting for Gizmodo before posting something cool? Should Slashdot just become an aggregator with comments and moderation for the other tech blogs out there?
Would it be possible to shine IR light through the edge of a plexiglass surface, and then when the user touches the surface it would cause the IR to scatter at that point creating a point source for the Wiimote to track?
Wow, slashdot editors are worthless. If you were my employees you would have been fired a long time ago.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/12/1714232&tid=222
If the video crashes at some point, a quick recap: it kinda works. You can see at certain points, the images get dropped and it looks like it doesn't totally track perfectly with where the fingers vs. screen are. However, it is an awesome technology and idea... maybe with a couple of remotes you could triangulate more precisely and get that true 'minority report' feel... just what i need for my tri-monitor setup :)
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If you saw it three weeks ago, then why didn't you post it? Oh, you were too lazy? Then STFU.
Just give me some Newton handwriting recog code on there and I'd probably never leave home again.. And no thought magic for me please, hand is the highest interface I wanna go.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, on the plus side they didn't actually have to very long for gizmodo to post it.... it...http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/12/1714232&tid=222/
The first article was about the original hack which used a test interface and IR-reflective tape. This article seems to be about a project to implement the no-touch hack in a more usable fashion in an actual application. Definitely a step forward and pretty cool.
A desktop on a desktop on a desktop....
A duck was found murdered in a chicken coop last night. Police suspect foul play.
When I saw this first on Johnny Chung Lee's site, I had the same idea (gloves et al). I was thinking how cool it would be if this could be combined with Compiz-Fusion or something like that (imagine manipulating the cube with your gloves!). I wouldn't mind trying to write something like this (but I don't have very much knowledge about writing code for X so not really sure where to start at all). I think it would be really neat. I was thinking that you could use gestures to manipulate the desktop. Either that or have a completely custom environment/desktop (sort of like in the video).
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Why not just use the Wiimote itself as a remote control? It seems more fun and practical.
If you saw it three weeks ago, then why didn't you post it? Oh, you were too lazy? Then STFU.
Because I didn't think it was worth discussing on Slashdot? Perhaps because in the past when I've submitted what I thought was pretty cool shit it was rejected within minutes or rejected and then posted a few days later by someone else instead that had, what I felt to be, a lame writeup?
But most of all it's because I can't stand the fact that some of the writeups are nothing more than blog advertisements that link to the real article and they continue to get pushed through seemingly w/o even hitting the firehose.
We're used to moving an actual thing around to do stuff. The physical reaction into our fingers is very important. The mouse gives a minimum, but the trackpad gives more. Touchless manual gestures don't keep the hands locked in a feedback loop with the virtual object, so they'll be clumsy.
What I'm waiting for is a thin memory plastic layer over a touchscreen, that can raise bumps and edges defining onscreen GUIs. Vibrating gloves could be good for simulating textures, but there's no tech for simulating tensile or inertial force in virtual objects. Maybe some kind of eccentric gyroscope, but I've never seen one.
--
make install -not war
It's Wii strokin' time!!
An updated version of this video has been posted to the Cynergy Labs Site. http://labs.cynergysystems.com/
If you saw it a few weeks ago, why didn't you submit it to slashdot? Your post makes no indication that you did so.
Slashdot is like OSS. If there's something you don't like, try to fix it yourself. At least that's what I've been told dozens of times.
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
A better explanation of how he built this can be found here and a better video with a cool example of navigating a 3D object can be found at the Cynergy Labs site.
Ok I get it. You can make multitouch interfaces. I have made multitouch interfaces myself using a couple different methods.
They aren't worth a damn though unless you have something to use them with. Where is the multitouch picture organizing software that I can display on my coffee table and let me family sort through the pictures. Where is the multitouch D&D program that will let me and my friends move our characters through a dungeon with miniatures? Where is the multitouch coloring book that I can put a bunch of kids on? Multitouch math races? Multitouch Chemical Compound manipulation?
We need software. We have ways to interact now. We need things to interact with.
It seems to me that the Microsoft Surface also let you place devices on it, and via a bluetooth connection, you could throw objects on, or pull them off. Example, place a portable hard drive and a digital camera on it, pull the photos off, sort them, and throw the ones you like onto the hard drive. That's what really impressed me with the Microsoft product, and lacking that feature, it isn't a Microsoft surface, just another multi-touch display.
Two words: tired arms.
Unfortunately, these sort of interfaces suffer from the same problems that doomed touch screen and light pens 20 years ago ("They can just touch the screen! How easy is that??") Users liked them at first, but holding your arm up is tiring. Try reaching out to your monitor and trace your Slashdot window for five minutes and see how long you last. It's *hard*.
There's a reason people in the Old Days wrote on flat tables, and didn't write on easels. That's also why artists who do use easels typically do "stroke and rest" (and why cartoonists use a flatter table)
A touch table is far superior for this sort of thing for that reason.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
This can make for an affordable and effective screen display. Nintendo For The Wiin!
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
I hope the gloves incorporate rumble. That's my favourite aspect of the Wii OS. Feeling that little bump when you scroll the cursor over a button is so tactile and tangible. It reinforces that you should immediately pay attention because you're about to execute a command.
Actually, we waited for Gizmodo to pick it from Oh Gizmo! to pick it from Hacked Gadgets to pick it from Hack a Wii to pick it from the source. Bureaucracy and fact checking, that is the way newspapers work!
For my undergrad digital hardware project, I made one of these act as a Macintosh mouse. That was cool my professor let me get away with such an easy project.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove
You could have a very large vocabulary of gestures by using finger positions like modifier keys. Apparently, the native resolution of the Power Glove is 8 bit. This might not sound like much, but with a smoothing function like the one used for SmartNav head pointing devices, you can emulate much higher resolutions very well. (I got my girlfriend one of these because of her RSI, and I can tell you, it works very well, even though SmartNav's native resolution is only VGA.)
As is well known in HCI research using your hands like this for some time becomes very tiring. But for showing off it's an impressive application :-)
from the to-stupid-for-words dept.
Next... get a few Wiimotes and add some more points to track the rest of your body. Then get a head mounted display or some 3D glasses, and plug it all into one of the virtual worlds out there. For movement, I suppose you might want to also add in an omnidirectional treadmill, or a giant hamster ball (I am not making this up)...
Heard the word "Microsoft" way too often, how long before they own the rights?
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
Please stop referring to any multi-touch device as being like the "Microsoft Surface". MS did not come up with the idea of a multi-touch display. They steal and buy 99+ % of their technologies. Let's get PC and stop giving credit where it isn't due. It is a "multi-touch" surface. Not an MS Surface. /rant
Perhaps those eight days would have been better spent caring for the screaming child in the background.
Well, this is the first time I've ever had a 0 and a +5 related to the same post... Nice work moderators!
I got to play with the Microsoft touch at CES. This is nothing like it. The MS table uses a camera underneath the screen, so it can do things like recognize physical objects. Imagine thumbing through artwork on the table, then putting your wireless MP3 player down on the table and dragging the artwork to it and having it wirelessly sync. Pretty cool, if you ask me. They demoed this at CES. Basically anything with a barcode can be recognized as a unique device. Without this type of physical object recognition, the Wii version is a poor substitute, besides the fact you can't actually use all 10 fingers (or 20, if there are two of you) at once.
can we move all the wiimote stories to their own site
In case anyone wondered, the Wiimote can track up to 4 infrared sources. The Wiimote's on-board hardware does all the heavy lifting as far as processing the image and determining actual coordinates (and sizes) of infrared sources. If a project only requires tracking four objects then the Wiimote makes a fantastic piece of hardware for experimental and hobbyist use.
So in this demo, all the manipulation is done by tracking four coordinates grouped into two pairs.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
A piece of $4.99 hardware and Jonny Lee Chung's Hack creates the #1 best selling Metroid of all time.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
From the comments on Gizmodo:
BY SONYGUTS AT 01/22/08 11:08 AM
At about 1:28 he says, "Why don't we see what else we can do with this?" and the Mona Lisa slides off to the left, and it appears that his hands make the motion a fraction of a second later. Reverse lag? I'm not sayin' it's fake, but I would like to hear an explanation.
That phrase shows just how clueless and gullible, most people...including Taco...are when it comes to Microsoft.
The MS Surface 'table' (and it is one big ass table) relies on gestures/movement, with none of the functionality (save the on/off switch, I suppose), dependent on touch at all.
There are approx. 1/2 dozen cameras below the glass that triangulate movement above the glass - thus the need for the BAT.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw Good lord this is cool. And he is right - bring on the games!!!!
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Maybe because the technology behind the MS Surface is already years old?
Interesting, except for the constant microsoft advertisement. "I love flash, but we built this in silverlight (continue on to long rant about how great that is with no relation to the topic whatsoever)", or the "and since it's built in .net it can communicate with the Wiimote", err yes? What's that gotta do with .net? Then the "oh, look a picture of me at some microsoft meeting", and on and on. All that really got on my nerves about 3/4 through the video.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Learn guitar.
I'm tired of people propagating the old "your arms get tired" meme. They get tired, at first. If the interface has any merit, though, you'll stick with it, and your muscles adapt.
I work retail, so I have to stand for several hours at a time. At first, I used to get very tired, but years later and my stamina has increased phenomenally. It would be exactly the same with a multipoint gestural interface.
A much better way to do it ... no glows needed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0awjPUkBXOU&feature=related
while watching that video?
If your MP3 player is wireless, you don't need a Surface to recognise it or drag to it - you just need a automatically registered representation of the player in a virtual environment, like on a computer desktop.
If the artwork is physical rather than virtual, the resolution of the image isn't going to be great from a camera - a scanner is an optimised graphical input device.
I'm not ruling out Surface and multi-touch as useful innovations, far from it - I just think that the "cool" demos we've seen so far are just scratching at the... surface.