Slashdot Mirror
Agloves Allow For Touchscreen Use On Cold Days
Zothecula writes "With capacitive the technology of choice on the majority of touchscreen devices hitting the market, people have been coming up with all kinds of interesting ways to interact with their devices when the winter chill sets in and gloves become a necessity. Many South Koreans apparently turned to using sausages as a stylus but if you'd prefer not to be hassled by dogs as you type a text there are less meat product-based solutions, such as the North Face Etip gloves. Now there's another glove-based solution in the form of Agloves, which provide even greater touchscreen friendly surface area for your hands."
Or you can convert an existing pair of gloves into touchscreen-capable gloves by using a needle a little bit of conductive thread:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Making-A-Glove-Work-With-A-Touch-Screen/
Not all touch screens are capacitive.
We also have good touch screens, which respond to actual touch, by any object.
Alternatively, just don't wear gloves. Your body (hopefully) has a lower minimum operational temperature than your touchscreen device.
I don't know about you but I will be using the speech to text and voice command features on my Droid X more and more during the winter when I have gloves on.
Just like the swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, should not the ipad?
I don't know about you crazy people, but staying alive is higher outdoors than using my touchscreen android. :P
here in Winnipeg Manitoba: we dip down as low as -42 degrees. (that's in Celsius, but it's the same temperature as fahrenheit.)
honestly, looking at my phone outdoors 8 months out of the year is the least of my concerns.
I have two completely different pairs of generic off-the-shelf leather gloves. They're a bit klutzier than bare fingers - they're gloves, after all - but they both work well enough with my iPhone. I figure it's because skin has similar electrical properties to... skin. Or am I just really lucky that these work somehow?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
When snowblowing, I change selections and volume on my iPod Touch with my nose.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
This is EXACTLY why I love my n900 so much... resistive touchscreen, transflective LCD. Who started that stupid capacitive touchscreen hype anyway? I use my n900 a lot, day in, day out. The resistive touchscreen is NEVER a problem. Being able to scribble things down with a stylus, however...
When I use my thin (i.e., down to 40 degrees) gloves, my Nexus One works just fine. I can also use it through plastic bags and clothing, which is a bit weird when you're trying to clean some smudges off the screen with your shirt (and yes, I have a screen protector).
However, it does get down to -40 around here and nobody makes gloves that'll work on a screen when it's THAT cold. That's more about the gloves being crazy thick/insulating, though. I suppose I could sew some conductive thread through my gloves on my own, but then that'll conduct the cold right into my gloves, too.
Which is why I wish my phone had SOME physical buttons, say, for ANSWERING and HANGING UP. It's a bit ridiculous to have to take my gloves off to answer a call by swiping across the screen.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Do LCD screens even work when its 40 below ? I thought they would freeze up.
Just please don't buy Dots Gloves. I was excited about them, bought them months ago based on their slick marketing, and finally got them delivered a couple weeks ago - they looked nothing like the ads. They were a pair of the cheapest, thinnest wool gloves you can imagine, with some conductive thread clumsily sewn over the very tips of the thumb and first two fingers. Horrible, horrible, horrible - so bad I've been looking for opportunities to give them bad word of mouth for it.
Man up, and don't wear gloves.
In the real world day-to-day weather conditions can actually kill you if you're stupid. I strongly suspect you have never walked around in weather so cold that the humidity of your breath freezes your nose hairs and if the wind comes up you have to turn around and hide your face until it dies down.
Man up here and you die son. You die a fool, not a hero.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
I'm fairly certain that there is a large swath of land in the "real world" of which you speak where day-to-day weather conditions couldn't kill you no matter how stupid you were, at least not on the end of the temperature scale where gloves are required. Don't confuse the real world with the location you chose to live in.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
I am a self admitted Polar Bear. I wear shorts when there's snow on the ground.
In the middle of winder I will be wearing so many layers it's not even funny. Gloves? I wear mittons because they're warmer.
When they talk about it being so cold that exposed skin will freeze in less than 5 minutes, they mean it.
Ability to use the phone even with gloves would help occasionally.
Oh, and for the operating temperature thing - you keep the phone close to your body to keep it's temperature up.
I don't read AC A human right
( http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Complicator_0x27_s_Gloves.aspx )
Yes, gloves. Many types of them - also fingerless gloves. Easy to make from cheap wool ones - and in this case cutting just the tips of two fingers will be usually enough, making them only slightly less warm.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Recommended gear for these people: http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/10/29/1416251/Mount-Everest-Gets-3G-Service
Interesting stuff. From the article's image, the AGloves seem pretty utilitarian. There's also a company MyGloves* that produces gloves with similar functionality .. the difference is that they have conductivity elements on only the main digits of your hand (index, thumb) and they're stylized with different prints / marks / fabric, it seems. Just tossing that out for the masses to chew on..
...in addition to APT, general hackability and real qwerty for fast typing.
It has resistive touchscreen and thus works well in -10 C, or so, when the gloves are not particularly thick.
Not that well in -25 C though, as using thick mittens tends to make touch somewhat imprecise. ;) But at least I can use thinner gloves underneath them so that I won't have to take them completely off.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
and they are actually really good. They aren't the warmest things in the world, but because of their snug, stretchy fit, they feel like they keep your hands warmer than other loose gloves I have worn.
They are really comfortable too. The fabric is soft and stretchy, it's got a bit of spandex in it. The response using my Nexus One is fantastic. It's like I wasn't even wearing gloves.
----------------
Full disclaimer: I got mine for free in Washington DC. One of the creators, Em, was giving them out at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. That said, I'm definitely buying some as gifts for friends.
"Coffee is for closers."
I know there are capacitive styluses in existence for sale online, and i know it's possible to make one yourself if you want to deal with the hassle, but why isn't it possible to walk into _any_ cell phone store and just grab one off the shelf? Multi-touch is great for some applications, but in a lot of cases you only need to touch one spot at a time, and a stylus is much more accurate and obscures a lot less of the screen. I don't understand why there isn't more of a market for them. And it would solve the cold weather issue without requiring you to get a special style of gloves.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Many South Koreans apparently turned to using sausages as a stylus but if you'd prefer not to be hassled by dogs as you type a text there are less meat product-based solutions
Hassled by dogs? For Koreans it's a virtuous cycle
Never underestimate the power of stupid people to bring about their own demise. IIRC, it's possible to die of hypothermia even in relatively mild conditions, if there's a little wind and you manage to soak your clothing (for example, by falling into a creek or pond).
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Projected capacitive screens are supposedly able to register fingers even when gloves are worn.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Don't confuse the real world with the location you chose to live in.
I do hope you were aiming for irony.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
I just wasn't all that clear. I should have said, "Don't confuse the entirety of the 'real world' with the portion of it in which you live"
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
(Just to bring this amusing and generally enjoyable digression back to the topic of TFA...)
Yes, it sure is possible to freeze to death if you're a bit chilly, it's a bit windy, and a you're wet. But after all that, your fancy touch-screen phone is fucked anyway so no high-tech conductive glove in the world will help you call for assistance.
Kid-proof tablet..
Oh boy, instead of buying a $US0.50 stylus, I can buy a $US20.00 pair of gloves!
We're looking for bikini models willing to traipse about in the snow wearing gloves and looking ridiculous.