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Using Magnets To Interact With Your Tablet

Posted by timothy on from the I-mostly-use-gravity-instead dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from MAKE's blog: "Tangible interface designer and inventor Andrea Bianchi, along with his colleague, Ian Oakley (University of Madeira / Carnegie Mellon Europe), have come with a novel approach to interacting with a mobile device. Using the magnetometer built into most modern smartphones, Bianchi and Oakley have created a series of tangible user interface demonstrations that go beyond what's achievable with capacitive touch displays."

7 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. It's 2012 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    And we still don't know how they work...

    1. Re:It's 2012 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Some clowns will never understand :)

    2. Re:It's 2012 by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      still haven't discovered the 2 remaining fundamental forces

      If you know for sure that there are exactly two of them, why do you call them undiscovered?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  2. Video Link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    The video in case it gets /.'ed
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BDqOXpkDoQ4

  3. Re:Suggest apps to try this with? by MozeeToby · · Score: 4, Informative

    https://play.google.com/store/search?q=compass :-)

  4. Re:Suggest apps to try this with? by arctus · · Score: 2

    The first thing that occurred to me was games for children who may be too young to interact with only a touchscreen.

    I mean, if you can make anything an input device regardless of whether it has a circuit in it, I guess you can dream up a lot. I'm just not brainstorming well today or something.

  5. Useful while using laptops near high field magnets by vigour · · Score: 2

    I used to use the magnetometer in my HTC Legend to measure the field outside a 5 T superconducting magnet. Of course I had proper magnetometers in the lab, but it was convenient being able to use my phone.
    Some of the relays in a device I used were very sensitive to magnetic fields, plus I didn't the HD in my laptop to get screwed up. It was linear up to +/- 2 mT which was enough for a solenoid type superconducting magnet (i.e. the normal kind), and it allowed me move my devices closer to the magnet, and shorten my cables.

    Very useful indeed.