Idea OTM
2007-11-14 20:43:29.510829+00 by
Dan Lyke
2 comments
Idea of the moment: I'm at an Apple performance workshop, they bring a bunch of developers in and put us all in front
of computers. We're packed in a little tighter than normal, so there are laptops interspersed with the desktop, and my
coworker instinctively reached for his mouse, his hand hit his cell phone, and he tried to move his cursor. It didn't
work, but... This seems like the "must have" iPhone hack: It's got a camera, so you can put it on its back and (if there's
light there) it should be able to sense motion (if not, maybe you could use the accelerometers), it's got Bluetooth, so it
should be possible to make it look like a wireless mouse, and the newer Apple mice sense button from your finger
position anyway. Someone needs to hack the iPhone to work as a mouse.
[ related topics:
Apple Computer Wireless iPhone
]
comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: made: 2007-11-16 04:15:00.449359+00 by:
ebradway
Doesn't the iMac have a web-cam built-in? Why not use the video feed to detect hand movements. Then, your mouse could simply be a bar of soap whatever felt good in your hand!
#Comment Re: made: 2007-11-16 10:52:41.908979+00 by:
meuon
I've seen this done on SGI's, and a couple times on PC's. It works, kinda
but was flakey. It's got to be really hard to determine a motions intent
and training the humans gets to be difficult: "Was that a mouse click, or were you tap you finger to the music?"
The phone idea is pretty good. Might work with any bluetooth phone with a camera, detecting relative motion with the camera could work well. The accelerometers might be better. Wonder how the battery life would be affected?
Side note: The touchpad on my HP TX1120 is the first one that works well enough that I have yet to plug a mouse into that machine for normal usage. If I did graphics on it, I'd want one..