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."

Dupe

[Anonymous Coward]

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 [slashdot.org]

from tfa: it kinda works

[192939495969798999]

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 :)

Re:Dupe

[AKAImBatman]

Uhhh... no. This article links to a previous article, which links to the article you linked to. Each of these articles shows a progressive evolution of the concept. The article you linked to used reflective tape to accomplish the IR tracking. The article linked to by this article shows how to use a light pen for greater accuracy. THIS article combines the two approaches using IR equipped gloves to create a highly accurate touch surface.

Re:What style gloves?

[morgan_greywolf]

I love the Power Glove. It's so baaad.

Oh, c'mon. This one's on YouTube for cryin' outloud. At least provide some linkage [youtube.com].

Updated video posted

[cynergylabs]

An updated version of this video has been posted to the Cynergy Labs Site. http://labs.cynergysystems.com/ [cynergysystems.com]

More info, better video

[pixelcowboy]

A better explanation of how he built this can be found here [cynergysystems.com] and a better video with a cool example of navigating a 3D object can be found at the Cynergy Labs [cynergysystems.com] site.

Bring Back the Power Glove!

[StCredZero]

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 [wikipedia.org]

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.)

It isn't Microsoft Surface!

[notanatheist]

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

Re:Table

[dustbowl]

You can even do it with a regular webcam and some IR lights - check out the forums at http://nuigroup.com/ [nuigroup.com] I recently built my own touch table from scratch - some IR lights point at a perspex surface, and an old projector back projects onto the perspex to provide a picture to interact with. The webcam has a small IR filter attached to the front, and this cuts out the regular lights. When my fingers touch the surface, they create hotspots that are tracked (known as Diffuse Illumination). You can also put the lights along the side of the perspex, and create a surface that uses FTIR (frustrated total internal reflection). So there are two ways of achieving similar results to Surface. If you are interested, check out nuigroup - everyone is very helpful if you run into any problems

Re:It isn't Microsoft Surface!

[Anonymous Coward]

They are using this Wiimote system to control a Microsoft Surface [microsoft.com] dumbass.

Re:Stop the Wii shipments!!!

[Tailsfan]

Only when hacked. Besides, Nintendo is MS's rival in the console industry.