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Multitouch Without Touch Using Wiimote

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Nov 12, 2007 02:47 PM
from the right-touch dept.
Hardware Hacking Wii (Games) Technology
owlgorithm writes to mention that Gizmodo has a neat hack for the multitouch Holy Grail — multitouch without the touch. This hack turns the Wiimote into a receiver for IR light reflected from an emitter off of your fingers using reflective tape.
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Submission: Multitouch without touch using Wii-mote by owlgorithm (874832)
[+] Wiimote as Multi-Touch Display Controller 107 comments
Tmack writes "While hard-hacks with the Wiimote are somewhat old news, this particular implementation is quite interesting. Using the infrared camera on the Wiimote, pens with LEDs instead of ink, and an LCD projector, Johnny Chung Lee of Carnegie Mellon University has created software to use them as a (relatively) cheap multi-touch display. Any surface onto which you can project becomes an interactive multi-touch display, as demonstrated in the video at the link. He has the software available for download, along with some other neat projects. Lee has also documented another impressive Wiimote hack.
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  • That we'd get our first glimpse of those cool minority report interfaces from a game console. I always figured it would be thanks to porn.

  • Power Glove redeaux? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Cerberus7 (66071) on Monday November 12 2007, @02:58PM (#21327189)
    (oblig.) I love the Power Glove. It's so bad.

    This could be really awesome. I can see this as a great way to bring good strategy games to consoles. It might even be better than a mouse. Supreme Commander with your fingers on a Wii? Nevermind that the Wii would gag on the graphics load, but the gameplay is intriguing.

  • Good Point (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blhack (921171) * on Monday November 12 2007, @02:58PM (#21327197)
    At the end he makes a very good point. Your arms get tired after a while. As cool as the interface in minority report might be....it isn't very practical. Keyboard and mouse interfaces have lasted for so long because they are VERY VERY good....a mouse is a perfect way of interacting with your monitor...you're using a 2d surface to interface with another 2d surface (not to mention the fact that you can let go of a mouse, and it stays in the same place....unlike a wacom tablet, or this thing). If we ever get to a point where monitors truly are 3d (which seems rather pointless to me, albeit cool)...then something like this MIGHT make sense....that is if you tracked it in all 3 dimensions.

    • Re:Good Point (Score:5, Funny)

      by Gibble (514795) on Monday November 12 2007, @03:00PM (#21327233) Homepage
      Heaven forbid any of us geeks build up some arm strength by doing more than pushing a mouse around!
      • When I was in boot camp, sometimes they would punish us by making us hold a pencil. We had to hold it with both arms held straight out. We were young kids in pretty decent shape and it didn't take long at all for it to get pretty painful. Just the weight of holding up your arms can get to be too much after a while.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by The FNP (1177715)

          When I was in boot camp, sometimes they would punish us by making us hold a pencil. We had to hold it with both arms held straight out. We were young kids in pretty decent shape and it didn't take long at all for it to get pretty painful. Just the weight of holding up your arms can get to be too much after a while.

          If they had you hold your arms out to the sides instead of out in front, it would have had another name: Crucifixion. Anything done long enough can be painful.

          I'd be very glad to see an actual game or product along these lines as it would introduce more exercise into the lives of the users. A really simple product that would work well with this would be in fast food. instead of having the workers touch a button with their gloves or hands, they just select the option they want in the air. And tell me,

          • When they crucify you they're nice enough to tie you there. Nail you if you're really special.
        • PENCIL? Hell, when I was in basic, they made us hold out a rubber duck (solid plastic M16 simulator). Pencil. Sheesh. Wimp.
          • It was the navy - what do you want? Our day at the range they did it to us with .45s. Holding that up straight out was no fun. But lest some innocent reader think I don't deserve the wimp moniker you have bestowed upon me - the .45 was chambered for .22. I shot 16 rounds if I remember and that was the one and only time I ever handled a functioning firearm while in the military. The last thing the Navy needs is sailors running around on a ship with guns. We had marines for that.

    • Re:Good Point (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LiquidCoooled (634315) on Monday November 12 2007, @03:01PM (#21327249) Homepage Journal
      I can see this owrking really nicely with a glass table.
      Who says you have to aim at the tv?
      It might work coming to the actual glass surface which means you could lay your arm down and rest it like a mouse but you have the third dimension when you need it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by CastrTroy (595695)
      I don't think that something like this would take over as the standard form of input, however, it could be useful for doing things like presentations. Imagine if you were in a small meeting, with about 5 people, and each one had a wiimote, and each one was able to draw things on the screen. Somebody watching a presentation could point the wiimote at a diagram to show everyone exactly what part he was asking a question about. Just because it isn't the best solution in all cases, doesn't mean it's can't be

    • Re:Good Point (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Tom (822) on Monday November 12 2007, @03:22PM (#21327461) Homepage Journal
      You haven't seen Jeff Han's talk [ted.com].
    • He is just less clever than he could have been that is all.

      You could probably make this a flat surface representation where the wii not be on your television but below your hand which rests on glass. There are some interface issues that have to be taken into account as controlling something like windows does not work in this situation, but if you had an apple iphone like interface it would work great.

    • Keyboard and mouse interfaces have lasted for so long because they are VERY VERY good....a mouse is a perfect way of interacting with your monitor

      The fuck they are! Keyboards and mice are relatively dreadful, quite frankly. Have you ever tried to draw with a mouse? It's like painting with a shoe. They're also extremely difficult to use for millions of people with various motor-related disabilities. And what's worse using them improperly (which most people do) *causes* disabilities -- carpal tunnel synd

    • Expand your view, man.....who says you have to stick to just your fingers.....you can work gestures into movement without relying on holding your arms in front of you the whole time.....

      I'm thinking 3D, First Person, Street Fighter.....using gestures and reflective tape in the right spots and I can just imagine "Ha-dou-Ken!" You should be able to get distance from it (size of dot in the video seemed to already indicate it)...speed (jab vs strong). (Of course, for the first idiot that actually tries Guile'

  • Everyone loves writing software... plus the Vicon (Score:4, Interesting)

    by compumike (454538) on Monday November 12 2007, @02:59PM (#21327223) Homepage
    But software will only take you so far. There's a lot of unique PC to human interactions that are possible, but this world needs more hardware hackers.

    In any case, this is a neat demo. People have been doing this on a much bigger, 3D, expensive $$$ scale with something called a Vicon Motion Capture System [vicon.com]. They basically take a whole bunch of those cameras, and a whole bunch of LED arrays, and strobe them so that they get a picture of little reflective points from many different angles. They then use some trigonometry to figure out where, in 3D space, a particular point is. Cool stuff -- good to see it's being brought closer to everyone's homes, rather than the tens of thousands of dollars that Vicon charges.

    --
    Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation. [nerdkits.com]

  • nerds at four o'clock!! (ok, slightly after...) (Score:5, Funny)

    by xeno (2667) on Monday November 12 2007, @03:03PM (#21327261)
    ok, i appreciate the true geekitude of taping your fingers with reflective stuff to air-type, but editing the video to 4:04 is just over the top nerdiness.

    damn.

  • "Holy Grail" is pretty old tech already (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bobbaddeley (981674) on Monday November 12 2007, @03:27PM (#21327501) Homepage

    The "Holy Grail" of multitouch without the touch is a pretty old problem. I've been working on something at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for a while called the HI-Space table, and it was around before I came to the lab. It uses infrared and a camera and detects multiple inputs simultaneously, as well as object placed on the table. It doesn't require touching at all and works fairly well, detecting not only single fingers but each of the fingers, allowing the user to do different things with different arrangements of fingers. It understands motions as well, and can detect a swipe, circle, etc. Objects aren't tagged with anything special; they're just cardboard shapes.

    Here's a video of the HI-Space table in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFBoq1i81V4 [youtube.com]

    Here's an old link to some of the work: http://infoviz.pnl.gov/hces/ [pnl.gov]

  • Stuck in our past. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bigattichouse (527527) on Monday November 12 2007, @03:28PM (#21327509) Homepage
    Seems to me we always seem to be building technology to make old ideas into a reality. I've always felt that all these hands-free interface ideas look like wizards waving their hands around in the air. If they had eye-glass headsup displays, they'd look like they're casting spells or something.

    Its not that it is indistinguishable from magic, its that were TRYING to make it look like that.

    Just a thought.

  • Danger to eyes (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2007, @03:34PM (#21327577)
    I would be careful making very bright infrared light. Because your eyes do not pick them up, your pupils will not know to shrink in bright infrared light.

    I would suggest doing this in a very well lit room, and NEVER in the dark, or you will likely seriously damage your eyes.

    • Re:Danger to eyes (Score:5, Insightful)

      by francium de neobie (590783) on Monday November 12 2007, @03:52PM (#21327837) Homepage
      Exactly the same thing I've been thinking after watching the demo. Although our eyes cannot see the IR light it can still pass onto the retina without much trouble. Using that thing for an extended period of time would quite probably damage the eyes.

      • Although our eyes cannot see the IR light it can still pass onto the retina without much trouble.
        Anything that's warm gives off IR light. Are you saying in a dark room looking at another person for too long will do damage to your eyes?

        This thing gives off IR in a different frequency than the human body of course, but if in general IR light is "dangerous", then we'd all be blind years ago.

        Using that thing for an extended period of time would quite probably damage the eyes.
        I doubt it. IR is lower in energy/

        • Re:Danger to eyes (Score:4, Informative)

          by blincoln (592401) on Monday November 12 2007, @04:46PM (#21328569) Journal

          This thing gives off IR in a different frequency than the human body of course, but if in general IR light is "dangerous", then we'd all be blind years ago.


          The near-IR light given off by this type of device has very little to do with thermal IR. It is much closer to visible red light, just a bit lower frequency (a couple of hundred nm or less difference, versus thermal IR being closer to ten times lower frequency).
          Human eyes are also opaque to thermal IR, which is related to what the GP was getting at - near-IR is potentially dangerous because your eyes are transparent to it, but your retina has very little sensitivity to it. I doubt the amount of NIR illumination here is very significant, but imagine the equivalent of having a bright flashlight stuck in your face, except without the ability of your pupils to contract in response.
      • Of course, you could just put single IR LEDs into fingers on gloves, and power them with a CR2032 battery or something. TFA's solution is actually kinda overkill.
  • I'm sorry for the awful picture you will get in your mind if you continue reading.

    But it occured to me that you could use a penis instead of a finger (giving it another use beside: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/03/21 [penny-arcade.com] )

    (Why, oh why this thought came to me...)
  • I'm no doctor, but it can't be good to flood your eyes with infrared light.

    http://www.google.com/search?q=infrared+light+damage+eyes
    • Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I vaguely recall seeing a article about the MPAA shooting infrared light from behind movie screens into the crowd to determine if anyone was using a camcorder to copy live movies.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by pilardi (187433)

        (Infrared == heat)

        This is not quite true. If (infrared == heat) then (visible light == even hotter heat). Every thing emits light. Things at normal environmental temperature (0-100 degC) emit primarily in the long-wave to mid-wave IR (about 10000nm or so). A typical IR LED emits in the near-ir (about 900nm or so) which corresponds to about 1000 degC or so. Red light, which is about 700nm, corresponds to about 3000 degC or so. So saying infrared == heat is very misleading. Caveat: the number are off the top of my head

  • While this was an impressive video, it leaves me wondering how to try it out at home. I assume there are more than a few web pages talking about grabbing wiimote data via bluetooth, but what software could you use to display multi-touch inputs on a PC screen?
    • Any Wiimote software that can display the raw IR data will work (wmgui for example). However, thats the easy part, the hard part is finding software or writing it so that you can actually do something usefull with that data.
  • No need to even solder a single wire if you point two Wiimotes at the screen and use their relative positions to do stuff.
    • Nintendo has said more than twice that supply will be about twice as big during the holiday season.
      • In this Mercury News interview with Reggie Fils-Aime [mercurynews.com] he pretty much gaurantees that they still wont meet demand for the holidays. Here's the nugget:

        We're working very hard to make sure that consumers are satisfied this holiday, but I can't guarantee that we're going to meet demand. As a matter of fact, I can tell you on the record we won't.

        I guess I'm going to have to start trolling target, walmart and such on a regular basis.
        • I hear that the best way to pick up a Wii is to look at stores' weekly leaflets and check if the Wii is shown there. If it is, show up on Sunday morning before the store opens. You can also call in advance to find out whether they'll have stock or not.

        • I guess I'm going to have to start trolling target, walmart and such on a regular basis.

          Fortunately, these guys all publicly announce when they'll be receiving shipments via their ads. Check the new weekly ad online at target.com, etc., before open time on Sunday. If the new ad advertises the Wii, it means they're putting a new shipment on the floor that morning. Get in the habit of checking target.com, bestbuy.com, and circuitcity.com every sunday morning.

          I managed to score a Wii (in the San Francisco b

    • People are still waiting on wii's? I bought one about 2 months ago by taking one from the shelf at Meijer and paying for it. I'll ship you one for $600.
      • It depends on where you live. In my area, they're still sold out all the time, I only got mine by having my brother, who conveniently worked in Target's electronics dept, snag me one. I know in some places, you can find them, but that's not everywhere.
        • It seems to me that there's a big problem with getting them to the right place. I know of many shops in my area that display the "Wii in stock" sign at all times. I got mine about 6 months back by just walking into a shop that just happened to get them in stock. I think this is the best way to go about it. Whenever you are in, or near a shop that sells the Wii, you should stop in and see if they have any. You will probably get one pretty quickly. I only went to about 1 shop a week, since the Wii start
      • People are still waiting on wii's? I bought one about 2 months ago by taking one from the shelf at Meijer and paying for it.

        I bought mine on launch night, with a whole bunch of other Zelda fanboys, and we bought up the entire supply then and there, along with heaps of other games and accessories. We all then went home over Christmas and played Wii Tennis with family and friends, who then went out and bought up the entire supply through to about May. I'm not sure any of them ever bought any other game.

        Wi

      • yes they are - but apparently talking about the wii in an article about a use for the wii is a wii bit off topic. so i guess i should stop.
      • I would call ahead if you're talking about Game Stop, as their shipments tend to vary. I got mine by calling ahead and then showing up and waiting an hour for the UPS guy to show up on a Wednesday.
    • No worries, unless your eyes are capable of picking up IR. On second thought, this might make an excellent anti-Predator device.

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