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Use Your Cellphone as a 3D Mouse
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Jan 19, 2008 06:36 PM
from the remember-when-they-weighed-like-twenty-pounds dept.
from the remember-when-they-weighed-like-twenty-pounds dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "In recent years, we've started to use our cellphones not only for placing calls or exchanging messages. Now, we take pictures, read our e-mails, listen to music or watch TV. But, according to New Scientist, UK researchers are going further with a prototype software that turns your cellphone into a 3-D mouse. The phone is connected to your computer via Bluetooth. And you control the image on the screen by rotating or moving your phone. As says one of the researchers, 'it feels like a much more natural way to interact and exchange data.' The technology might first be used in shopping malls to buy movie tickets or to interact with advertising displays."
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Minority Report (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Minority Report (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
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Wii Remote anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
What we have here is a solution looking for a problem.
-Bean
Re:Wii Remote anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Simply put they break.
This system puts the device in the users hand and reduces physical interaction significantly, which reduces cost.
Re:Wii Remote anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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WTF? (Score:2)
WTF are you smoking?
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Almost four years ago (Score:5, Informative)
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cool but impractical (Score:5, Insightful)
This type of interface is completely impractical, except for a few high specialized applications (like architecture).
The problem with things like this is that your arm gets tired after using it for a few minutes. The great thing about a mouse is that you can take your hand off of it and it stays in the same place. I know that personally, I use the arrow and tab keys for navigation WAY more than i use my mouse.
Mice work really really great because it is a 2D interface to a 2D environment.
I would rather see grant money pumped into multi-touch than stuff like this.....its cool, its just not going to replace your mouse anytime soon.
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I kinda did this (Score:3, Informative)
Pretty much everything about artoolkit plus worked out of the box, and the bluetooth code to emulate a mouse was pretty simple. if someone wants to give something like this article a bash, I would start with something like this.
My 2p
My cell phone as a wii-esque I/O device? (Score:1)
Still, I imagine there are people out there willing to find one more excuse to shake their cell phones around, people with money.
Tired of these cellphone as credit card "dreams" (Score:5, Insightful)
I suggest they do something different, start with forcing all financial institutions to adopt a single standard for electronic payment and force them to accept it without fees or charges.
THEN let's do the utopian buy everything with our cellphones trick. Hell it's been in place in europe in some places for almost 5 years now (German bus line, you pay your bus fare by waving your cellphone near the pay terminal)
I'm tired of the wheel being reinvented monthly while nobody is inventing roads.
Start with how to force banks to quit being assholes and create a universal OPEN electronic payment system that has ZERO cost.
Re:Tired of these cellphone as credit card "dreams (Score:1)
... and create a universal OPEN electronic payment system that has ZERO cost.
Because it costs the bank something to set up/maintain the electronic payment system, it is not possible to have a zero cost system. (see TANSTAAFL [wikipedia.org] principle) However, a standardized system with standardized (reasonable) payments would certainly go a long way in the direction the parent poster intends.
Re:Tired of these cellphone as credit card "dreams (Score:2, Insightful)
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It's the perverse incentives of market economies that give rise to this kind of crap and why the banking industry needs to be regulated.
In canada Pay day loan shops (i.e. legal loan sharking) is quite the business I wish government would shut it down, these parasites do not add anything to the economy.
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Dangerous technology! (Score:2)
Just like that, no other input needed? Suppose someone told you "let's meet by the bus terminal". You are just standing there, waiting. Will the phone in your pocket do the kindness to pay for everyone that comes by, without you realizing it?
Re:Tired of these cellphone as credit card "dreams (Score:2)
How are they supposed to make money? Who pays for fraud? Who pays for maintenance of the electronic infrastructure? Customer support?
not just yet (Score:4, Insightful)
Interacting with video advertising displays? Gee, I can't wait.
Using my handset to interact with public devices will only be cool when I can stop the 07:43 train from taking off without me at Clapham Junction and when I can disable that stereo system the five punks in the Camaro Convertible have blasting my head off at the traffic lights. (Perhaps you can do this one already?)
What you want is simply to interact with your handset which will replicate the public interface/display on its screen. I.e. Multiple users simultaneously accessing a terminal display and no more queues. Little need to control the external display except as a gimmick.
Re:not just yet (Score:4, Interesting)
"Where the fuck is the bus map? Which bus do I need? What's wrong with this fucking city, there's a fucking plasma screen in the bus shelter but no fucking map."
(That was at one of the bus shelters under Centre Point in London.) There was some kind of interaction with the advertisement, but I didn't see anyone pressing the buttons; I've only pressed them if I've been bored and alone. I don't mind video screens where I don't have to look at them for very long. I like the ones along the escalators in some stations: they're pretty cool, and the old station design (bold tiles etc) contrasts wonderfully with brushed steel LCD displays.
(You're actually wanting the 0743 to be late? I (was) the one inside thinking "hurry up! Hurry up! Leave, dammit")
Transmitting the display to the screen would be much, much more useful, that's a great idea. It could be pretty easily done with a website, WiFi and/or bluetooth (or similar) to transmit a URL to nearby devices.
Parent
custom do-it-yourself 3D mouse pointers (Score:3, Informative)
Amazing cell phone applications (Score:4, Funny)
This works with the iPhone as well (Score:4, Funny)
Stolen From Nintendo (Score:1)
Zonk and Roland (Score:4, Funny)
Great excuse not to design a real 3D input device (Score:2, Insightful)
Every 3D input device created over the last 15 years has failed without exception. They were either too expensive (datagloves for VR, various space navigator gizmos for CAD), or too crappy to be of any use (P5 glove?), or died because of lack of driver/software support.
So if anyone wants to create a 3D input device that actually gets used by more than 5 people a) design it so it actually works well b) don't overprice it c) don't count on game or software companies to "support" it unless you create a really
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May I present the exception: SpaceNavigator [3dconnexion.com]. It is nothing like that waving around stuff but a simple knob with sensors detecting the force you apply. I got one some weeks ago and haven't had time to play with it a lot, but even so after some minutes it started to get quite intuitive.
nokia n95 as a mouse (Score:2)
uses the accelerometer and bluetooth.
Buy, don't bring (Score:5, Funny)
Why are cigarettes sold... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Touchscreen LCDs God's Answer to the Mouse (Score:2)
How is this faster?
How is this any different from using your finger to touch the display?
Are touch screens so expensive that we need to find a free alternative to use normal LCDs instead?
Nintendo called.... (Score:2)
2W in my hands all day long? no thanks! (Score:2)
unintended consequences (Score:2)
The researchers forgot to mention the obvious applications of a 3D cellphone mouse on the new academic field of teledildonics. Too bad, they just lost a honorary PhD in Multidimensional Advanced Cellular Teledildonics. But other people will surely develop the new science quite soon. It won't be long until discussions such as this become increasingly common in university campuses and boring corporate meetings:
I'd be happy using my cellphone as a 2D mouse! (Score:2)
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