We’ve seen a couple of prototypes that enable or at least emulate touch-sensitivity on everyday objects. But as wearable technology continues to flourish, we’re going to need a simple and portable solution. Augmented reality company Metaio thinks they may have an answer with Thermal Touch, a technology that emulates touch-sensitivity using “the heat signature left by a person’s finger when touching a surface.”
Right now the hardware needed to pull off the feat is quite bulky. In the demo video below, Metaio used a tablet, a standard camera and a rather large infrared camera. The company hopes that in the future, all of the necessary hardware can be included in a wearable device similar to Google Glass, like so:
Here’s the demo video:
Sorry zombies, I guess you’ll be stuck with voice commands. Good luck with that.
We’ve seen all kinds of gamecontrollerplushies, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen one that can actually be used to play video games. Adafruit’s Becky Stern built the soft controller using their Flora Arduino-compatible platform and some conductive thread and fabric.
Even though Becky’s design looks like a squishy, oversize NES controller, your computer will recognize the plushie as a USB keyboard, so you can use it with any keyboard-based game. If you’re handy with stitching, perhaps you can modify Becky’s guide and make a plushie of your favorite controller. It would probably take a long time to build a full keyboard plushie though.
Make a plush browser and head to Adafruit for the full guide and parts list.
Ever since the rise of Apple’s touchscreen devices, it’s seemed only a matter of time until a touchscreen MacBook arrives. But those who wince at finger-smeared screens may not need to worry — a newly uncovered patent suggests Apple is more interested in revamping the bezel.
It may not look like much, but Dentaku’s tiny board lets you follow in the footsteps of Leo Fender, Antonio Stradivari, Ikutaro Kakehashi and other musical instrument makers. It’s called the Ototo, and it’s a small synthesizer that can be activated by any conductive material and tweaked by a variety of inputs.
The Ototo is a lot like the MaKey MaKey, except it specializes in making music. It has 12 capacitive touch keys that you can activate with your fingers or any other conductive material. It also has four inputs for its sensors. One input modifies the volume, one changes the pitch and the other two sensors tweak the “texture” of the synth. At launch, Dentaku will offer seven types of sensors. There’s a knob, a slider, a joystick, a force-sensitive button, a touch-sensitive strip, a light sensor and a breath sensor.
Augmenting the synth with one or more sensors lets you make a variety of instruments, from a cardboard saxophone to a drum made of human heads. I mean live human heads. I mean living human drums. With their heads still attached – you know what I mean. Don’t kill people.
Ototo is powered by two AA batteries or via micro-USB. Speaking of which, you can also use the synthesizer as a MIDI controller over USB.
Jam with your browser and head to Kickstarter for more info on Ototo. A pledge of at least £45 (~$73 USD) gets you an Ototo board.
The printed word is dying, but the printed keyboard is alive and kicking. And no, you won’t need a 3D printer to make one. A company called Novalia has made an incredibly thin Bluetooth keyboard made of photo paper, conductive ink and its proprietary electronic module.
Novalia made the keyboard to show off its advancements in printed technology, particularly the electronic module based on Nordic Semiconductor’s system-on-a-chip and a printing process that allows conventional printers to mass produce capacitive sensors.
Novalia’s technology could be used to make not just keyboards but other input devices as well, and existing printing presses could churn out hundreds of overlays with built-in sensors in a matter of minutes. Nordic Semiconductor says the module can last for up to nine months on a single CR2032 button cell battery.
I’m not sure if Novalia will make the keyboard available to the public. It does have Switchboard, a much simpler version of the keyboard on its online shop . That one’s made of foam board and has eight capacitive keys and sells for £25 (~$41 USD)
Disney’s Touché concept can turn many ordinary objects into touch sensors. But what if you could buy materials such as wood, foil or paper that were already touch-sensitive off the shelf? That’s one of the dreams of a group called Embodied Interaction. To prove that the idea is applicable, the group made sheets of flexible and cuttable multi-touch sensors.
According to researchers Simon Olberding, Nan-Wei Gong, John Tiab, Joseph A. Paradiso, and Dr. Jürgen Steimle, their multi-touch sensor works even when parts of it are cut because of two main factors: how the electrodes – the points that sense touch – are wired to their connectors and where the connectors are located.
As the group claimed in their research paper (pdf), in conventional touch sensors electrodes are arranged in a flat grid and are wired to the connectors and to each other, as seen above. This presents two problems. First, several electrodes are dependent on one wire. Also, because the connectors are located at the edges of the sensor, you can’t damage or cut out those edges or you’ll leave the whole sheet useless. That won’t cut it for a cuttable sensor. In addition, conventional touch sensors are not made of materials that are hard to cut using ordinary tools.
What the research team did is to come up used circuit printing technology to make flexible multi-touch sensor sheets, in which the connectors are at the center of each sheet and the wires connect to as few electrodes as possible. In what they call the star topology, each electrode has its own wire to the connector. A second arrangement called the tree topology there are a few central wires that branch out and handle their own batch of electrodes.
The end result is a multi-touch sensor that can be cut into a variety of shapes, although obviously they couldn’t cut a hole in the middle of the sheet.
Of course, the challenge of wiring these touch-sensing sheets to a microcomputer is another matter altogether. Still, it would be nice if you could build your own touch-sensitive furniture, gadget or tools. Haed to Embodied Interaction’s website for more information on the concept.
Disney’s miraculous touch-sensitive technology isn’t available yet, but Tinkering Techie found a way to discreetly incorporate current tech to his furniture. He made a wooden nightstand and installed three capacitive touch strips underneath its overhanging edges. Then he made a custom circuit so that he could control the nightstand’s lights and a lamp through touch.
The strips are located on the front and side edges of the nighstand. Tapping any of them once turns on an RGB LED nightlight underneath the drawer, while a double tap turns on the lamp on the nightstand. The lights can then be turned off with a single tap. Tinkering Techie also said that he can use the double tap gesture on any 120v device in place of the lamp.
As you’ll see in the video below, Tinkering Techie also installed another RGB LED on the drawer that lights up when the drawer is opened. The touch strips can also be used to adjust the color of the nightlight and drawer LEDs.
Last month I talked about Bare Conductive’s Electric Paint Pen, which can be used to make simple or hidden circuits. Thanks to the company’s newest product, you can use the pen to make more complex and fun devices. Bare Conductive’s Touch Board turns anything conductive – including the Electric Paint and your body – into a trigger for its built-in mp3 player or MIDI device.
The simplest way to use the Touch Board is to load an MP3 file to a microSD card and load the card to the board. Then you just connect a conductive material and a Li-Po battery to the board. Now all you need to do is touch the conductive material and the Touch Board will play the MP3 file.
The Touch Board also has a distance sensor, which means you can set it so that you don’t even have to touch your sensor to trigger the Touch Board.
Combine it with the Electric Paint and some creativity and you can make neat stuff like a cardboard boombox, a talking wall, a cookie thief alarm and more. But that’s not all. The Touch Board is also compatible with Arduino Shields, so you can extend its functionality beyond just triggering sounds. Anything that an Arduino Shield can do, you can turn into a distance- or touch-activated action.
Pledge at least £45 (~$72 USD) on Kickstarter to get a Touch Board as a reward. Bare Conductive will even throw in a microSD card and an Electric Paint Pen with your Touch Board unit.
Like many of us, Terry Burton and Jinna Kim find themselves witnessing – and contributing to – the slow but inevitable death of paper books. The husband and wife team decided to make a functional artwork that bridges the gap between eBooks and their ancestors. Their eBookmark not only lets you save a book page, it also lets you specify the paragraph where you stopped. How does it work? With a minimalist touch interface, of course.
The eBookmark has a balsa wood body. Inside are LEDs, a touch-sensitive strip, a battery and an Atmel 8-bit processor. It also has a switch up top for pointing out either the left or right page and can be extended to accommodate larger books.
I know that Terry and Jinna made the eBookmark as an artistic statement, but it would’ve been nicer if it had a motion sensor that caused the LEDs to turn on only when the book is opened. If you’re actually looking for a more precise bookmark, check out this bookmark by Fred & Friends.
Wearablemice have been done before, but Nick Mastandrea’sMycestro might be the best implementation of the form factor yet. Like other wearable mice, Mycestro – it’s pronounced “mice-tro”, get it? – is designed to be worn on your index finger. But instead of a small trackpad, Mycetro lets you control your cursor by waving your finger around.
If it seems like a stupid idea to you, temper your cynicism. Mycestro can be calibrated and it’s sensitive enough to read even small movements. You don’t have to emulate an orchestra conductor to move your cursor around. Aside from tracking motion, the Mycetro also has touch-sensitive left-, right- and middle-click buttons. You can swipe your thumb along those three buttons to scroll up or down.
Mycestro is also designed to activate only when your thumb is touching it, so you don’t have to worry about your cursor running wild while you move your hand about. That smart feature should also help conserve its battery, which lasts up to 8 hours and can be recharged via USB.
The Mycestro can also be used with devices that support Bluetooth 4.0. Here’s a brief demo of the Mycestro being used to control an Internet-connected TV:
Here Nick shows how it can be used to control Solidworks CAD software.
Pledge at least $79 (USD) on Kickstarter to reserve a Mycestro. It seems like a decent alternative to the traditional mouse, but I am curious if the Leap sensor – which is cheaper yet more versatile than the Mycestro – will render it obsolete. Then again it is more portable and has its touch-sensitive hardware going for it.
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