Well, this has certainly been a long time in coming. I’ve been really busy with all kinds of work, most of which has not been related to the Keyglove project, which is why it’s been almost three weeks since my last update. However, I’ve been able to make enough progress here and there to post this video for you today.
Keyglove #04 – Typing With Prototype B from Jeff Rowberg on Vimeo.
Basically, this shows another proof-of-concept typing demonstration using the new glove construction with a full sensor array. All 34 sensors are attached to the glove: five sewn on the fingertips, one sewn on the lower thumb segment, three sewn on the palm. All of the rest are remote control rubberized keypad contacts which I cut from a cheap broken universal remote I got off of eBay.
Note that this video doesn’t demonstrate any mouse movement or accelerometer control yet. It is focusing only on typing with touch combinations. The mouse control is still being developed as a feature as well, but it is not part of this video.
The actual typing starts at around 5 minutes into the video. Enjoy, and merry Christmas!
Ohh noes! you’re missing the ‘P’!
You are correct! I didn’t notice at first, but after I did, I really didn’t want to go back and redo that part of the video. It’s a little tedious as it is; I should learn to make them a bit shorter.
nice 🙂
is this the final layout? i was hoping for more multi-touch letters instead of having 27 individual sensors…
btw. i see you have moved on to the teensy which should make the software side a bit simpler (or not dunno – but it has usb support, right?) … however you could also do this directly out of processing without using any visual basic stuff, by incorporating the robot class, which basically allows you to create a robot object, which then would control keyboard and mouse etc.
i used it here: http://fkeel.blogspot.com/2011/02/shadowcoat-v-002.html
(it doesnt work very well, the sensor placement I have at the moment is very much sub-par for this… )
I think that is the final physical sensor layout, provided I can improve the accuracy with the most optimal size and conductive material (currently testing again with conductive thread for small, reliable, stationary sensors). However, the particular touchset I was using there–all letters as individual 1-to-1 combinations–could certainly be changed to whatever makes the most sense for your particular application or taste. It’s only a matter of changing the definitions in the controller code. You could come up with a fingertip-only touchset if that would be preferable.
The Robot class in Processing is very intriguing! I didn’t know about that. If I had, I would have skipped the simple VB implementation. The Teensy board eliminated the need for any of that though, since it does indeed have native USB mouse/KB support. It’s incredibly easy to use and it works great. Your latest Shadowcoat video is quite impressive though.
On top of that, just last night I was able to finally make some headway with the BP20422 Bluetooth module, ripped from a cheap ITON keyboard. I will have a blog post about that up soon.