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and detailed instructions to make your own Soap.

I've already seen "Fight Club," thanks.

...you can try an Air Mouse [gyration.com] from Gryration [gyration.com]. I know we're all really excited about the Wii and all, but, honestly, it wasn't the first, and isn't the only, device that does motion sensing.

I know it's not home made, but it does the job pretty well.

TW

... you put a sock around a stubby thing and kinda rub it with your hand, and it makes you happy.

Except that the stubby thing is attached to a computer.

I believe that ./ers are uniquely qualified to operate this device.

This pretty much looks like the optical equivalent of picking up a ball mouse and rolling the ball.

It doesn't have any sort of motion-sensing features, nor any pointing features (that is, it's not like a laser pointer with feedback).

All in all: slow news day.

- RG>

I like the joystick functionality, but I find it hard to believe the "belt" actions are as versitile as my mouse on a desktop. I think a better design might use a flattened oval-shaped device (no 90 degree corners), as it would allow free-er transition between directions. Is this design strictly limited to one type of click, it seems so to me...

Three researchers at Microsoft Research have created an innovative handheld pointing device that works in mid-air. "Soap" -- which resembles a bar of soap -- is based on hardware found in a common wireless optical mouse...

Yeah, most of FPS gamers I know could use some soap...

I have a similar mouse from years ago actually that is a gyroscopic wireless mouse. Problem is even with tweaking the sensitivity its still hard to use which is why it has a button on there you have to hold when you want to use it so that the cursor doesn't just fly all over the place all the time.

It is extremely useful for my current setup though where I have my 40" hidef LCD hooked up via DVI->HDMI to my computer. Once I get a wireless keyboard I'll be able to play WoW from my couch!

The other cool thing is that you can have multiple mice plugged in at the same time, and both will work. They just both control the same cursor.

These are no Lawnmower man mice, but they're close.

And then you have to completely rebuild the thing when you need to replace the batteries. No thanks.

It would be nice to build a squashed sphere version of this device with two mouse buttons and a scroll wheel. If the scroll wheel was moved just a bit deeper into the shell, you could perform belt actions without accidentally triggering the wheel, and the location of the wheel would provide a nice tactile reference to mouse orientation.

It's an interesting new method of cursor control, but I doubt it's all that accurate or useful for playing games(or anything else requiring much for clicking on specific targets). Since you're spinning the inards of the device around, and the button/s with it, that could make quickly clicking to fire your gun a problem. You'll need to 1: know if your on the top or bottom of the mouse to know which side the button is on(though this could be resolved by some sort of bumps on the inards to signify which side is which), and 2: moving your finger or thumb to the button would probably result in more movement of the cursor.

It looks like the dude controlling the mouse onscreen to click folders and other small targets is having a bit of hard time with accurate clicking.

But to be fair, its just the guts of a mouse in a hunk of fabric... not some device designed with two million dollars of R&D and a 20 man team. It is cool for what it is. Its a good concept piece or just a bit of fun. Perhaps it will lead to more functional devices based on the same methods of movement. So with all that said, I do think its rather cool.

...by turning my mouse over and rolling the ball with my thumb. I'm doing it right now with my laser mouse. They call this an invention?...it's on the same level as Mentos in Diet Coke as near as I tell.

The "experts" decided that OK on the right, while not natural for left-to-right readers, was optimal for a mouse.

With other pointer devices (touch screen, touch pad, wiii-controller, bar-of-soap), such an optimization is not helpful.

So can we now put the OK CANCEL back to left-to-right ordering?

why are those guys still pointing the damn thing at the monitor, as if it needed line of sight to work? Doesn't that just annoy you? I mean, the whole benefit of this thing is I could move the cursor around while my hand is stuffed down my pants...

good jokes all.. /clap clap
Nonsense aside, where is my power glove for PC? I should be able to navigate 3d environments by moving both my hands, one for motion the other for grabbing/moving data/files. Go download Tactile3d and play with it for a minute to better understand the concept. then imagine a device similar to the Wii's for navigation. It would make such systems faster to navigate & therefore useful!
I think it's absurd that a console should have something my PC does not.
Glad to see other people are thinking along the same lines...

side note: i bet the power glove is reintroduced on the Wii..

...can I write a driver for Soap using SOAP?

Chris Mattern

Here's the link [hackaday.com]. The guy who conceived it works at Microsoft Research. See his resume [patrickbaudisch.com] (WARNING! PDF!)
I think he even did it as part of his job, but for some reason I can't find where I've seen it...

one points over there. one points up. both mean something else when viewed by others.

(points)

...which sells in europe for abt. 40 EURs. The wii remote uses ordinary bluetooth, drivers exist for ALL common OSes (win, osx, linux, see http://wiihacks.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com] and http://www.wiili.org/ [wiili.org] for further infos) and you got:
- a precise mouse-like pointing device (you've got to build yourself a simple "sensor bar" which consists only of a couple of IR LEDs as wii (hoho) all know)
- 3 dimensional acceleration/motion sensors
- couple of buttons
...and you're done!

Still like my trackball better and it doesn't require a desk either. It looked like there were precision issues.

You know that this is probably violating someone's patent. Probably MULTIPLE patents!

The article is about manipulating items you bought to make something new, that's like saying making a ball of rubber bands out of rubber bands is violating patent. It's not a commercially marketed device yet, so patents are a non-issue.

But thanks for playing.

Not to mention that, but this is about three months old. Its only when it gets reported on the FOSS news-o-sphere (or whatever the fuck you'd call it) that it gets on /.