Comments on: More accellerometer goodness

More accellerometer goodness

mathowie — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 20:45:52 -0800

The code is here, a blog post about it is here. I knew the first wave of goofy accelerometer hacks would be followed with better stuff and I can't wait to see what else people do with the sensors. Hopefully someone ports this to the newer macs as well. [via dj]

By: b1tr0t

b1tr0t — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 20:59:01 -0800

Just add a GPS and you can get inertial navigation!

By: smackfu

smackfu — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:02:37 -0800

Interesting idea there b1trot... wonder if a car tilts enough when you go around a turn to trigger the sensor. Then you wouldn't need GPS.

By: sycophant

sycophant — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:02:52 -0800

Anyone else see this motion sensing thing and think "snow globe"?

By: fenriq

fenriq — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:04:11 -0800

Filed under Goofy Accelerometer Hacks, check. So far, the Cool (and Useful) Accelerometer Hacks folder is empty. smackfu, a car probably doesn't but a motorcycle would on a curvy road.

By: jonson

jonson — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:08:12 -0800

fenriq, agreed. Gimmicky, and never once to be used for a real purpose. I wish I could imagine a viable use for the thing, but my imagination isn't good enough. Tilting your laptop while still using your laptop in the conventional way (ie, reading the screen, typing on the keyboard) is a pain in the ass.

By: bobloblaw

bobloblaw — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:08:55 -0800

I prefer this GAH: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8QsTHuoceo

By: bobloblaw

bobloblaw — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:13:32 -0800

Oops - mebbe I meant this one...

By: Fidel Cashflow

Fidel Cashflow — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:14:48 -0800

Just add a GPS and you can get inertial navigation! GPS just tells you your position. Even if you tilt the laptop, you're still going to be in the same place. It's a neat hack, but it's not that useful. That security script that causes your laptop to freak the fuck out if someone picks it up is a much nicer use of the tilt sensor, in my opinion...

By: bobloblaw

bobloblaw — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:15:18 -0800

oh, for pete's sake - here Bedtime for this Bonzo...

By: tomplus2

tomplus2 — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:15:32 -0800

What, no apple comments yet?

By: tomplus2

tomplus2 — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:16:39 -0800

whoops

By: Fidel Cashflow

Fidel Cashflow — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:24:53 -0800

oh, for pete's sake - here Ok, that's fucking neat.

By: IshmaelGraves

IshmaelGraves — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:29:34 -0800

I want this one.

By: KevinSkomsvold

KevinSkomsvold — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:29:36 -0800

Back in my Rand McNally days, we had a company approach us and demo this technology on a Palm device. It would have been pretty nifty with our Palm mapping app but it never went further than a demo.

By: Chuckles

Chuckles — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:31:08 -0800

So what are the specs on the accelerometer? How many degrees of freedom, what sensitivity, etc.

By: puke & cry

puke & cry — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:34:35 -0800

My hovering notebook is full of eels.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:56:35 -0800

>oh, for pete's sake - here >>Ok, that's fucking neat. Agreed. Reminds me of the UI navigation paradigm (press the sides of the player itelf) on iRiver's new Clix player. [/shill]

By: Busithoth

Busithoth — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 22:00:57 -0800

that tapping is definately neat, though they obviously sped up the video to make it seem more seamless. but thanks, Matt! I was just going about making a new image for my thinkpad, and now I can slap this onto it.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 22:08:50 -0800

I find google earth's interface a little annoying. I wish I could tell it to fetch a certan portion at a certan resolution, like, overnight or something so I could browse sans loading time.

By: nogudnik

nogudnik — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 22:36:33 -0800

Did someone say goofy accelerometer hacks ?

By: AndrewStephens

AndrewStephens — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 22:54:50 -0800

It would be more useful if the laptop also came with a compass (or gyroscope) along with GPS. This would allow the map to rotate so that the direction you were facing was at the top. Instant In-Car Navigation!

By: b1tr0t

b1tr0t — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:06:07 -0800

If you have a GPS, you can determine your initial position. The accelerometer should be sensitive enough to detect the car accelerating and decelerating (from which you can approximate velocity) and turning. That may be enough to give you positional deltas off the first few GPS locations. You could use GPS all the time, except when out of sight of satellites. Then you rely on the accelerometer for deltas.

By: AndrewStephens

AndrewStephens — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:18:05 -0800

I think that cornering would be the problem with an accelerometer-only based approach. You could probably approximate your heading if the car's speed stayed constant through a corner, but accelerating or decelerating while turning would throw it off, even with perfect instruments. Or so I imagine, I could be wrong.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:24:50 -0800

I wish I could imagine a viable use for the thing, but my imagination isn't good enough. At the very least, from the moment I heard about the accelerometer my first thought was hook it up to MAME, then run Marble Madness. That would kick ass.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:28:59 -0800

At the very least, from the moment I heard about the accelerometer my first thought was hook it up to MAME, then run Marble Madness. That would kick ass. Until I read this, I didn't get it. Now I want one, too.

By: SweetJesus

SweetJesus — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:55:36 -0800

If you have a GPS, you can determine your initial position. The accelerometer should be sensitive enough to detect the car accelerating and decelerating (from which you can approximate velocity) and turning. I don't think so. The accelerometer only detects sudden motion. It should not be sensitive enough to be triggered by the movement of a car. I think you think the accelerometer is a lot more high tech than it is.

By: Chuckles

Chuckles — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 01:26:26 -0800

Thanks for the link SweetJesus. So, it is three degree of freedom.. No sense of the resolution yet -- gravity at -50 isn't really basis for a good guess, I don't think. From one of the google maps navigation videos, it looks like it has to rotate at least 10deg to start moving. That is about .2g, I'm thinking marble madness would need to sense ~2deg tilt, or ~0.04g.

By: youarenothere

youarenothere — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 06:17:08 -0800

my first thought was hook it up to MAME, then run Marble Madness. That would kick ass. *drools uncontrollably*

By: pax digita

pax digita — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 07:04:41 -0800

I'm too lazy to dig up links right now, but ships that use inertial nav -- I'm mainly thinking of nuclear submarines, which have had it since at least as far back as the mid-1960s -- can't rely on it exlcusively and indefinitely without updating the current "fix" periodically -- one of the reasons for GPS. Even the high-end INSes, which are extremely precise versions of what we've been discussing above, have some error in them that accumulates over time. The cumulative error when the SINS is zeroed might be, say, a meter or two, but as a ship or sub manuvers, changes depth/latitude/longitude, encounters tiny variations in earth's gravitation (it's not perfectly uniform everywhere) and the "local vertical," the intertial fix can get "loose" enough to be a ship-length or more. If this built-in cumulative error gets big enough, the OOD could mistakenly conn the boat right into a sandbar that he thought was hundreds of yards to port or starboard, kiss his OOD letter goodbye, and get his skipper put "on the beach" after having to sit in front of a bunch of annoyed admirals who stare disapprovingly at him over a green felt-covered table. (I'm thinking USN here, obviously.) The risk is greater for submarines than surface ships because charts are often imprecise and even grossly wrong. So-oooo...submarines will use a technique like the "tilting laptop" only with more precision, but they won't use it exclusively nor indefinitely.

By: bobloblaw

bobloblaw — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 07:37:59 -0800

And if percussive virtual screen switching ain't for you - some feller just figgered out how to switch it with the ambient light sensor in the left speaker grill. More video here.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 09:59:13 -0800

Thanks to comments on my personal site, I've almost got what I wanted with a tilt sensor marble app. Here's a video I just shot of me using it.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 13:43:53 -0800

mathowie, is it me or is that really, really hard to do? And the lightsaber video is at the top my goofy list right now. That dude sooooo wanted intarnets fame for his "skills" in swinging his $2000 laptop around like a toy. No cookie for you, putzie!

By: fenriq

fenriq — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 13:45:17 -0800

bobloblaw, that is much cooler to me. I don't wanna smack my machine, just my monkey!

By: Orb2069

Orb2069 — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 07:28:52 -0800

Playing marble games with an accelerometer: Been There, Done that. , or at least Til Harbarum has. Does it count if I always wanted to do it?