Low Cost Control of the Mouse via Web Cam
Flavio Percoco contacted me today to let me know about some recent work he has been doing. Well...it's way cool: he's managed to hack a software solution that uses the built in web cam on his system to control his mouse pointer. This is friggin' cool. We've all been talking about this for a long time, but talk is cheap. Flavio actually went ahead and did something. Way to go Flavio!
I've invited Flavio to submit a GOPA Task Proposal to flesh out the work further, and I have my fingers crossed that we'll get a good proposal with achievable and useful deliverables for this space. It is definitely something we've wanted for a while. Neat.
OMG, that's awesome, URL!!!!!!!!!
Posted by Diego Escalante Urrelo on May 15, 2008 at 04:21 PM EDT #
That's is very good news indeed.
Any chance of a few more details Will?
Is it head track or eye track?
I'm convinced eye track is the way to go for people with physical impairments as eye control is nearly always possible and commercial systems are effective but so expensive.
If we can get something that works into GNOME it should act as a catalyst for other work that is going on in the area like OpenGazer. Oh and I just found out that Gijs is working on it for his degree.
Awesome. I Can't wait to try it on my laptop with built in webcam.
Posted by SteveLee on May 16, 2008 at 02:07 AM EDT #
Here's a video of the prototype in action: http://www.flaper87.org/files/videos/mouseTrapCam2.ogg
Posted by Willie Walker on May 20, 2008 at 11:46 AM EDT #
Here's a link where can be found an extended information about the project.
http://www.flaper87.org/2008/05/21/mousetrap-an-accessible-control-of-the-mouse-via-web-cam
I hope you like it.
Thanks Willie for everything.
Posted by Flavio Percoco on May 20, 2008 at 07:30 PM EDT #
Dude, that's awesome. Its stuff like this that make me want to contribute to open source.
Eye tracking would be excellence, but head tracking already is way innovative. Good job!
Posted by Anders Feder on July 14, 2008 at 02:34 PM EDT #
Is this based on Adam McCullough's http://live.gnome.org/CamTrack 2005 GSoc project? It seemed quite promising at the time.
Posted by Will on July 14, 2008 at 03:54 PM EDT #