Tag: Accelerometer

We’re seeing more and more tiny Bluetooth devices that are good at keeping track of useful information, such as your heart rate, electric consumption or the whereabouts of your wallet. The DropTag on the other hand tracks a closely guarded secret: whether or not a delivery package was mishandled before it got to its recipient.

It looks like the Nike+ FuelBand is working well for consumers, and people who like to track their physical activities are rejoicing everywhere because nothing sucks more than buying tech that just doesn’t work (like the Jawbone UP).

Football is a rough sport and players get hurt all the time from the forces and impacts that are generated in the game. There have been some calls for new safety gear that will monitor the force of hits and strikes.

Sony today took the wraps off of their new PlayStation Move controller system, their much-anticipated answer to the Nintendo Wii-mote and Microsoft’s Project Natal. The PlayStation Move is actually a set of motion controllers, sort of like the Wii-mote and Nunchuk.

This new add-on for the iPhone and iPod Touch gives your handheld extra gripping power for playing motion-controlled video games. The Batman logo-esque Posimotion Helix clips onto the back of your iPhone or iPod Touch, and adds large hand grips on either side of the device.

Minor modifications aside, today’s Rubik’s Cube is very similar to the one that Ernő Rubik introduced to the world more than 30 years ago. But it was only a matter of time before the geeky puzzle cube got touched by technology.

Ever try to install a satellite dish? Speaking from personal experience, I can say that finding the right line-of-sight from the dish to the skies can be a real pain in the a$$. Now there’s a new app coming for the iPhone 3GS that could make satellite dish positioning just a bit easier.

A couple of young Czech whippersnappers have figured out how to use the iPhone’s accelerometer to control remote controlled cars. They say, “Controlling is very easy with the iPhone 3G. It has five buttons, four of them you can use for traditional driving and when you press the last one, it unlocks the accelerometer control in the same way as in many driving games available on AppStore.”

Do you remember the oh-so-low-low-tech game Snake? Now it can be played on a monome with an accelerometer. You don’t even need a controller, since the tilting motion is all you need to control the snake’s movements.

The Jupiter Mouse is a sphere of wood fashioned into a mouse that you hold in the palm of your hand to control. You move the cursor by adjusting the tilt of the mouse. The mouse is made out of “Chinese flowering ash from Japan’s rural Gunma prefecture.”

This nifty proof-of-concept demo shows off just one of the many gameplay possibilities for multi-player video games on Apple’s wonderphone. iPong is a variant of Atari’s classic paddle ball game, with a multi-device, multi-player twist. Using some clever trickery, players can actually bounce their ball off of their iPhone’s screen onto the display of another phone.

I came across this nifty concept for an electronic plaything earlier this week and thought I’d share it with you guys. Steve Gilbertson’s interactive color cube uses a 3-axis accelerometer to detect movements and relays that information to a grid of brightly colored LEDs to create a portable light show in a box.

This modern twist on the classic pedometer doesn’t just track your steps, it lets you keep tabs on the quality of the exercise you get during your day-to-day life. Unlike meters that just count your steps, the Seiko SlimStick uses modern dual-axis accelerometers to track the magnitude of your movements, giving greater value to more intensive exercise.

Sure, there are lots of devices which are starting to embed motion sensors or touch screens to power new user interface paradigms. But this is the first time I’ve seen a motion-sensitive device which is designed to be operated entirely with one hand.

Interactive artist Andrew Fentem created this cool electronic cube puzzle game loaded with colorful LEDs. The Fentix Cube is controlled by touch as well as through movement. While it’s designed as a platform, capable of playing a number of different games and puzzles, the interactive plaything happens to do a great job digitally emulating the old Rubik’s Cube.

A hacker claims to have written custom software which directly accesses the accelerometer on Apple’s iPhone. He’s put together a brief video clip which shows off some really fun use of the motion-sensing capabilities. While I’m a bit skeptical that the video clip could be a fake, developer Erling Ellingsen does have a track record hacking motion-sensors and says he’ll be posting the source code soon.