Raph wanted an alternative way of controlling his webcam, so he went and knocked up some software to control XMMS using a laser pointer and a webcam. It works by defining areas on a wall, then using a webcam to pick up the laser spot when it crosses into an area. Whilst Raph was using it to control XMMS, the whole thing is pretty extensible, and reminds me a little of a hackable version of the eyeToy.
What’s really good are the potential applications for this, especially when you take another piece of software into account.
Mobiola WebCam is a piece of software for Symbian 60 Mobiles (with UIQ and Windows Mobile to follow) that allows you to use your bluetooth mobile’s camera as a Webcam for your system. On its own, this utterly rocks my world, but combined with something like the software above the potential for fun (or abuse) is pretty limitless. Unfortunately Mobiola needs to use Windows and Windows web camera drivers (implying that it might use TWAIN support, although I don’t know if WINE supports these) whereas the laser pointer software runs on Linux and uses V4L.
If someone could marry these two together (or knows of any equivalents) I think they’d be onto a winner.
I think this would be ideal for a presentation ‘hot spotting’ system where you define areas of a screen on a given presentation (be it OOImpress or Powerpoint) and point your laser pointer at it to perform certain actions. Ideal for those who instigate death by powerpoint, only now with real lasers!
So, if you had a system that would allow you to use a bluetooth mobile camera and laser pointer as a control system, what applications could you think of?
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