

Nod - Touchless Interaction - tsudot
https://hellonod.com/

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modeless
Wish they had more technical details instead of breathless marketing. Looks
like a gyro mouse, as a ring. Definitely neat, but hardly revolutionary. Gyro
mice have been around for years ([http://www.amazon.com/s/?field-
keywords=gyro%20mouse](http://www.amazon.com/s/?field-keywords=gyro%20mouse)
); they're rather frustrating to use. The ring doesn't look small enough to
wear all day, and the latency looks pretty terrible in the demo video.

What I really want more than another gesture thingy is a one-handed, portable,
and eyes-free text entry device; something that could really replace a
keyboard for a mobile device, even for demanding activities like programming.
Is anyone working on that?

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seanewest
You can get to 40+ wpm pretty easily on a standard iphone. Kids these days
have no trouble typing fast, one-handed, on their phone.

As for programming -- a language could be invented that is on-screen keyboard
friendly (no brackets, etc).

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nacs
Or a simpler way instead of implementing a new language -- just use a custom
keyboard. Android already has this and iOS 8 just added it.

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Mithaldu
It has the same problem the Leap has: It has intolerably high latency between
movement and execution of input. (Judging from the video in some cases almost
a whole second, but generally over half a second.) It might be useful for
niche applications, but if i need to take over ten times longer to do simple
tasks with it, it will never be part of normal daily usage.

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magic_at_enimai
We have made a lot of progress since the early product videos. We are demoing
it in SF at the AA hackathon today if you want to see it in action. Nod is the
only pixel accurate gesture control device in the market.

~~~
Mithaldu
I'm in Germany, so seeing it isn't remotely an option. I'd appreciate the hell
out of videos though. Youtube is cool and modern phones have really good
cameras. ;)

What exactly do you mean with pixel-accurate?

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arjn
I'll stick with a wireless mouse and keyboard for now. The device in the video
looked incredibly painful to use. Strange how the producers did not see that.

IMO This is not a solution to anything.

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scribu
"Awkward." That's the gut reaction I got while seeing the person in the video
using this device.

That said, touchscreens still feel less satisfying than physical buttons, so
maybe I'm just being nostalgic.

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GuiA
> That said, touchscreens still feel less satisfying than physical buttons, so
> maybe I'm just being nostalgic.

Or just pragmatic :)

There are dozens of articles/papers/essays I could put you, but here's one:
[http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...](http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/)

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glifchits
Thalmic Labs' Myo is more conceptually similar to this than the Leap. This
looks cool but it does look laggy and inaccurate. The Myo alpha unit I got to
test worked beautifully.

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sorahn
I preorderd a Myo, and that was the last I heard from them about it. Glad to
know that its working.

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srlake
Hi there - good chance we're either getting blocked by a spam filter or have
an incorrect email. We've been sending out some kind of email roughly every
4-6 weeks. If you send us a note at thalmic @ thalmic.com we should be able to
get that sorted out.

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maxpert
GORILLA ARM! When would people understand! I've seen 3 Products have failed
doing this (including Microsoft Kinect)

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magic_at_enimai
Nod can be used with your hand on your side (or anywhere else). No need for
Gorilla ARM.

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seanewest
How does this make my life better/easier? Tv's have been trying to do this and
nobody really cares. Take the Nest example ... why don't I just literally turn
the Nest device?

I'm not saying this couldn't have a practical use -- just that you aren't
proving it.

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magic_at_enimai
you can point at your Smart TV and actually type into your TV. Ofcourse this
requires the smart TV to incorporate our gestural keyboard (and we are working
with leading vendors to incorporate it or at least provide it as an app)

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advertising
Neat idea but this looks like it will suffer the same annoyances as the leap.
It works great when you make very specific controlled movements, but that ends
up taking away from what touch-less is supposed to promise in my mind. I just
want to flip my hands about casually but the leap would rarely catch it
properly. Instead I was usually just left frustrated and tired of holding my
arm up in the air.

The part of the video where they traced a word out on the keyboard just looked
painful trying to keep your hand up in the air and steady.

Haven't used my leap after the first month of getting it. I fear the nod will
be the same.

Do like the button/slider feature however. That seems like a good addition.
But that gets me thinking is a wii controller much different?

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jschmitz28
I actually thought the whole thing was a parody video (of other similar
devices) during the clip where a bunch of scribbling across the keyboard
somehow ended up spelling "Island". Even the logo makes it look like the
device is really hard to control.

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mafuyu
I'm excited for these type of wearables as input devices for head-mounted
HUDs/AR. Google Glass currently uses voice recognition and a capacitive strip,
which is fine, as Glass is only for briefly looking up information. As AR
develops, it will need more complex input methods, and I see these as some
vague possibilities:

* Hand/wrist/arm mounted input (Nod, Myo, watches, chorded keyboards, etc...)

* Eye-tracking (technology exists, but needs to be miniaturized and developed further to fit within a glasses frame)

* Head movement (tiling your head, winking, etc.)

* Computer Vision (ie. AR develops enough to use your hand in front of you to intuitively interact)

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RobLach
Touchless is kind of opposite of what I want. Haptics are important.

In almost every situation I'd rather have a physical knob or button. If I'm
sitting down at a desk or on my couch and putting on a ring, I might as well
be picking up a controller or remote that have instant action and tactile
feedback.

I suppose all these hand waving hardware startups share the Minority Report
vision for interfaces.

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_Adam
Why will this do any better than the Leap (which arguably hasn't seen major
adoption)?

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orillian
Regarding the leap...while it has not had as much adoption as the team had
hoped, the effort being put into it is still significant. The latest SDK
update addresses a number of shortcomings that the initial implementation had,
making the hardware that much more viable.

That all said, the biggest issue with all of these new interactions is the
lack of a solid, low fail interaction model that can seamlessly replace our
current interfaces.

Looking at the leap, while it does a number of things right it has to always
get it right, or as close to always as possible to be as good as a mouse click
or a keyboard key press.

This looks interesting, but watching a promotional video doesn't show me how
often a person has to flick their hand or swipe the touch strip to get the
desired result. I have a leap and while I've gotten fairly proficient with it,
I still find it's failure rate to be to high to make it a real replacement for
my mouse and keyboard.

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anbu5
I just checked out their product. I'm an engineer and it is one of the best
wearable devices I've seen out there. The initial product demo video doesn't
do any justice to the latest version they have.

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jcromartie
This reminds me of something I had in the 90s that was a lot like this, but
using ultrasonic triangulation with an L-shaped frame on the monitor.

It was a complete pain in the ass to wave your arm around to do everything.

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niico
The product looks amazing, I wonder how long it will take the porn industry to
come up with it first Nod-based app.

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advertising
Your member would probably get just as tired as your arm holding it up to type
out a url :p

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lifeformed
Does anyone actually want to play Fruit Ninja on their TV? (Yeah, I know it's
just a demonstration.)

Cool tech though.

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JCole
That is a truly beautiful website. Product looks awkward though, my finger
felt empathy cramps.

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mantrax5
I don't know. You obviously like the site, and it's full of these scroll
abusing sites, it make me believe I can't browse sites anymore.

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brownBananas
Looks good! It would be nice to get more information about the OpenSpatial
framework.

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magic_at_enimai
please see github.com/openspatial for SDK, code samples and an emulator for
iOS/Android.

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edmack
This looks really fun. Excited to try it.

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jc_dntn
y u make something i have to wear?

