

Flutter Updated with Next and Previous Song Gestures For Mac - mehuln
http://flutterapp.com
We just released a new version of Flutter with three gestures, Play/Pause Song, Next Song, and Previous Song for Mac.  In addition, we also added support for MPlayerX version 1.0.17.&#60;p&#62;Windows version with new gestures will be available in a week!
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bratsche
This seems like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. The front page
says, "Remember all those times you had to pause your music but had to find
the right window?"

No. Every fucking keyboard on the planet has a pause button on it. Who goes
searching for a window to click a button to pause music?

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tonydev
When did Hacker News become a place to use profanity and trash ideas without
providing any constructive input?

I haven't logged in for as long as I can remember. I did so just now to say
how dissapointing the tone of this comment is.

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dchichkov
True. And the original commentator is plain wrong. There is certainly value in
a working solution to gesture recognition problem.

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mehuln
Thank you.

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twog
This is awesome! Love the design of your site! So fresh & upbeat.

A couple of points of feedback

-A better gesture walkthrough for first time users would be helpful

-Start with a 14 day trial and then charge for this. I would pay for this app.

-It might not hurt to add something like "we are kinect for your itunes!"

Great job! Really excited to see where you guys go with this!

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mehuln
Great pointer Twog. Appreciate your support - thank you!

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jc4p
Maybe I'm just doing it wrong but each time I hit the "I'M READY" button on
the intro screen the app crashes (and goes away from my task bar on the top
right)... Early 2011 MBP, 10.8.2

Edit: looks to be unrelated to hitting the button, it's just crashing on
start-up.

Edit numero dos, ran it from the command line, got this:

    
    
        kasra-mbp:MacOS kasrarahjerdi$ ./Flutter 
        sem_open: Operation not permitted
        Bus error: 10
        kasra-mbp:MacOS kasrarahjerdi$
    

Edit number three: Here's a crash report, sorry it's a gist I don't have
anywhere to upload files to right now:
<https://gist.github.com/ce750dcc9c8aea8f855c>

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mehuln
Do you have a 3ivx or Parian on your machine? Sometimes that does crash our
app. If you do then, please upgrade 3ivx to latest version and it fixes the
problem.

Looking into crash report!

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jc4p
Don't have either installed :)

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mehuln
Hmm... looking into your crash log. Will get back ASAP.

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lukeedy
I have had exactly the same issue described above - except I was unable to
even click the "I'm Ready" button.

Similarly I do not run either of the two apps mentioned above.

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jmiseikis
Really cool app, thanks! I've been using it the whole day yesterday and
performance was really good (did get few false positives though..). I was
pleasantly surprised when it recognised next song gestures in really dark
conditions, hand was mainly lit up just from the macbook screen itself.

It would be really cool to have a gesture for answering a Skype call (maybe
even making a call, to pop up online contact list). Telephone hand gesture
should do the trick.

Keep up the good work! I can see this going beyond the music control.

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mdanger
I remember commenting the story when the first release came out (IIRC it was
just play/pause). I'm thrilled to see that this is still going, as there have
been plenty of times I've ended up scrambling around for my Mac remote in the
dark.

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mehuln
Thank you sir!

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andyjsong
I tried it with VLC, the play/pause diagram showed up, but nothing happened.
Does it only work with iTunes and Spotify?

Edit: I love the design of your site. Very comic book/Roy Lichtenstein-ish.
One critique is the hand. Everything else has perspective or shading, the hand
is flat and it should be a big part of page and be more noticeable, since it
is a motion controlled app.

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mehuln
It should work with latest version of VLC - some old versions do not have
script bridge support so we cannot support it. Are you having issues with Next
& Previous on the latest version of VLC?

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andyjsong
I'm running 2.0.3 on Win7. How do you do next and previous gestures?

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mehuln
Sorry, Windows version with Next & Previous song gesture will come out in a
week. Stay tuned! Thx for your patience!

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jeybalachandran
30 minutes later I noticed my fan went into overdrive. Opened up Activity
Monitor and noticed this: <http://cl.ly/image/0Q3g3Q2b0V1j>

It uses a minimum of 70% CPU after several minutes of usage. Needs to be
fixed. Closing and re-opening the application solves it for 5-10 mins, then
back to the same.

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mehuln
Jey. Please let us know config of your system & version of flutter u are
using. Thanks for the feedback.

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brandoncapecci
I can't stand downloading things through the App Store. The "do you want to
open in" popup where I know I need to wait for a program to load, usually
input credentials, and press download again. As I suspect this isn't a very
big file, I'd really at least like the option to download straight from the
site.

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mehuln
Yup, understand. We will add it in our next site update.

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mehuln
You can download mac version through flutterapp.com/next

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dchuk
Why is this app free?

It's a feature added on top of other apps, there's nothing stopping any of
those apps from adding this feature and making Flutter a moot point...why not
charge for the app now so you can profit before any of the apps you're piggy
backing off of pivot and make Flutter irrelevant?

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mehuln
Thanks, we will look into it for sure. We just feel that we need to add more
functionality first.

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dchuk
Good. And I apologize if that came off as disparaging, my fantasy football
team is getting crushed today and I'm grumpy :)

I just want to see people make lots of money making awesome things, so make
sure to factor that in before it's too late.

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mehuln
Thx man. No issues. My redskins are sucking as usual, so understand it. :-)

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bryanh
Getting an SSL error guys: <http://i.imgur.com/jw5Tk.png>

Using the most recent Chrome on Mac OS 10.7.4.

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mehuln
Crap - sorry, will fix ASAP.

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ericdykstra
Cool, but not cool enough to switch to iTunes for music playback. A Songbird
plug-in and I would be using this daily, and I'd pay for it.

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mehuln
Will add support for more apps very soon! Thx!

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jeybalachandran
Love it. Volume controls would be nice, and I'm glad it's in the works.

Even with the limited functionality, I'd gladly pay for this.

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mehuln
Thank you. Good to know.

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Void_
It seems to be working pretty well, but I have really good lighting around
here.

But 20% usage and the fact it doesn't _always_ works makes this a cool hack,
nothing more.

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mehuln
Thx for your kind feedback. Pls make sure your hand is 1-6 feet away and it
should work. Even our tests it works fairly well in diff lighting but I am
sure you guys will let us know.

On avg it uses about 5% of CPU - 20-30%% when doing gestures and 2-3% when
not.

With all due respect, the cool hack now has 4.5M+ gestures used to Play/Pause
songs and 100s of thousands of users... so perhaps we may be on right track.

Thanks for appreciate the hard work of fellow developers!

~~~
Void_
I'm sorry if my post sounded 'offensive'. I just don't think that in five
years we're going to control our computers using webcams. They are just not
made for that.

I'm still getting 20%, on 2012 Air. Maybe you should try it on a cheaper
machine.

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mehuln
No issues. Thx for it feedback.

Who know what will be there in 5 years? We just want solve for hardware that
is already ubiquitous. If better cameras become widespread then we will switch
to that hardware.

Yes, doing this on webcam is incredibly difficult but if we can do it then it
can really improve HCI. We just thought its worth trying.

Thanks. Appreciate your candid feedback.

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dmcg
I'm curious to know what your business model is. Is the market for a utility,
even on both platforms, really large enough to interest YC, or are you
planning to fry bigger fish?

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catch23
Flutter is something similar to the gesture pendant used on the Aware Home
project at Georgia Tech [1]. The gesture pendant was engineered for those that
lacked vision & mobility. One could use the gesture pendant to open blinds,
turn on/off the tv, answer the phone, etc. If you're partially blind, it's
probably hard to locate the tv remote to turn on the tv, but when you're
wearing the pendant, you can do it anywhere. If you're elderly, it may be
difficult to open the blinds. The pendant was interesting, but requires
special hardware. Flutter can run on anyone's computer via the webcam.

[1]
[http://smartech.gatech.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1853/29822...](http://smartech.gatech.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1853/29822/gesture_pendant.pdf)

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dmcg
I can see what it does, but not how it makes money doing it.

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joejohnson
This is an awesome app and it's free!

I wish that it worked from further than 6 feet away. I hope they have plans to
make 👍 and 👎 control the volume.

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mehuln
Thx Joe - Volume gestures in the works. Once we make it even more efficient we
will use full resolution in web cameras and make it work from 12 feet away!
Thx again!

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capex
The green camera-on light on my macbook gives me a headache, even if I know
its only tracking gestures.

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mehuln
yes, we agree. That's Apple Hard-Wired. We don't think it can be turned-off.
Let us know if someone has found a hack to turn it off while camera is on.

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minikomi
Maybe you could have a "clap to activate" option

Or, snap fingers.

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chrischen
I know this is supposed to be a gimmicky product but it actually works just
well enough (still less practical than the play/pause button on the keyboard)
that the novelty factor makes this fun enough that I'm constantly using it
over the physical buttons.

I can't see this beating a keyboard for stuff like browsing the internet but
it'd be great for controlling music, or maybe air-drumming.

Great job guys!

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capex
What gestures I can use, other than the palm of hand shown on the homepage?

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mehuln
Hi, on Mac, you can do Thumbs Right to go to Next Song, and Thumbs Left to go
to previous song.

On Windows, these will be released in a week.

