3Dpad is now available already assembled on Tindie, "hand-made" by the inventor himself!

     

Open Electronics talks 3D-Pad: " A very interesting project for a touchless gesture control device: definitely worth supporting! "

"I don’t know about you, but I wondered if gesture-recognition is going to be as big the touchscreen. Ever since the film Minority Report and the rise of the Kinect, I have wondering how long it would take before it was everywhere. Seriously, I don’t why we are still using a mouse or other controller when we can just wave a hand and manipulate controls using the Force. Fortunately, there is the 3Dpad from Ootsidebox....
...Not to spoil the video or anything, but I really see an interesting 3DPad world. Why not have something that you can use gesture recognition on, from the smartphone, to the tablet, to the PC, to the TV! In short, let’s just put a 3Dpad on everything. "  The Geek Church Blog.
  Atmel  talks 3D-Pad:
" Ootsidebox goes touchless with the 3Dpad

 "

ootsideboxがIndiegogoで非接触ジェスチャーインターフェース「3Dpad」の資金募集を開始した。Arduinoシールドとして動作し、オープンソース、価格は59ユーロから。

MATRIXSYNTH:
Elektor 3D pad: Touchless Gesture Control Interface Now on Indiegogo

3D-PAD: CONTROL POR GESTOS CON ARDUINO

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNzE3OTAyMzA0.html

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Our vision:
"Touchless and gesture control everywhere and for everyone!"

But not provided by a big company like Microsoft, Samsung, Apple or similar.

Easily make your own with 3D-Pad!

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What is 3D-Pad, and how does it work?

3D-Pad is a touchless gesture control interface providing 3D coordinates and gesture recognition, with a 10cm depth perception.

It consists of a sandwich made up of: 

• a PCB called an electrode plane (1)
• an  Arduino Shield (2)
• an Arduino Uno (3) - based on ATMEL ATmega328
  

Detection principle:

To detect the proximity of the human hand or finger, we are using the  projected capacitive technique. This is the principle of virtually all modern touch screens - except that now we are in the air, relatively far away from the detector surface (10 cm max).

It’s very simple: We build capacitors which are as “open” as possible, using electrodes drawn on the electrode plane PCB in order to obtain a maximum “hand effect”.

The capacitors formed by the electrodes are part of an oscillator whose  frequency is influenced by the distance of a hand. When it enters the electrostatic field, this “intruder” is going to cut the field lines and divert the electrical charges.
Result:  the closer the hand approaches the electrodes, the more the oscillator’s frequency increases.

The following signal processing is used:

• a phase/frequency comparator
  
• a control and locking program

This simple system makes the conversion of the very small frequency shift into a variation in a voltage signal which is easy to use:

The embedded software (sketch) running on the Arduino UNO will exploit the analog result in order to:

• Calculate 3D coordinates
• Recognize basic gestures (swipes, push and rotations)
• Send it all to a host device on the USB COM port

The evaluation software (PC) will enable you to quickly evaluate the 3D-Pad. You'll see all the values sent by the Arduino Uno (1), the gesture events (2) and the 3D coordinates in the form of a cursor (3).

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We designed the first prototypes with our partner Elektor Labs

Check out the full description in the May edition of Elektor Magazine

3Dpad prototype's schematics (version Elektor magazine) You can download the pdf here: http://goo.gl/hqILDr

 

What’s it used for?

3Dpad can be used in a very wide field of applications, for instance:
medical & healthcare (should reduce the nosocomial risk), household  appliance control (think at cooking when your hands are covered of fat content), gaming with "air control", and many other. 

But at the moment our favorite app is music, using 3Dpad as an "3D Air control" MIDI controller. Watch our first experiment in the video below:

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3Dpad project timeline:

Our Team:

Meet us at the events:

                                                                                       MakerFaire Paris - June 21 & 22

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Why do we ask for your support?

3Dpad is only the starting point for OOTSIDEBOX:
We have many other ideas to share in the field of human - machine interaction: touchless & gesture interfaces, telehaptics, wearable technology, artificial intelligence and many more. We are sure you will love it!

Your support in this Indiegogo campaign is the key to start OOTSIDEBOX right now.

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We have rewards for you:

Limited edition of our special design T-shirt

Elektor green membership card

3D-Pad shield for Arduino: (1) + (2)

3D-Pad shield + Arduino UNO board (1) + (2) + (3)

The most amazing reward we offer you:

The ootsidebox's box

A unique opportunity to get one of the only two very early stage prototypes of 7 inches touchless screen, hand made by the inventor, Jean Noël himself!

You can see it in action in those videos: 
http://youtu.be/V67WuFBAX4A
http://youtu.be/yyR7JzCk8gs

This prototype has already traveled in a lot of famous places in Europe and USA, for instance the Noisebridge hackerspace in San Francisco, the Elektor Labs in the Netherlands, and recently at the Paris MakerFaire.

This is the only one available today and you can have it for a contribution of 11K Euros (or more), this way you'll become the one who "made it happen" for ootsidebox!

Think about it: what would have happened if you had acquired Apple's first prototype?

Here is what you've got inside the box:
* a 7 inches HDMI screen equiped with ootsidebox's touchless sensor
* a "Panda board" from TI, running demo software under Linux
* the alimentation providing all required voltages

You just plug it in, and the magical demo gets started...

 Jean-Noël - the inventor - says:

"The story started six years ago with my basic invention. For one year now I have been working full time on it to finally get it to market. 
The idea of this disruptive technology is to enable humans to interact with electronical devices by touchless and gestural mode. 

Ootsidebox is in competition with very big companies. However, we are able to give benefits that they cannot provide so far. I´m very proud of this fact and today we want to share it with all the creative people: artists, makers and hackers".

Feel free to share!

3D-pad is an open source and open hardware project:

   All schematics and software codes are provided under                                            Creative Commons license

    More about OOTSIDEBOX on ATMEL's blog:

                                   Interview: Jean-Noël talks Ootsidebox

Don't forget to take a look also at the Gallery (Top of this page)