Infrared Control Freak - 360 degree Proximity Sensor

The sensor is designed to fit onto micro robots or autonomous quads or can be used for any project where 360 degrees or 3D proximity sensing is required. Such as building a touchless Midi Music instrument, 3D Mouse or Joystick for gaming and kinetic art, The sensor is ideal for building robot swarms,robot gaming and robot sumo competitions.

The sensor is also packed with 2 x ambient light sensors (for light tracking experiments or line following), "feelers" and IR remote control functionality so it can can receive and transmit Sony SIRC IR control signals for basic inter-robot or project commuications. This also allows you to take remote control of your robot (or any other device) using a TV controller (must be Sony SIRC compatible) and for inter-robot communication during gaming. See more details here

UAV / Quadcopter Proof of Concept

We've recently started a new PoC to review interfaces to FrSky flight controllers and receivers for development of UAV autonomous flight control and telemetry feedback.

See the progress here ->

• Quadcopters | 360 Degree Proximity Sensing

360 degree / 3D touchless HID sensor

Plug the sensor into your Arduino, Teensy, PICAXE, Basic Stamp or other microcontroller project using RS232 interface, to add a 360 degree proximity sensing functionality including , ambient light sensing and IR remote controller to your projects. Experiment with 3D graphic control, control of servos, gaming and experimentation of kinetic art, etc.

We are playing with various interfaces to the IRCF 360 sensor to convert it into a 360 degree / 3D HID type of mouse ! (see videos). We are taking this further for gesture sensing applications - but there is still some way to go. Any of you budding mathematicians and are good at this stuff, please contact us.

We have opened up this project on various forums for support (e.g. processing.org) read more

PC HID device | 360 degree / 3D Control - Gaming, Kinetic Art -

Plug the IRCF360 sensor into a Teensy2 to enable 3D mouse, joystick, keyboard interface to your Arduino projects. The Teensy2 can be configured as a USB device such as mouse, Joystick, keyboard which allows the sensor to control your PC or Mac ....adding new dimensions to your projects.

So how does this work?...By moving your hand over the sensor the direction and distance of your hand / fingers are sensed and translated into values within the Teensy2.....

Develop your own Arduino Sketch or Processing.org sketches

We are using Processing.org , Arduino, Teensy as a development platform as it's real easy to develop cool java graphics programs and Processing GUI is free and really a great way to learn about programming and interfacing..

Gaming control

Keyboard emulation interface

Sensing directions are translated into keyboard keys. This is programmed into the Teensyduinon - sketch using the usb keyboard commands:

Keyboard.set_modifier(0);

Keyboard.set_key1(KEY_W);

Keyboard.send_now();

e.g. configurate of the keys WASD to control online or Massive Multiple online (MMO) games - spaceship speed control is achieved by mapping mouse or keyboard keys to the distance readings from sensor.

Mouse emulation interface

Sensing directions are translated to mouse directions. This is programmed into the Teensyduinon - sketch using the Mouse.move (x, y) USB mouse command ; e.g. configurate of the keys WASD to control online or Massive Multiple online (MMO) games - engine / speed control is achieved by mapping mouse or keyboard keys to the distance readings from sensor.

Joystick emulation interface

Sensing directions are translated to Joystick directions or commands. This is programmed into the Teensyduinon - sketch using USB Joystick command to add Z directional control to your project too.

The joystick usb interface has

• • 32: Buttons

  • 6: Axis (X, Y, Z, Rotate Z, Left Slider, Right Slider)

  • 1: Hat Switch

Joystick.X(value);

// "value" is from 0 to 1023 Joystick.Y(value);

// 512 is resting position Joystick.Z(value);

Joystick.Zrotate(value);

Joystick.sliderLeft(value);

Joystick.sliderRight(value);

Adding 3D Control to your Java and Processing Sketches

We've opened up an open source project on various forums for support to develop your own Arduino, Teensyuino or processing sketches.

It's easy to develop cool java scripting based graphics programs using the FREE development environment from processing.org and Arduino. Processing is free and opensource and really a great way to learn about programming and interfacing.

. .read more

Using Arduino or MAX232 serial interface to a PC the sensor can control your java and processing sketches. Examples are:

• Rotating earth and space junk example

• Kinetic Art demo

• Multi-touch 3D gesture sensing demo

• 3D demo

• 2D mechanical linkage demo

Start writing your own Arduino or Processing.org sketeches to interface with the IRCF360 to visualise the results. The example below is the multi-blob tracking demo, where the two large blobs are tracking the closest and 2nd closest object. The brown 'spider-web' is a representation of all other directions. For more advanced Java programs & sketches the pattern could be used to interpret different hand gestures to add more advanced controls.