Concept Breakdown:
My idea for the final project will be an interactive glove: a innovative physical way of interacting with the computer. In this glove, we will be able to use certain hand gestures to send input to our Arduino and later on, our computer. In order to comply with the hardware limitations and time restrictions, I will not utilize the glove as a mouse, as the use of a trackpad will require utilizing a board different than Arduino Uno (For example, the Arduino Micro, Pro Micro or Leonardo).
The Hand Gestures:
The hand gestures utilized will require touching the border of the palm (the other side if we check our knuckles) of our hand with a finger, regardless of which one we decide to use. Try it. Some people will be able to use it with one hand, some people will not. his means we will be able to use either the fingers in the same hand or the other hand. How does this work?
The user will use either one hand or both to control the input, which will be similar to a binary system: 0001. In this case, what we do is utilize the border right under every finger except for the thumb as one of the spaces for the input. This means that touching every part of the palm in different combinations will hold a different output (or input, from the Arduino’s point of view).
This leaves us with 2^4 different combinations that we can map to certain keyboard inputs because remember, a touchpad/mouse-style input requires a different board and honestly, many more inputs.
The Arduino Circuit and Design:
The circuit design is simple but effective. The idea will be to connect cables from the Arduino ports to the border of the palm. By connecting 5v current to all our fingertips, what we will be able to do is effectively create an array of switches that will trigger on our touch. We will attach all the necessary cables to the glove and cover the exterior to avoid disconnections and other problems. Important to note that we will have to be aware of possible delays and misinputs, as it is a form of physical input.
The P5js sketch:
The P5js Sketch will be a way of demonstrating the inputs of the glove. We will utilize many of the previous projects we have done, such as the piano, the bouncing ball, the musical instrument and other little games in order to show the public that it is possible to control the input differently.
The Connection:
As much as the communication between p5js and Arduino should be obvious at this point, we will compute the inputs in the circuit before sending a single “key” input to p5js. This means that we have no delay in terms of the computation nor we will need to send more information than necessary. A great addition would be also for p5js to send a response to Arduino. For example, the piano could have its output coming from a speaker.