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Sorry about the lack of posts on this blog. I tend to procrastinate when it comes to blogging.

Version 0.44 of GlovePIE has been a bit slow, since I tried to add too many features at once, and some of those features are still half finished. Some people who requested support for new hardware disappeared before they could do the tests I needed on that hardware.

Also, my girlfriend doesn’t like me working for free and not getting paid, and is keen for me to start charging for GlovePIE. Unfortunately, that means I can’t add features to a free version unless I never want to charge for those features. So I’m not sure what to do.

And I decided to write a new virtual reality library for windows, to allow people to write VR applications easily that support the full range of new input devices. But that has taken lots of time.

And I’ve been distracted by elections and other political things.

But mostly I’m just lazy. :-)

Anyway, sorry.

 
Using Thought Control to Manipulate Lighting - InteraXon

Using 'Thought Control' to Manipulate Lighting - InteraXon

Canadian company Interaxon are using Neurosky ThinkGear headsets to allow the public to control lighting installations at major landmarks around Canada, during the Winter Olympic games. Click on the image above to go to their website.

Now you too can use the exact same headset with GlovePIE (in theory) to control your computer games. I haven’t tested it, but in theory GlovePIE should now support Neurosky headsets.

Personally I think Interaxon are being a bit dishonest pretending they invented these things, and selling the idea to other companies, when really they are just using Neurosky’s products. Especially when the Neurosky product is so limited compared to its competitors like Emotiv. Perhaps Interaxon are patent fascists who are trying to make a business by patenting all the obvious things you could do with someone else’s technology, although that’s more a US thing phenomenon rather than a Canadian one. Or perhaps they are just trying to make money by promoting something companies didn’t know about.

Anyway, their “Bright Ideas” installation looks really cool. So check out: http://interaxon.ca/featured_project from now until the end of the Winter Olympics.

 

GlovePIE 0.42 fixes some really annoying bugs: Wiimotes disconnecting when you change tabs, Wii Motion Plus going haywire the second time you run your script, Nunchuk.SwingVertical gesture not working, Nunchuk.Shake gesture missing, and Fakemouse.DirectInputY not working.

It doesn’t fix the bug with the window not appearing on startup for some people until they disable visual themes, because it works fine for me with visual themes so I can’t replicate the bug.

It also doesn’t fix an OSC bug I discovered, so OSC should be considered broken in versions 0.40+.

It fixes the trojan false positive for people who use AVG, by making Emotiv support (with edk.dll) a separate version in a separate zip file that only Emotiv users should download.

It adds support for the Neurosky Thinkgear headset (untested) and for the Wild Divine Lightstone (see previous blog post).

GlovePIE now has a right-click menu in the editor, so you can choose clipboard commands, and you can also check your code. You can highlight a section of code and only check that section for errors.

And GlovePIE 0.42 includes a few scripts, including lednerg’s wonderful Wii Motion Plus mouse script (with a few changes I made since calibration was no longer necessary in GlovePIE 0.42).

GlovePIE 0.42 now shows when gyros are calibrating by lighting the middle 2 lights on the Wiimote or Sixaxis. When the middle 2 lights are lit, keep the controller completely still.

 

Here’s a strange input device you don’t see everyday:

Wild Divine Lightstone

It’s the Lightstone for the game Journey To Wild Divine, sponsored by renowned con-artists and fraudsters: Deepak Chopra, and Andrew Weil.

Although portrayed as some kind of magic crystal, it’s actually a USB biofeedback device that measures your pulse, and how much electricity your skin can conduct. Your skin conducts more electricity when you are stressed (because of sweat). With those two readings your computer can know other things, like: how hard you are exercising, how stressed you are, how relaxed you are, how fit you are, and whether you are telling the truth or lying.

The game it originally came with is basically a relaxation game, where you have to go through a variety of relaxation exercises in order to progress.

Journey To Wild Divine

I hear the game is actually quite fun and useful, if you can tolerate the anti-science bigotry and outright nonsense.

I just added partial support for the LightStone to GlovePIE 0.42, which I’ll be releasing shortly. Currently GlovePIE 0.42 can only read the Skin Conductance Level, and the “Heart Rate Variance” (it goes up to indicate each pulse). I haven’t added code to detect peaks in the HRV yet, so it can’t tell you more useful information like your pulse rate yet (unless you script it yourself).

Actually GlovePIE already supported measuring your heart-rate, if you had a Concept 2 Rowing Machine (“ergo”) connected to your computer by USB.

But the idea of a device that can measure your mental state for game playing is part of a growing trend these days, with the recent release of no less than 3 competing devices that directly measure brainwaves with an EEG: Neuosky’s ThinkGear, Emotiv’s Epoc, and OCZ’s NIA. I’ll talk about them in a coming post.

 

Here’s the same Lego Indiana Jones script, but for the SIXAXIS this time:

// Lego Indiana Jones, SIXAXIS, by Carl Kenner
WASD = sixaxis1.LeftStick + sixaxis1.DPad
Enter = sixaxis1.Start
Esc = sixaxis1.Select
U = sixaxis1.cross
H = sixaxis1.square or sixaxis1.Stabbing
J = sixaxis1.circle or sixaxis1.SwingVertical
K = sixaxis1.triangle
Space = sixaxis1.R1
LCtrl = sixaxis1.L1

ArrowKeys = sixaxis2.LeftStick + sixaxis2.DPad
NumpadEnter = sixaxis2.Start
F2 = sixaxis2.Select
Numpad5 = sixaxis2.cross
Numpad1 = sixaxis2.square or sixaxis2.Stabbing
Numpad2 = sixaxis2.circle or sixaxis2.SwingVertical
Numpad3 = sixaxis2.triangle
NumPad0 = sixaxis2.R1
RCtrl = sixaxis2.L1

 

As you may have noticed, GlovePIE 0.40 and 0.41 didn’t come with any scripts included. That’s because most of the scripts out there were written for much earlier versions, and did things the more complicated and less effective way. Then other scripts copied that way, even though there were now much better ways.

I just wrote a script for Lego Indiana Jones. You can download the demo of Lego Indiana Jones here, if you don’t mind downloading 465 Megabytes. The demo is the first level, which is quite long, and when you finish the first level you get to replay it in Free Play (you can be all the different characters and thus reach new parts of the level).

Lego Indiana Jones is a bit buggy (the game, not my script) when you try to add a second player. You may have to enable it in the menu, and switch player 2 to keyboard 2.

My script is for 1 or 2 players using Wii Remotes and Nunchuks. The controls are based on Lego Star Wars for the Wii, since I haven’t played Lego Indiana Jones on the Wii:

Nunchuk or DPad move around in the game and the menu. They also control when you press against the wall.
+ Selects a menu item, or pauses the game and brings up the in-game menu.
- for player 1 is the Escape key, for player 2 it is the F2 key.
A jumps, or selects from some menus (mostly ones during gameplay)
B shoots if you are holding a gun, or can be used to punch if you are too lazy for gestures
C swaps with a nearby characters, gets in/out of vehicles, or talks to characters
Z builds lego, picks up, drops, throws, uses your special ability (whip, digging, repairing), cancels menus, or lets go
1 in Free Play transforms you into the next character
2 in Free Play transforms you into the previous character

Swing the Wii Remote vertically to use your whip, dig a hole, throw something, pick something up, or drop down from a ledge. Miming any of those actions should work.

Punch with either hand to punch. With the Wii Remote it is more like a stab, so keep your hands at the normal angle. To make it easier, you can also shake the Nunchuk in any direction to punch.

If you have the Microsoft Bluetooth Stack, when you are running the script, hold down 1+2 (for at least 30 seconds) on Wii Remotes to connect them automatically. It will stop searching once the number of wii remotes used by the script are connected.


// Lego Indiana Jones, Wiimote+Nunchuk, by Carl Kenner
WASD = nunchuk1.Joy + Wiimote1.DPad
Enter = Wiimote1.Plus
Esc = Wiimote1.Minus
U = Wiimote1.A
H = Wiimote1.B or Wiimote1.Stabbing or Nunchuk1.Stabbing
J = Nunchuk1.Z or Wiimote1.SwingVertical
K = nunchuk1.C
Space = Wiimote1.One
LCtrl = Wiimote1.Two

H = (|Nunchuk1.RelAcc| > 10) and (not Nunchuk1.Z)

ArrowKeys = nunchuk2.Joy + Wiimote2.DPad
NumpadEnter = Wiimote2.Plus
F2 = Wiimote2.Minus
Numpad5 = Wiimote2.A
Numpad1 = Wiimote2.B or Wiimote2.Stabbing or Nunchuk2.Stabbing
Numpad2 = nunchuk2.Z or Wiimote2.SwingVertical
Numpad3 = nunchuk2.C
NumPad0 = Wiimote2.One
RCtrl = Wiimote2.Two

Numpad1 = (|Nunchuk2.RelAcc| > 10) and (not Nunchuk2.Z)

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