Proximity sensors for hand distance

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Deadp1xels

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I'm looking at getting some form of proximity sensor to detect the position of my hands in open space as if I was playing a piano

I will be using two Teensy 3.0 on each hand and the distance will determine what note I'm playing.

I'm going to use infrared under my hands to detect the proximity to the floor for octave but due to the small surface area of the side of my hands I'm going to need something fairly sophisticated to judge there proximity even when perfectly level.
 
Sounds like you are doing a hand-centric approach. Just the hand, or individual fingers?

Alternately stated: how many notes, triggered how?

There's a lot of interest in doing hand tracking by looking at the hands using the Kinect, whatever Kinect replacement is imminent for the next Xbox, or the Oculus Rift device. I've played with the latter and it tracks both hands amazingly well and with more precision than you'd likely want, though possibly in less total airspace than you'd prefer.
 
Notes will be triggered by bend sensors on all 10 fingers

I just need my hands to move across a 2 octave range from left to right or right to left

The distance will be used to increment or decrement a octave variable, which will be used within the NoteOn

Clearly my hands are never going to be perfectly in Line but as close to as possible so linear methods aren't going to work.

Ideally I want to have the gloves independent without something like kinect
 
Couple options:

You mentioned IR but not the sensor. You could try the sharp IR distance sensors, e.g. http://www.pololu.com/product/136/
There are a few different flavors out there with different ranges and sensitivities. These could be attached to your glove (palm & side). Found them to be quite useful.

Depending on your distance you could make a large cap sensor (via the touch library on the t3). Just need a strip of copper tape and voila...a theremin. Distances are limited and would require an external t3 for this.

If external device is possible you might look into the leap motion sensor. It's not the greatest at what it claims to do, but can certainly give you the data you are wanting (but again scale might be an issue, and you mention not wanting to use an external device). You can get the data in to Max, and I'm sure other programming environments.

Although not distance you can use an orientation sensor/IMU to give you hand orientation. Perhaps that with a bend sensor on the inside of your elbow would give the values you need? A little integration of gyro/accelerometer data could give a rough idea of movement up/down/left/right.

Maybe a bit more of an explanation of the parameters/environment you want this to work in would help?

Hope this helps a bit.
David
 
I do that with leap motion which makes it incredibly simple as you only need to plug the leap motion to the computer and get the Leap motion Processing libraries to start playing with the mapping position of the ten fingers and trigger signals. It even detects you wrists and many different movements that you can map to an infinite range of signals.
 
Thanks for all the advice guys i've currently ordered the components for the second glove.

I still want it contained if possible within the gloves

I'm playing around with different ideas to span octaves and notes without moving my hands in air but within logical reason, i feel to achieve a contained system i might have to resort to putting the sort of functionality within more simplified enviroment like a bend sensor and when my left thumb is bent i go down the octave and when my left thumb is bent i go up octaves.

I still need to communicate those variables with both gloves wirelessly though so the note values of my fingers change accordingly on both gloves.
 
Btw, this has already been done in a very elaborated way by british singer Imogen Heap. An ingineer from NASA made her a pair of gloves with which she can perform a whole concert alone. They have a shit ton of sensors in them and detect the position of the singer on stage to play different instruments depending on where you stand. She can play chords, loop everything she wants, pan, harmonize ....


Here is a video of the demo of the first prototype : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6btFObRRD9k
 
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