Friday, June 17, 2011

Using a smartphone to control a laser pointer.

This is an idea I have been floating around for a while. I thought it would be cool. Unfortunately, exactly what is cool about it is why I can't work on it alone. 
The idea is very simple, to use the accelerometer in a smartphone to control a mirror actuated laser point. The point is projected onto a wall or screen. 
The concept is that someone who goes up to a screen to present can take out his smartphone and then use to it to move a laser pointer on the screen. His interaction with the smartphone is exactly the same as as if he had a laser pointer connected to the end of the phone. 
However what is actually happening is that the laser pointer is being projected from a different laser box. He is infact running an app on his phone which sends out a filtered set of data about the orientation of the phone and we then use it to compute the angles to drive two mirrors and move the pointer to a point on the screen mapped to the angle of the phone.