jfedor2/hat-mouse

Bluetooth input device using an orientation sensor

Hat mouse

This is Arduino code for an "air mouse" (or "head mouse") type of input device. It works as a standard Bluetooth mouse and is compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac with no additional software running on the computer.

Demo video.

I'm using Adafruit's Feather nRF52840 Sense board, but it should also run on their other nRF52 boards and modifying it to use a different set of sensors should be pretty straightforward.

The way it works is it reads accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer data, puts it through a sensor fusion algorithm to get orientation and then uses the yaw and pitch values to position the mouse cursor on the screen. It uses absolute cursor positioning instead of the most common relative mode, hence the custom HID report descriptor.

Cursor re-centering is done by pressing the "user switch" button on the board.

On the demo video I'm using it with a separate USB foot switch for mouse clicks. It could also conceivably be combined with some kind of sip-and-puff switch, though I'm not showing one here.

hat-mouse's Issues

Ideas

Not really an issue.. More of a ✋ high five 👍 and a chance to totally abuse your issue queue with some random ideas... This would totally be useful for a lot of people with disabilities..

Have you ever seen the commercial systems of these? https://www.quha.com/products-2/zono/​​​​​​​

So some quick ideas

• Click could be sip/puff - but I note that board has a sound sensor. A "Click" sound made?
• Add left click to the onboard switch. But if held down for n ms - it would act as a reset centre.
• Would love to adjust the vertical and horizontal sensitivity. We often see patients who have great movement in one plane - but little in the other. We would add two pots to do this (or one and a slider toggle to slide between x, y and overall sensitivity)
• Add in device switching logic to the board - so on a separate switch press swap connected devices - so someone can go from an iOS device to a Windows device for example (https://github.com/AceCentre/morAce/blob/00a08c1c0ba9ff8f88b98d1976e76a4519a0ad5d/morAce/morAce.ino#L541)