Crayon Prototypes - Take 2

After some trial and error together with much thought, I've come up with a new direction for developing the crayon interfaces. I've included a schematic of what I want to pursue below.



Included in this diagram is a hybrid system of registering the movement of the crayon that uses ideas from both a trackball and an optical guided system. After running into frustration with getting the optical mouse circuit alone to relate movement (the tube had to be perfectly upright and also pressed against a sufficiently smooth surface with just the right amount of texture), I believe this more versatile hybrid approach will work much better. Not only will it allow play over any type of surface, but it also works well at slight tilt angles, something the optical system alone can not do. The only drawback I can see is the precision that'll have to go into engineering these devices and if I can do it by hand.

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Though we have essentially removed from this first draft of the project any idea of animation or object interactivity, I still think it's important to keep these things in our minds. Here is a very cool 2D drawing physics engine that can be of inspiration for the down the road. It's called 'Phun' and it's described as "the 2D physics sandbox!". Watch the video and install the program if you like. It's in BETA and free to use...just don't make profit off it.

http://phun.cs.umu.se/wiki


That's all I have for now. Thank you Nick for pointing me towards the Phun engine.

G