Category Archives: Gaming Gloves

by Vinicius Furlan, Jhonatt Lima
Project Description at: https://blogs.discovery.wisc.edu/wearable14/2014/11/03/112-gaming-gloves/

Gaming Gloves Final Post

Gaming Glove Presentation

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Describe what your project does and how it works
So our project is basically a semi-glove made to play without needing a keyboard. It have pressure sensors in the tip of each finger; When the user press the finger against a surface, the difference of pressure sends a signal to the Arduino board and it computes the signal and recognizes send it via Bluetooth to the computer. The application running in the computer receives the signal and simulates a keystroke pretending that the user is pressing that key on keyboard.

What are your overall feelings on your project? Are you pleased, disappointed, etc.?
Satisfied. After a lot of hard work and problems with pressure sensors (we tried velostat at first and it didn’t worked well) and coding (we discovered that a keystroke isn’t the same than sending the corresponding key to the console) it worked like we expected and meet with what we expected to do in the end.

 How well did your project meet your original project description and goals?
Pretty well. We wanted to make the use of a keyboard to play games dispensable and in fact we did this. Our only limitation was the amount of keys that can be pressed with only five alternatives, which limits how many games can be played using the gaming gloves. But we already thought about how to fix this limitation in a future prototype: using a shift key in one of the fingers to double the alternatives of the remaining fingers. And if 8 keys isn’t enough, the user can make combo movements with fingers to create more commands.

What were the largest hurdles you encountered?  How did you overcome these challenges?
The keystroke issue and the velostat. About the velostat: we just figured out that velostat was not the best option to do what we wanted because of it was not sending a reliable signal when pressed so we just changed to pressure sensors and fixed this problem. About the keystroke issue: After finishing the code (at least we tought it was finished) we figured out that the glove was working on notepad(it was writing Q,W,E and R when we pressed the corresponding finger) but ingame the skills Q,W,E,R were not working. So after a research we discovered that what we actually need was the software that receives the signal to simulates a virtual keyboard instead of just writing Q,W,E and R. After almost a hole night studying about the code and searching in the internet, we found a library that helped us to do what we need to fiz the problem.

 If you had more time, what would you do next? 
A mouse glove to completely remove the need of having a mouse or a keyboard to play computer games at the comfort of your couch.

Gaming Gloves 12/7

This week we finished the finger’s cover with the pressure sensors added to it. As you can see in the picture below, we made a two layer’s cover to hide the sensors. We had already tested and all of the sensors are working perfectly by sending a response whenever it suffer any pressure. The arduino code is already done and we plan to finish the software by Wednesday. Besides the software all we have to do is just finish to plug all components of the glove in the actual prototype what should take us less than a day.

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Gaming Gloves 11/23

This week we solded the pressure sensors and ordered (again) the bluetooth pin that haven`t reached yet. In the picture below you can see how the pressure sensors were solded to the cables. The next step is to sew up the protection for the fingers which also contains the sensors so the player can press his finger agaisnt almost any surface. We also hope to start the software this week(the only obstacle will be create a program without the bluetooth board to test it).

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Gaming Gloves Update

Hey guys!

This was a hard week for our project because of two things, our Bluetooth module was not delivered and we decided that we would use force sensitive resistors instead of Velostat. The good part is, the force sensitive resistors were already delivered and we already know how to use them after a few test.

So I hope that in the end of this week we will already have a prototype of our project!

Here are two pictures that I took from my tests with the resistors:

The Circuit:

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Some of the results from the test:
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Gaming Gloves project week 2

This week we learned more about the behavior of the velostat fabric. It is very sensible and we need to use it with neoprene to get better results. Our Bluetooth board didn’t arrive yet so we could not use it to start creating the code (we need to do some tests with the board). The seller sent us an email saying that we are supposed to receive the board in the next Tuesday. We didn’t met any cute animal to take pictures by the way :(.

11/2 Gaming Gloves

Project Title: Gaming Gloves
Project Members: Vinicius Furlan, Jhonatt Lima

Description of what you are going to do – We want to build gloves that will be used to replace keyboards necessary to play games. Our idea is to facilitate the game play when you are not in a good environment to play certain games.

Design Sketch

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Description of Materials you plan to use along with the costs for these materials :

Arduino Nano board: $8
Velostat pressure fabric: $4
Bluetooth module: $6

Timeline:

11/11 – Circuit finished and start of the software

11/26 – End of the software and beginning of the tests.