tony@clio.las.uiuc.edu (Tony) (09/14/90)
I am doing a project using the Nintendo Power glove to control a robot arm. I was wondering if anyone has specs on this sucker or knows where I should look. This is my first post so I am not sure about the distribution. Thanks. tony@clio.las.uiuc.edu
heskett@titan.tsd.arlut.utexas.edu (Donald Heskett) (09/15/90)
In article <1990Sep14.052001.5750@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> tony@clio.las.uiuc.edu (Tony) writes: > I am doing a project using the Nintendo Power glove to control > a robot arm. I was wondering if anyone has specs on this sucker > or knows where I should look. This is my first post so I am not > sure about the distribution. Thanks. I asked the same question of the group yesterday, and a number of people pointed that the July, 1990, issue of Byte had a review of the power glove. Here's a brief summary of the article, which is entitled "Reach Out and Touch Your Data". The article reviews three gloves, the VPL DataGlove, the Dextrous Hand Master, and the Power Glove. The first two sell for around $8000-$15000, depending on the options chosen; the power glove sells for less than $100 (one poster found it for $70, with a $10 rebate certificate included). The first two are professional quality, have standard or quasi-standard interfaces, return high-accuracy data, and are, in general, what you would choose for professional work; the Power Glove, built with kids in mind, is, in the reviewer's opinion the most robust of the three. The power glove incorporates two types of sensors, strain gages and ultrasonic rangers. There is one strain gage per finger (not per finger joint) to measure finger flex. The ultrasonic ranging system consists of a pulse transmitter on the glove and a system of ultrasonic detectors that mount on the TV. A microprocessor converts the raw data to provide information on flex of each finger, position of the hand in front of the TV, and orientation of the hand with respect to pitch and roll. If I understood things correctly, that information is then converted to standard Nintendo game inputs. I'm not sure whether the intermediate information (amount of finger flex, hand orientation, etc.) is thrown away, though that was the impression I got. The article also includes information on interfacing the Power Glove to a PC. This includes the necessary modifications to the Nintendo connenctors, where to tap off 5-volt power for free, etc. He also includes a brief assembly language demo program. Want to know more? Read the article! If, in your explorations, you discover anything the article failed to mention, please let me know. Thanks to all the people who responded! Hope this summary helps.