How can I learn how to use sensors to build power glove?

[johnfshaughnessy]

Hi All,

I'm pretty new to VR but I've been learning all I can ever since I got my Rift in November. I've been focusing on how to use Maya + Unity to build a virtual world, but I'm getting more and more interested in the hardware.

I've been searching for DIY powerglove guides and there is some info out there, but I don't know where to look for the basics of what it is I'm doing. I have experience with coding and software engineering but am entirely new to the mechanical side of things. Any advice would be much appreciated!

[Haloar]

It's not the mechanics so much as the electronics that will probably cause you difficulty if you don't have that background.

I am pursuing full articulated finger-tracking and force feedback gloves as a serious investment. I believe we share the same problem of having a general overview of how electronic systems work, leading to overconfidence, whilst lacking an orthodox education in circuit design.

I recommend ploughing through a few books under headings like practical electronics and practical robotics to have a crash-course on the subject.

The issue of mechanical and material performance is much more difficult and I recommend liaising with the parts' manufacturers for usage guidelines.

Ultimately though, it can be fun to learn these things on your own if there is no time or quality constraint.

[cybereality]

You can start with learning how to work with the Arduino. It's probably the easiest way to get started with electronics. There are beginners kits available that will teach you the basics.

I started my own power glove project, but I've been side-tracked with a ton of stuff so not sure if I'll ever finish.

Anyway, I am using Spectra Symbol Flex Sensors, and they seem to work alright. This will track the bend of the finger.

For orientation there are a bunch of IMUs available for fairly cheap.

For positional tracking you are on your own but optical based solutions seem the most promising.

Hope that helps.

[johnfshaughnessy]

Awesome, thanks both of you. I'll check out Arduino and see if I can't find a book on electronics/robotics.

[WiredEarp]

If you just want a DIY glove with motion sensing, but no force feedback, IMHO the easiest option is to buy a P5 glove, and mount a tracker to it.

I've looked at the prices of people who have built their own gloves etc using resistive sensors, and it seems for the amount you spend, you can just buy a P5 straight out, and still have money left over. There are lots of different tracking technologies you can use, personally I prefer the Hydra, magnetic tracking doesn't have any occlusion, and hand lag isn't so bad as head lag.

To do it when I was experimenting with gloves a while back, I wrote a P5 driver that simply reads the finger positions directly via USB. This way, I didn't need to use the existing drivers/DLL, which simply didn't work on my PC. Eventually, I traced that specific problem to some sort of value out of range error in the P5 drivers. I discovered my first P5 glove had an issue with one of the fingers - unless I straighten it completely, it causes the P5 drivers to crash. My driver is a bit more robust in that it wont crash in these situations. However, if you have a perfectly working P5, you should be able to just use the existing P5 driver, or GlovePIE P5 driver/interface.