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Input devices - is this the new mouse?

Posted in Future, Technology, USB on January 22, 2008 at 11:36 pm

For A Level ICT we are still learning about input devices and just how many there are, now this may come as a surprise – it did to me – how much more can there be to learn about Joysticks, Keyboards and Mice but I now believe the reason is that input devices are updating and changing in this the modern age.

The mouse has been the primary input device for many years now, it hasn’t been rivalled by anything serious but nowadays there have been many contenders and I’m not meaning those trackballs and silly imitations of mice but other more serious devices – such as graphics tablets which aren’t quite as new as I’d like but still quite high up in the technical department, and then related to tablets are touch screens which are becoming oh so very common in shops now and then there are ‘Smart boards’ which are mostly used in schools – they are just a board which has a projector projecting onto it connected to the computer in use and it responds like a touch screen with sensors under the first layer to locate the pointer location – these are brilliant for schools as they allow drawing and other interactive features as well as the ability to save this.

The reason I believe that there could be some new contenders which are taken more seriously than trackballs and the like is that the new devices being developed are not just input devices but allow a lot of interactivity and may become more than just the mouse for a computer – my first example is a project by a guy called Johnny Lee based around Wiimotes – because they have a ir camera in and are able to connect to computers using bluetooth they can have other uses, such as head tracking shown in this video:

The same guy has also done some projects using the same concept but in order to create a cheap interactive touch screen like display:

And finally another innovation which I don’t see as being a replacement for mice but as some inspiration – imagine if all input devices were as intuitive and unique as the one in the following video – we could be throwing balls around a room to change the channel and so on. This video shows a large amount of imagination and creativity, using coloured balls - of gum to control a sequencer, which could essentially control a pc in reality.