Sony's LED magic wand patent

It appears that Sony was granted a patent in August 2005 on an optical magic wand idea. The description is for "an input device for interfacing with a computer" which "includes a body configured to be held with a human hand" that "includes a light emitting diode" that changes color in a way that "is capable of being detected" by "an image capture device." In other words, it blinks in a specific pattern that's detectable to a camera connected to a computer. I've heard of other systems that encode data into rapidly blinking LEDs (the most obvious is the infrared LEDs that power remote controls), but I think they're thinking of visible light. Maybe not, maybe it's all still IR LEDs, but the key is that it's detected by a general purpose camera, rather than a specialized IR receiver.

My prediction: soon, wands for everyone!

(The link to the patent is here and I was alerted of this by this New Scientist article.)

No TrackBacks

TrackBack URL: http://orangecone.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/200

Ads

Archives

ThingM

A device studio that lives at the intersections of ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence, industrial design and materials science.

The Smart Furniture Manifesto

Giant poster, suitable for framing! (300K PDF)
Full text and explanation

Recent Photos (from Flickr)

Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design

By me!
ISBN: 0123748992
Published in September 2010
Available from Amazon

Observing the User Experience: a practitioner's guide to user research

By me!
ISBN: 1558609237
Published April 2003
Available from Amazon

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Mike Kuniavsky published on April 26, 2006 11:46 AM.

How to make a magic wand was the previous entry in this blog.

More Roomba stuff and the 2006 Power Tool Drag Races is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.