We often get to see interesting projects that are posted for crowdfunding on sites such as Kickstarter. Those that achieve their funding goals then enter production stage, thus jumping off the drawing boarding and becoming reality. Haptix is one such project that was posted today on Kickstarter, its quite similar to Leap Motion, but instead of allowing you to control computers by making gestures in the air, Haptix can turn almost any flat surface in to a fully functional 3D multitouch controller. Its basically a bar about the size of a webcam that can be placed or clipped on where possible and then track hand movement across the flat surface.
It works with laptops and TVs and acts as a virtual keyboard or touchpad. Haptix has two CMOS sensors, usually found in webcams, that capture the hand’s position in 640×360 resolution. These sensors are attached to a microcontroller which does most of the processing. Since it employs infrared when natural light is low, Haptix is even capable of working in the dark. It is connected to a computer via a USB 2.0 cable. Right now Haptix only works with Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8 as well as Ubuntu, the team says they’re working on building support for Android and OSX. The funding goal is $100,000, the lowest one can pay for Haptix right now is $59, though this price is only limited to 500 backers. Once it sells out, the minimum pledge to receive Haptix will be $65. Delivery is expected in February 2014.
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