I'm actually already working on exactly that -- after trying it out on a couple of mini-games such as https://github.com/mristin/pop-that-balloon-desktop, https://github.com/mristin/cactusss-desktop and https://github.com/mristin/ski-leu-desktop.

Please let me know if you want to join forces! You can find my contact information at: https://github.com/mristin.

I figured that I don't mind my kids playing computer games as long as they move. The first stage for me is to find a workable approach to DOS games. In particular, I thought about adapting ski-leu to race games such as Outrun & ilks.

Excellent, I'll reach out! Your balloon game looks a bit more like my face keyboard interface: https://github.com/everythingishacked/CheekyKeys#readme

For some idea sourcing, you guys could consider mapping to musical notes as well. Then each melody maps to a particular dance.

Hmm like a camera-based full-body theremin?

>> I figured that I don't mind my kids playing computer games as long as they move.

These could also be of interest for inspiration as well - basic idea this Youtuber is doing is to use console gamer joystick re-mapper hardware to convert joycon acceleration readings to button presses/button combos.

Can you Lose weight by playing Breath of the Wild? - Ringfit Controller Mod Explained Version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYn3pWXMPF8

- Today we talk about the Ringfit Adventure controller mod for Zelda: Breath of the Wild. With this mod you can Exercise and play BotW at the same time.

I made a Ring Fit Adventure Mod for Mario Kart - Controller Bending

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNZSfunw85A

- Today on Controller Bending we mod the Ring fit controller to play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with. With this Ring-con mod you have to run to drive. Literally. Squeezing the ring-con activates items! I would love to have Nintendo officially support this switch mod. Seriously, Ring fit mario kart is the most fun I've had in a while. Maybe I should speedrun with a ring fit controller

I'd imagine a lot of similar mods could be done via computer vision instead of using joycon accel readings.

I think the key would be to show up to a gaming console as a PS4/XBox controller instead of just a keyboard. I think there are Python libraries to do this.

Cool ideas!

I implemented a couple of mini-games using a dance mat as well:

https://github.com/mristin/dance-a-mole-desktop

https://github.com/mristin/judo-dance-desktop/

https://github.com/mristin/dance-cat-to-mouse

https://github.com/mristin/burpee-frog-desktop

https://github.com/mristin/dance-runaway-desktop

Dance mat could be even easier to integrate as it acts just as a normal joystick. The problem, though, is that many games expect reaction times achievable with a keyboard & mouse, but leg movements are a bit slower.

The problem with the dance mat is that you can not use it in a school class as you need extra equipment. It worked well in a dojo for my judo classes, though.

Cool stuff!

Demo is very cool, how do I run these games on Unix? Looks like it's an exe file. Is there a way to build this myself.

I'll try to package it for Linux this morning. So far nobody asked for it.

Even instructions on which python files to run would also work for me :)

You can find the packages here:

https://github.com/mristin/ski-leu-desktop/releases/download...

https://github.com/mristin/pop-that-balloon-desktop/releases...

If you want to run the code manually, install it in the virtual environment. Then you can simply run commands `ski-leu` or `pop-that-balloon`.

Btw., I use pop-that-balloon for basketball dribbling training, and a friend uses it for boxing. Have fun & please let me know if you use it for yet another sport :).

Edit: removed bullet points

that youtube video was hilarious and very clever... you're about to become a overnight sensation mate :-D

I thought it was awesome. It occurred to me when you mentioned tinkering with magic values that it won't be very tweekable for other users like that.

Instead of MediaPipe try training a simple NN with a quickstart asking new players to assume the positions for fine tuning? :P

Thanks! Yeah, I definitely chose the easy way over the 'right' way for this version with just setting simple thresholds.

I'm not sure how well it will work yet, but for a game controller I might try to have users record their own custom motions - as in, "show me a few of your chosen [high punch] motions to match against in-game."

I loved this! Should be customizable so that twerking also allows you to double letters :)

I hope the video was dramatized and that you didn't actually hurt yourself!

Rather than type every letter, a more efficient system is to represent sounds with keys. This is how stenography works. Each stoke of the keys is mapped to a series of characters; a letter, a grouping (such as 'sh' or 'ing'), or a complete phrase. Using such a system would allow one motion, for example for 'b', to map to a whole word, such as 'be'. Something as simple as that would reduce your risk of injury by something like 50%.

A major difference between stenography and typing is that steno is chorded: the signal is sent when the keys are released, not when they are depressed. I'm not sure how that would work with the full body.

Check out the OpenStenoProject for more about steno. Their community would probably enjoy discussing a full body steno theory (if they haven't already) .

Take care and thanks for all the effort that went into producing the video! It was a lot of fun :)

Interesting, I wonder if you could make a BodyChord or FaceChord setup using steno... Can you actually write code using a steno keyboard - as in, full access to all the usual symbols and modifiers - or would it just be for letters and basic punctuation?

There are plenty of chorded keyboards that are programmable enough to allow use of whatever symbols you want or need when programming.

The Charachorder One is one example

https://www.charachorder.com/products/charachorder-one

Yes! Here is a really great talk on the state of doing so, with a fantastic realtime demo near the end. Mirabai live-codes using her Plover setup and narrates her thought process as she types out each command.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb-dB6g

Amazing! The spoken demo reminds me of Victor Borge's Phonetic Punctuation. This would be such a great way to spend so much time getting slightly more efficient...

I saw her at a keyboard meetup in NYC. She blew my mind with her vim setup: chords representing commands meant that the keystrokes didn't exactly matter: you could have the chord represent an arbitrarily annoying set of keystrokes and have a correspondingly complicated vimrc to handle them. Very cool!!

Can't code with that.

Completely unrelated, but your comment about stenography reminded me how our French president announced the COVID lockdown. It was a speech full of key information (some I could not hear because when he announced that the schools would close children erupted in yells) but that was not the best part.

The best part was that the speech was also signed for the deaf (that part was normal) and subtitled by a ..., well, ... stenography trainee.

He or she had all wrong, could not keep the speed, was mixing words and skipping whole parts. At some point they seem to have said to themselves "oh fuck it" and were typing more or less random words.

The whole country was with them, hoping that they will go on typing until the end (which they did). That was a memorable event and people actually learned about stenography and the fact that they apparently use a special keyboard in the form of a butterfly.

As a remote software developer, if this became a product that could be used daily I'd surely buy it. It would be the key link between programming and body exercise.

Yoga pose based programming?

YDD, Yoga Driven Development

>DDDD

>>Downward Dog Driven Development

My back agrees with you

Have you found or implemented a "reader"?

Imagine teaching some ML your personal body movements, and then you could have it transcribe text into Semaphore-output video (or live rendering)... At least well enough that Semaphore-input could read it?

I started building a super simplified version of something like this to help me practice flag semaphore, but ended up learning the alphabet a lot faster than finishing that script :o)

Your project (especially the video) made my life a little brighter. Thank you for putting it out there, and having a sense of humor :)

Your video is a work of art.

You could probably combine senaphore keyboard with some sort of stenography software for faster input (e.g. Plover https://youtu.be/KZGuBV1xe64)

I replied to a similar comment above, definitely worth an experiment!

Enjoyed your video, but quick FYI: Your SSN is visible on the shot of your tax form. Might not want that detail to go viral.

I don’t think that is the authors SSN, since the first number closely matches a song title and the second is “69 420 007”, which is definitely a joke.

I’ll keep this mind the next time I’m stuck on a burning rooftop and trying to communicate with the rescue chopper. I only hope the pilot understands Semaphore!

Big Jack Stratton energy in your demo GIF.

Here’s hoping this ends up in a Vulf music video.

how much did you love the nintendo powerglove back in the day?

The video on your site, from the clothing to your expression, is absolute perfection!

Thank you for this! Watching this brought me quite a bit of joy.

Can I just say how much I liked the small details here? Like your choice of matching sweatbands, your jazz hands on the last symbol, your choice of pose for backspace, and the commit message, "Updated readme for pedantry". In your honor, I am performing the chef's-kiss gesture. (Which I hope you will include as you add emoji to your input device.)

Thank you! Although TBF I only merged the pedantic README update :D

The jazz-hands sold it for me, too.

I wish this existed 20 years ago when I done my college capstone project. It would be great present this to the examination board

Have you considered adding an autocomplete? Maybe add in three most likely completions to your word and have three separate signals to select each respectively? Maybe that's cheating, but that could up your words per minute drastically!

Have you considered making a full body musical instrument?

Yes, hoping to do something along these lines for a future update! I'm not sure if it would be individual notes/chords per motion, or something based on samples and a looper. If anyone knows of related projects, I'd love to get some ideas for inspiration.

This is absolutely great! Thank you Sir!

This is amazing! I think there is a lot of potential for education. This makes studying letters way more fun.