The Nintendo Power Glove was terrible. Really, really terrible. Thanks to modern components, though, it’s possible to recreate the Power Glove experience in a way that doesn’t suck so much. That’s what [Leif] did with his motion sensing glove for the Commodore 64.
Instead of rolling his own IMU and putting it in a glove, [Leif] is using SonicWear SoMo, a glove originally designed to generate MIDI data for performance pieces. Inside this glove is a 9 DOF gyro/accelerometer/magnetometer, uC, battery, and XBee that can be easily reprogrammed to do something a little more (or less) useful than simply sending MIDI notes and commands.
[Leif] reprogrammed the XBees to use I/O line passing instead of sending serial data, and connected the recieving XBee to the C64 joystick port through a very simple circuit with a hex inverter.
All the code to turn a SonicWear glove into a C64 controller is available on the Github, and there’s a neat demo video of [Leif] demoing his glove at the VCF Midwest late last month.
“All the code to turn a SonicWear glove into a C64 is available on the Github”
Brian, did you mean a C64 controller?
No, he meant a C64 but he forgot to mention you need to add a SID chip. Jeez…
Ah, that’s great! Best hack ever!
Now that’s a good hand job… wait, what!?
The reference for those not old enough to remember.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZErvASwdlU
Darth Maul has a Commodore 64?
Thanks for the laugh. This site does have its moments at times.
I have got all you guys beat.. I was physically THERE at the place that device was demoed at and SAW it in person. It was demoed at ECCC 2013/VCFMW 8, and honestly, its a great place if you are into retro computer hardware!
Sends signals to a C64 joystick port? Then it’d work with an Atari 2600 and anything else using the same port.
The Nintendo Power Glove had the potential to be something good, but they messed it up big time with shitty controls and even shittier games. This one sounds awesome though.
What game is he playing there with it?