zackfreedman posted this great project with a full tutorial over on instructables. Very cool!
This sexy cyberpunk wristband puts a versatile trackpad on your arm, for the ultimate multi-touch control for your cybernetic augmentations. It’s stable, comfortable, easy to assemble, hack-friendly, and looks ridiculously cool.
Under the hood, this is just an Adafruit PS/2 Trackpad in a custom 3D-printed shell. I like this trackpad because it has built-in multitouch, gesture detection, and can return trackpad-style (delta) and tablet-style (absolute) coordinates. Its enclosure is also invitingly flimsy, almost as if Ladyada wanted us to pull out the electronics and put them in a custom enclosure…
The trackpad is PS/2, which is really easy to use with Arduino. This can be used for BeagleBone, RasPi, etc, but you will need a PS/2-to-USB adapter. I won’t help you troubleshoot connections and I will make fun of you if you ask.
This project involves 3D-printed parts. If you don’t have access to a 3D printer, get in touch with me to buy pre-printed parts and learn how to make cooler friends who have 3D printers.
Most importantly, this project is complete. I will not add any features or improve the design. I will fix bugs if you find them, or clarify things in the instructions if you tell me, but that’s it! You’re welcome to fork the design, but read The Serious Part first.
See the full tutorial here.
Featured Adafruit Products!
Capacitive Trackpad/Touchpad – Microcontroller-Friendly PS/2: Add a cool touch interface with your project with this microcontroller-friendly track-pad. We found an easy to use PS/2 track-pad that is easy to use and interface with. This track-pad is two-in-one: you can use it either in relative ‘mouse mode’, where it spit out finger movements as they change OR you can put it into ‘tablet mode’, where it give the absolute X and Y location of the point being touched. It will also return Z coordinates for how hard the user is pressing and a flag if a finger is touching the pad or if the finger was removed (so you know its no longer being touched). This device does not support multitouch, but it does have basic gesture support for ‘tap’ and ‘double tap’ on the touch-pad area. There’s also two tactile buttons that act like a the two buttons on a mouse. Read more.
Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!