Soon Use the Power of the Force Tech Band to Control Your BB-8 #WearableWednesday #StarWars #Wearabletech
When I found this post about BB-8 on Wareable I thought I must have misread something. I had heard about the Pokemon wearable, but I hadn’t heard anything about a Star Wars wearable. So, needless to say I’m trying to win the lottery now that I know that you can use the power of the force to move objects, specifically the adorable BB-8. Just strap this tech onto your wrist and you are ready to go.
You can see this video was posted in January, so they’ve been working on this Force Band for a while. Movements include push and pull, as well as special hand motions to control the head. I was thinking about the parts they might use to achieve this control and so far my guess is a 9DOF sensor, although some are saying just an accelerometer. In another video from Engadget you can see an actual test drive of the droid with the specific motions. Wareable adds this detail:
Turn your palm down and the BB-8 will look away from you, up and it looks towards you. If you spin round, the BB-8 spins round – we saw a few gestures in action such as turning the toy’s head and it all worked quickly and seamlessly. There are also currently LEDs to show which mode you are in, though this isn’t necessarily going to be in the final design. As with smartphones, the Force Band pairs to the BB-8 toy via Bluetooth.
One of the cool things I learned is that the makers wanted kids to feel like they could be away from their phones to play. Of course there are other fun modes for this wearable including commands from BB-8 in Force Training, pretend lightsaber/blaster practice in Combat Training, discover Holocrons in Force Awareness and control other droids in Robot Control. Sounds like a blast to me, and the special BB-8 Force Band package is supposed to be available Sept. 30th. In the meantime, you can learn more about the different ways to capture movement in our Sense All the DOFs Learning Guide. Feel the force…
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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!