Orientation and Motion Sensing are widely implemented on various consumer products, such as mobile phones, tablets and cameras as they enable immediate interaction with virtual information. The prototyping phase of any orientation and motion sensing capable device is however a quite difficult process as it may involve complex hardware designing, math algorithms and programming. In this paper, we present FreeIMU, an Open Hardware Framework for prototyping orientation and motion sensing capable devices. The framework consists in a small circuit board containing various sensors and a software library, built on top of the Arduino platform. Both the hardware and library are released under open licences and supported by an active community allowing to be implemented into research and commercial projects.
@cite_4: In this paper we briefly motivate, present, and give an initial evaluation of DUL Radio, a small wireless toolkit for sketching sensor-based interaction. In the motivation, we state the purpose of this specific platform, which aims to balance ease-of-use (learning, setup, initialization), size, speed, flexibility and cost, aimed at wearable and ultra-mobile prototyping where fast reaction is needed (e.g. in controlling sound), and we mention general issues facing this category of embodied interaction design tools. We briefly present the platform, both regarding hardware and software. In the evaluation, we present our experiences with the platform both in design projects and in teaching. We conclude that DUL Radio was the preferred platform for sketching sensor-based interaction compared to other solutions, and that it does seem to be a relatively easy-to-use tool, but that there are many ways to improve it. Target users include designers, students, artists etc. with minimal programming and hardware skills, but this paper addresses the issues with designing the tools, which includes some technical considerations.
@cite_4 is a small sensor board containing an accelerometer, a microcontroller and wireless communication which has been designed for ease-of-use. While this device may be interesting for inexperienced developers, it may be also constraining compared to Arduino, as also noted by the authors. Our framework also aims to ease sensor based interaction prototyping, however we concentrated on not loosing the flexibility and extensibility of the Arduino platform while providing wider sensor input.