ThingM’s own Mike Kuniavsky was featured on BoingBoing today. Woot!
Mike spent some time getting a Gyration Air Mouse to work on Mac OS X as a gestural input device. The Gyration stuff is interesting because it’s based upon a two-axis gyroscope. It’s not accelerometer-based like some of the old game console controllers (or like the Sudden Motion Sensor in the new Mac laptops)
I got a few of those mice as well to experiment with, thinking it would be a cheap way to acquire a gyro, since dual-axis gyros are pretty pricey.
Except when you take it apart, it turns out the gyro is huge:
The gyroscope is the large silver cube. This is no MEMS device like all the other gyros, but some honking steampunk-like device that measures Coriolis effect using electromagnets.
I’m considering talking to Gyration about getting a few OEM samples of their gyro for non-mousing applications. Or maybe just get the datasheet from them and canabilize some Air Mouses.