Eyewriter

[Insectoid]

Was browsing Gizmodo can came across this.

Open source software and an estimated $50 DIY (US dollar probably) to be able to draw or write with your eyes? Hell yes! With letter-recognition software (already existing somewhere) you would never need a keyboard again! I for one would love to make one of these, if I could come up with fifty bucks and the time and expertise to make it.

[Cezna]

The only thing I could foresee being a problem (and something that has always been at the back of my mind when I hear about these sort of things), is "what if you are just trying to look at another part of the screen, such as what you have already written?"

Still, this does sound amazing, and I almost had a heart attack due to utter disbelieve and overwhelming excitement when I read the first half of the post, but then when I got to the part about building, my heart sunk.

There is no way I would be able to build this and have it actually do what it was supposed to.
If I did make it, my writing would look like that of a 4 year old with as many spelling mistakes (due to the inevitable errors in the tracking and character-recognition that would plague anything like this that was made by me). That is if I didn't electrocute myself...

[Insectoid]

I kind of had a brainfart while posting this thread, lol. I'd actually like to keep my keyboard and abandon my mouse. Mouse is slow, eyes are fast. Keyboard is fast, eyes drawing letters is slow.

[USEC_OFFICER]

You'll want to keep your mouse if you play any FPSes. They did a study using eyetracking instead of a mouse in Quake II. Everybody hated it. (eyetracking, not Quake.)

(I'm searching for it now.)

[Insectoid]

Oh, of course I'd game with a mouse (Only need one hand on the keyboard for it), but switching one hand from mouse to keyboard while browsing files and pages and whatnot (anything BUT gaming) is a pain in the ass. Even in OS X's Expos?, it would greatly speed up UI use (hit the hotkey, look at the app you want and hit the hotkey again). I think it shows a lot of potential and as soon as I build this thing and modify the code to control the mouse I'm...well, I'm going to do something awesome.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Found it. I was slightly wrong. 92% prefered the mouse, but it was because the eyetracking tech was too sensitive, and picked up their unconious eye-movements.)
(Spelling sucks)

Many people liked it as it seemed more natural in other games. But I completely agree with your opinions.

Link

[Cezna]

Same problem would arise though, most of these systems (at least those that I have heard/read about/seen on TV) rely on you blinking to make selections, or holding your eyes over a target for a certain amount of time to make selections (like the new interface in Windows 7, I mean the part about holding mouse over target for certain amount of time, but now I am getting off-topic).

But what if you just blink because you have to blink? And blinking all of the time if you are making selections would quickly become annoying (not just the tiring out of your eye lids, but your vision would keep blinking).
And holding your eyes over a spot is necessary to read it, so how would they distinguish between reading and selecting? If it was by the amount of time you spent looking at the target, then aside from the issues of wanting to look at something for a long time, it would take forever to navigate.

Anyway, I'm sure there's some extremely ingenious and mind-blowingly simply way that they have come up with to allow ease of use and navigation, but at this point, who am I kidding, I'm just ranting out of lust for one of these systems!

[Insectoid]

More than the functionality is that this extremely fancy toy can be built for less than fifty dollars! You think about eye-tracking technology and assume it's something new and unavailable unless you have twenty grand to throw away (as in the commercial versions of this), when you can actually make it out of shit you've got lying around (plus a webcam). Hell, I'd love one of these just so I can show off to my friends. 'Wtf is that thing with the glasses and lights?' 'Oh that? That's the mouse for my computer. Nothing important'.

When you have wires and circuit boards connected with twist-ties to glasses, well, it looks a lot more impressive than an enclosed product.