Eric Lundquist created and maintained this page for a very popular exhibit. It is a bit long-in-the-tooth now (last updated 2008-01-08).
Picked one of these up on sale for $20 from Tiger Direct. It is an interesting piece of technology. The base plugs up to the usb port. Each finger has a bend sensor. There are 7 LED’s and 4 buttons on the glove. The base station can see up to 4 of them at a time depending on the orientation of your hand. Essential Reality makes a software development kit available for Linux and for Windows. Unfortunately, the Windows version only supports Visual C++. To get around using vile Micro$oft software, I have ported a Linux GNU C program from Jason Mc Mullan jmcmullan@linuxcare.com that dumps the raw data from the glove. This program uses the libusb drivers for Linux. Fortunately, some enterprising individuals have ported this package to Windows. I was able to compile the software and, with a few tweaks, make it run.
The glove sends packets that contain the status of each button, the value of the finger bend sensors, and from 0 to 4 x,y,z readings from the LED’s. The next step is to figure out how to convert those x,y,z readings into roll, pitch, and yaw data.
Eric Lundquist
Update 05/19/2007 – Updated the Robot Glove software to work with the Beta 3 (not 3.1) version of the CP5DLL and to use RXTX instead of javax.
Update 11/17/2004 I have written a Java program that utilizes Carl’s P5DLL.dll and the javax comm api to control a Lynxmotion Arm. I have made the source code available. The new project page for the combined P5 Glove and Lynxmotion Arm is at Robot Glove.
Update 10/04/2004 – Carl Kenner has created a version of P5DLL.dll that is what Essential Reality should have released in the first place. It supports all languages instead of just yucky old M$ VC++. It also supports absolute mode instead of just relative mode. The code is available here.
The code
p5dump.c Source code to dump program for Windows.
p5dump.exe The executable. Requires libusb-win32 to be installed.
p5glove.c Source code for P5 Glove support routines.
p5glove.h Include file for P5 Support routines.
RobotGlove.java Portable Java program that allows a P5 glove to control a Lynxmotion robot arm.
Resources
A really great web page by Ross Becina. Lots of P5 info and links to VR glove info in general.http://zzz.com.ru/zzz_original_site/roid/P5community.html Another great P5 resource.
The P5 Glove Wiki site.