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Void_
It seems to be working pretty well, but I have really good lighting around here.

But 20% usage and the fact it doesn't always works makes this a cool hack, nothing more.

mehuln
Thx for your kind feedback. Pls make sure your hand is 1-6 feet away and it should work. Even our tests it works fairly well in diff lighting but I am sure you guys will let us know.

On avg it uses about 5% of CPU - 20-30%% when doing gestures and 2-3% when not.

With all due respect, the cool hack now has 4.5M+ gestures used to Play/Pause songs and 100s of thousands of users... so perhaps we may be on right track.

Thanks for appreciate the hard work of fellow developers!

mtrimpe
Don't get passive aggressive with the haters. Doesn't make you look good..

FWIW, early adopter here and I love the app. The only thing that makes me turn it off occasionally is the false positives from when I'm just touching my face.

If you could fix that, you're golden!

mehuln
Ok, thanks for letting us know! Are you still seeing false detections on the new version?

Would you please try it with new version?

This is one of those things where we will keep getting closer to 100% as we improve... working hard everyday to improve it!

mtrimpe
So far the new version seems to have improved on this.

I can't get to the gesture tutorial though, perhaps because of the upgrade from the first version to the App Store version?

P.S. Are you planning to add a thumbs up gesture to favorite a song? ;)

Void_
I'm sorry if my post sounded 'offensive'. I just don't think that in five years we're going to control our computers using webcams. They are just not made for that.

I'm still getting 20%, on 2012 Air. Maybe you should try it on a cheaper machine.

mehuln
No issues. Thx for it feedback.

Who know what will be there in 5 years? We just want solve for hardware that is already ubiquitous. If better cameras become widespread then we will switch to that hardware.

Yes, doing this on webcam is incredibly difficult but if we can do it then it can really improve HCI. We just thought its worth trying.

Thanks. Appreciate your candid feedback.

joejohnson
This is an awesome app and it's free!

I wish that it worked from further than 6 feet away. I hope they have plans to make 👍 and 👎 control the volume.

mehuln
Thx Joe - Volume gestures in the works. Once we make it even more efficient we will use full resolution in web cameras and make it work from 12 feet away! Thx again!
twog
This is awesome! Love the design of your site! So fresh & upbeat.

A couple of points of feedback

-A better gesture walkthrough for first time users would be helpful

-Start with a 14 day trial and then charge for this. I would pay for this app.

-It might not hurt to add something like "we are kinect for your itunes!"

Great job! Really excited to see where you guys go with this!

mehuln
Great pointer Twog. Appreciate your support - thank you!
jc4p
Maybe I'm just doing it wrong but each time I hit the "I'M READY" button on the intro screen the app crashes (and goes away from my task bar on the top right)... Early 2011 MBP, 10.8.2

Edit: looks to be unrelated to hitting the button, it's just crashing on start-up.

Edit numero dos, ran it from the command line, got this:

    kasra-mbp:MacOS kasrarahjerdi$ ./Flutter 
    sem_open: Operation not permitted
    Bus error: 10
    kasra-mbp:MacOS kasrarahjerdi$
Edit number three: Here's a crash report, sorry it's a gist I don't have anywhere to upload files to right now: https://gist.github.com/ce750dcc9c8aea8f855c
mehuln
Do you have a 3ivx or Parian on your machine? Sometimes that does crash our app. If you do then, please upgrade 3ivx to latest version and it fixes the problem.

Looking into crash report!

jc4p
Don't have either installed :)
mehuln
Hmm... looking into your crash log. Will get back ASAP.
lukeedy
I have had exactly the same issue described above - except I was unable to even click the "I'm Ready" button.

Similarly I do not run either of the two apps mentioned above.

dchuk
Why is this app free?

It's a feature added on top of other apps, there's nothing stopping any of those apps from adding this feature and making Flutter a moot point...why not charge for the app now so you can profit before any of the apps you're piggy backing off of pivot and make Flutter irrelevant?

mehuln
Thanks, we will look into it for sure. We just feel that we need to add more functionality first.
dchuk
Good. And I apologize if that came off as disparaging, my fantasy football team is getting crushed today and I'm grumpy :)

I just want to see people make lots of money making awesome things, so make sure to factor that in before it's too late.

mehuln
Thx man. No issues. My redskins are sucking as usual, so understand it. :-)
oakenshield
While you have a valid point, Flutter has some pretty deep and well-trained computer vision code that can't be replicated in a month or two. In addition, even if one app (say iTunes) builds this functionality, users would still want gestures for other apps, which is why a separate gesture-recognition-focused product makes sense. I can see Flutter's core tech being useful (e.g., as an API) for a wide variety of uses beyond video consumption.
andyjsong
I tried it with VLC, the play/pause diagram showed up, but nothing happened. Does it only work with iTunes and Spotify?

Edit: I love the design of your site. Very comic book/Roy Lichtenstein-ish. One critique is the hand. Everything else has perspective or shading, the hand is flat and it should be a big part of page and be more noticeable, since it is a motion controlled app.

mehuln
It should work with latest version of VLC - some old versions do not have script bridge support so we cannot support it. Are you having issues with Next & Previous on the latest version of VLC?
andyjsong
I'm running 2.0.3 on Win7. How do you do next and previous gestures?
mehuln
Sorry, Windows version with Next & Previous song gesture will come out in a week. Stay tuned! Thx for your patience!
jeybalachandran
Love it. Volume controls would be nice, and I'm glad it's in the works.

Even with the limited functionality, I'd gladly pay for this.

mehuln
Thank you. Good to know.
bratsche
This seems like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. The front page says, "Remember all those times you had to pause your music but had to find the right window?"

No. Every fucking keyboard on the planet has a pause button on it. Who goes searching for a window to click a button to pause music?

mehuln
Thanks for your feedback.
bpatrianakos
Thanks for being a good sport. The HN crowd can be quite rough. Don't take it personally. I'd take feedback from non-technical users more seriously as they don't have a tendency toward know-it-all-ism and contrarianism like the HN crowd does (myself included I suppose).

To refute the parent, the problem exists. I have a keyword sans playback buttons. I've often wanted a quick way to pause music. Even on my Mac where there are playback buttons, sometimes ill be listening to Spotify, try to pause the song using the keyboard, then iTunes tries to open instead. I'm not sure if your app addresses that problem but it'd be cool if it did.

mehuln
Thanks so much. We think it addresses that issue. Try it and let us know.
ebf
My keyboard doesn't have a pause button on it.
tonydev
When did Hacker News become a place to use profanity and trash ideas without providing any constructive input?

I haven't logged in for as long as I can remember. I did so just now to say how dissapointing the tone of this comment is.

dchichkov
True. And the original commentator is plain wrong. There is certainly value in a working solution to gesture recognition problem.
tylermenezes
Seriously. The bash-everything mentality is bad - for the Hacker News community, but also for the startup community as a whole. No one is going to create anything new if they're afraid to try.

Beyond that, I don't come to this site to read people insult everyone else. Can you imagine going to a developer meetup where everyone just walks around and criticizes everyone else? But somehow people think that sort of thing is okay online.

As far as I'm concerned, people like this represent the worst form of hackers, and should not be welcome on this site.

bratsche
You know, you're totally right. Thanks for calling me out on this. I apologize to the OP (and everyone else) for my negative tone.
mbateman
How is this the top voted comment?

Anyway, working on software that takes abstract input to a camera as an interface is awesome, no matter what particular bits of functionality they start off with.

crisnoble
When I'm watching movies from 5 feet away using VLC, the pause gesture is invaluable.
capex
What gestures I can use, other than the palm of hand shown on the homepage?
mehuln
Hi, on Mac, you can do Thumbs Right to go to Next Song, and Thumbs Left to go to previous song.

On Windows, these will be released in a week.

capex
The green camera-on light on my macbook gives me a headache, even if I know its only tracking gestures.
mehuln
yes, we agree. That's Apple Hard-Wired. We don't think it can be turned-off. Let us know if someone has found a hack to turn it off while camera is on.
minikomi
Maybe you could have a "clap to activate" option

Or, snap fingers.

brandoncapecci
I can't stand downloading things through the App Store. The "do you want to open in" popup where I know I need to wait for a program to load, usually input credentials, and press download again. As I suspect this isn't a very big file, I'd really at least like the option to download straight from the site.
mehuln
Yup, understand. We will add it in our next site update.
mehuln
You can download mac version through flutterapp.com/next
jeybalachandran
30 minutes later I noticed my fan went into overdrive. Opened up Activity Monitor and noticed this: http://cl.ly/image/0Q3g3Q2b0V1j

It uses a minimum of 70% CPU after several minutes of usage. Needs to be fixed. Closing and re-opening the application solves it for 5-10 mins, then back to the same.

mehuln
Jey. Please let us know config of your system & version of flutter u are using. Thanks for the feedback.
dmcg
I'm curious to know what your business model is. Is the market for a utility, even on both platforms, really large enough to interest YC, or are you planning to fry bigger fish?
catch23
Flutter is something similar to the gesture pendant used on the Aware Home project at Georgia Tech [1]. The gesture pendant was engineered for those that lacked vision & mobility. One could use the gesture pendant to open blinds, turn on/off the tv, answer the phone, etc. If you're partially blind, it's probably hard to locate the tv remote to turn on the tv, but when you're wearing the pendant, you can do it anywhere. If you're elderly, it may be difficult to open the blinds. The pendant was interesting, but requires special hardware. Flutter can run on anyone's computer via the webcam.

[1] http://smartech.gatech.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1853/29822...

dmcg
I can see what it does, but not how it makes money doing it.
ericdykstra
Cool, but not cool enough to switch to iTunes for music playback. A Songbird plug-in and I would be using this daily, and I'd pay for it.
mehuln
Will add support for more apps very soon! Thx!
mdanger
I remember commenting the story when the first release came out (IIRC it was just play/pause). I'm thrilled to see that this is still going, as there have been plenty of times I've ended up scrambling around for my Mac remote in the dark.
jmiseikis
Really cool app, thanks! I've been using it the whole day yesterday and performance was really good (did get few false positives though..). I was pleasantly surprised when it recognised next song gestures in really dark conditions, hand was mainly lit up just from the macbook screen itself.

It would be really cool to have a gesture for answering a Skype call (maybe even making a call, to pop up online contact list). Telephone hand gesture should do the trick.

Keep up the good work! I can see this going beyond the music control.

chrischen
I know this is supposed to be a gimmicky product but it actually works just well enough (still less practical than the play/pause button on the keyboard) that the novelty factor makes this fun enough that I'm constantly using it over the physical buttons.

I can't see this beating a keyboard for stuff like browsing the internet but it'd be great for controlling music, or maybe air-drumming.

Great job guys!