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Show HN: Kinesis – Control your Mac with the Meta Neural Band (github.com)

1 points by callbacked ↗ HN
a couple hours ago i had astra take on a 10 month old repo of mine https://github.com/callbacked/neural-band-poc/that involved finding a way to use the meta neural band independently from the glasses to read the sEMG data off of it. i really think it is a cool piece of technology that largely gets overlooked by the glasses, and always thought it was a shame it couldn't be used outside of its main application.

after making quick work of that, i wanted to use it to control my mac using gesture controls and that's how kinesis was born. it has been very cool being able to swipe from desktops using my fingers, swiping up to open up mission control or controlling a virtual knob to adjust my volume.

i definitely havent scratched the surface with the neural band but it has been a really fun endeavor thus far!

45 comments

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pluc
Kinesis is already a word and an Amazon product, might have better discoverability naming your project something unique and specific.
embedding-shape
And a band, and a company, and a .... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinesis

Do you think it's likely someone goes looking for the real-time data processing platform, lands on this GitHub and gets confused?

pluc
Discoverability is the degree to which something, especially a piece of content or information, can be found in a search of a file, database, or other information system. Discoverability is a concern in library and information science, many aspects of digital media, software and web development, and in marketing, since products and services cannot be used if people cannot find it or do not understand what it can be used for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discoverability

justinsaccount
> Do you think it's likely someone goes looking for the real-time data processing platform, lands on this GitHub and gets confused?

No, but I do think it is likely that someone might find this while looking for the kinesis keyboard, a popular product which has been on the market for 34 years.

moralestapia
Amazon was already a word.

Facebook was already a word.

Meta was already a word.

Imagine if they chose "something unique and specific", they wouldn't have failed as companies!

utopiah
I don't think anybody would take a flight to Brazil to see an Amazon shop and vice versa.

In this specific case though as others pointed out there are already a lot of products on that specific segment with that name.

gorjusborg
Definitely interesting work, but Meta will get nothing from me, as far as I can help it.

No level of convenience will tip that scale.

smt88
Meta doesn’t make money if you buy its hardware used on eBay or similar
amenghra
Walking around wearing Meta’s hardware supports them by you advertising their product (unless you never show anyone that you own the hardware).

The existence of a used market also slightly increases the value of new things. By buying used, you’re supporting/signaling the used market and indirectly supporting the company.

If you don’t want to support a company, don’t go near their products.

smt88
“Advertising the product” is an extremely mild form of support in this case.

Your criticism of buying used is complete nonsense. Secondary markets have put companies out of business. You’re not “signaling” anything except that the price is too high.

amenghra
You are right, it's double-edged. In some cases it can hurt companies (e.g. luxury good companies) while in other cases it can benefit them (e.g. car companies benefit from the second-hand market in many ways). It's a fascinating economics+psychology topic.
gorjusborg
I'd have to be pretty sure I could use the hardware forever without a login for me to let it near my systems. Anything with firmware or a security footprint would not qualify.

I might accept a Meta paperclip into my house, but then again, why risk it ;)

Meta's game is to do all sorts of dirty tricks to pull you into its data. No thanks.

geoah
The neural band always looked more interesting than the glasses tbh.

I've been moving more and more away from terminal and IDEs, and I've been exploring how I could move to a flip phone / table + compact keyboard as most of my development time is now possible to be done via just using TTS.

I'd be interested in exploring if something like this could remove the need for a mouse or touching the screen as well.

Some alternatives that are not bound to the meta glasses: Mudra Link (USD 299), Mudra Band for Apple Watch (USD 350), MindRove Armband (USD 800, wow), SiFi Labs SiFi Band (no price), OYMotion gForce Pro+ (USD 1250, ok this side project is starting to look expensive)

UltraSane
The neural band could become a standard interface for situations where keyboards and mice are not practical.
eloisant
I'm always worried about the "Midas effect" with something like that. Having to be careful not to trigger actions you don't want to.
utopiah
Yep, and IMHO that's why eye tracking even though is amazing when it does work is still very limited.
ileonichwiesz
I think the inertia of familiar input devices is way too high for something like that to gain any sort of traction. For better or for worse, the mainstream user is probably not leaving his QWERTY keyboard and his touchscreen, even in use cases where those are highly suboptimal.
eadwu
Keyboards are wildly suboptimal. Inertia is only an issue when you replace suboptimal with only slightly better suboptimal. The transition period from blackberry (keyboard-based phones) to iphones did not take long at all (relatively speaking of course).
utopiah
suboptimal for which tasks and what's better then?

I spend a LOT of time with different interfaces (eye tracking, 6DoF controllers, pens, touchpad in keyboard, ergonomic mouse, etc) and... basically if there is 1 thing I'm confident about is that input methods are very task dependent. If you want to input text, especially hard to pronounce keywords and symbols, keyboard is great, if you want to move a pointer at arbitrary position in 3D keyboard sucks. It also depends on the context, behind a desk vs on the move is totally different.

So yes quite curious about such a wide statement.

utopiah
IMHO inertia isn't the biggest factor, training requirement is.

I switched recently from mouse to touchpad and ... next day my great ergonomic mouse was basically in a drawer. Meanwhile when I tried to use Tap Strap the first step was to learn combinations with basically no gradient of feedback, it was either success or failure.

Inertia isn't such a big problem if the investment is small but if you have to learn an entirely new way then it's a huge risk.

utopiah
Consider also Tap Band then.

I worked a bit with Tap Strap on XR and without but in my experience once you master a keyboard nothing comes close while manipulating text, e.g code.

sammyteee
I seem to have completely missed the Neural Band as this is my first time even seeing it, but I have to admit - it does look quite cool.

Anyone have any long-term hands-on experience with it? Would love to know if it feels clunky or not...

fidotron
The vibe coders have finally discovered their killer interface, and it is kind of cool, especially if integrated with voice inputs.
robk3
that seems so cool lol
f0e4c2f7
Very interesting. So how open is the neural band to hack on? Do you expect this to be something to get patched out eventually if you update? Seems like a really cool platform to develop against outside of the intended ecosystem.
NDlurker
I want to wear 2 of these bands and have multi touch AR. In thinking like pinch to zoom for reality.
utopiah
You can do that without bands since 2019 with the Meta Quest. Hand tracking and (for that old one only black & white) video pass through is enough, no need to additional hardware.
nickthegreek
I have an old Leap motion sitting around.. I'd imagine I might be able to do something similar with it?
neoncontrails
This looks like it could potentially be a huge productivity win. The ergonomics seem tantalizingly similar to the infamous scene from Minority Report where Tom Cruise manipulates translucent data streams with his bare hands.

Could I suggest that you shoot a new promotional demo video with enough lighting that viewers can see your hands? Personally I'd be very curious to see and understand the actual gestures that support a real world workflow involving multiple desktops and applications, with the hands transitioning as needed between neural band mode for navigation vs. keyboard/mouse mode for fine-grained motor inputs.

dabinat
That scene in Minority Report looked cool but how tiring would it be to have your hands suspended in the air for 8 hours a day?
leobg
https://www.mitre.org/news-insights/impact-story/rapid-proto...

> In another prototype—again, heavy on the use of what he called "materials that move at the speed of thought," such as coat hangers, tape, fishing line, projectors, chopsticks, and a presentation clicker—they learned that the Minority Report style of interfacing with a computer by swiping with your hands at images was actually a poor idea. While people loved trying out the prototype, even the strongest found that their arms and shoulders soon began to hurt.

utopiah
Agreed but tbh it's not fair, nobody is even typing 8hrs/day.

FWIW it's very to test by the way, pick a random XR demo support hand tracking and you will see it's not that tiring. It doesn't mean it's useful though.

jasonjmcghee
Feels like such a misnomer, but I guess that's marketing.

I remember when OCZ NIA came out and it claimed BCI and it was effectively doing muscle activity too.

At least meta is properly representing what it does!

tash_2s
I've heard from several people who've tried the KiWear ring that the experience is close to using the neural band. Different form factor and technology though.
utopiah
For anybody who wants to try that without any extra hardware but just your webcam give a go to https://codepen.io/mediapipe/pen/bGweWyR based on MediaPipe Hands in JavaScript https://chuoling.github.io/mediapipe/solutions/hands.html

You could imagine binding a hand position or gesture to a desktop command by running this in the background on your NodeJS companion app and spawn() for the commands.

FWIW did something similar using OpenCV https://fabien.benetou.fr/Portfolio/PostureMaintenance 15 years go.