alt Hacker NewsShow HN: Kinesis – Control your Mac with the Meta Neural Band
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! i really hope others can find creative uses for their neural bands too :)
note: i really hope this works on other bands because the sample size has just been me so far.
Comments
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.
Kinesis is already a word and an Amazon product, might have better discoverability naming your project something unique and specific.
The vibe coders have finally discovered their killer interface, and it is kind of cool, especially if integrated with voice inputs.
Kinesis is a legendary keyboard brand.
Meta doesn’t sell these separately from the glasses :(
Are they patented to heck and back or can another manufacturer make a EMG bracelet for controlling a PC?
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...
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!
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.
I have an old Leap motion sitting around.. I'd imagine I might be able to do something similar with it?
I want to wear 2 of these bands and have multi touch AR. In thinking like pinch to zoom for reality.
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.
omg..I hate FB and I actually want that..
that seems so cool lol
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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)