$25 iRing controls iOS apps via hand gestures (with video)

“iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch owners who use music apps can control them now through a ring on their finger,” Lance Whitney reports for CNET.

“Launching this quarter at a price of $25, the iRing responds to the gestures of your hand to perform specific tasks on an iOS device,” Whitney reports. “The double-sided ring talks to your device’s camera, which reads your various gestures. You simply move your hand up and down, left and right, or twist it around to control the action.”

“Created by IK Multimedia, the iRing supports the company’s music apps, including GrooveMaker and VocaLive,” Whitney reports. “But the company wants to expand the ring’s power beyond mere music apps. It’s encouraging developers of games, health and fitness software, and other mobile apps to take advantage of the technology.”

Read more in the full article here.

20 Comments

  1. It’s brilliant in concept.

    I can envision a future product that cups the fingertips, like small condoms containing the circuitry to enable multi-gestural features.

    Couple this and 4K screens and Logic and Final Cut comes alive.

    1. Exactly!

      Microsoft tried to build this. They started with Steve Ballmer’s Minority Report vision and made a table that he could eat off of and do work. 😛

      I suspect that with Apple’s acquisition of a motion-sensory product, hand and arm signals are the new frontier of user interface.

      Now if they can just develop a monitor that is just a couple of mikes thin, I could surround myself with workspace and stand in the center of the room and direct traffic.

      And then I woke up…

  2. Hideous looking and mostly useless since your phone’s camera has to look at it. Would bee cooler if it had motion sensors not dependant on the camera. If your phone has to look at your finger, why not.. just use your finger.

      1. No, but depending on what it did I may think its expensive IF it were $200.. and tech has a way of becoming cheaper as manufacturing catches up with it. This iRing is kinda gimmicky. Almost Kinect gimmicky. Do you really think people will be using this thing excessively? I sure don’t.

        I think for something like this to be moderately successful it needs to not be dependant on the camera.

    1. You joke, but that’s exactly what I was thinking. Those symbols are far too easy to fake. You couldn’t draw them on your hands, but you could paint them on a piece of white cardboard and glue it to a ring.

      I stopped the video about halfway through. It was getting repetitive. Honestly, if that’s the best demo they can come up with for this thing, it’s going nowhere.

      ——RM

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