After seeing the control of galaxy s4 with hand movements, I thought there are some situations where this is really needed (like if your hands are dirty or wet). I tried to think about how it would be possible to do simple operations without touching the device and I came up with this idea.

Although it is far from ideal (takes a lot of CPU power while running), it uses the proximity sensor to determine which command to execute. It works as follows:

When you close the sensor, it starts to count the number of cycles. If a certain number was reached before the sensor is opened again, command 1 is executed, and if a larger number was reached - a different one is executed.

The script can be configured to change the sensitivity levels (the counts numbers and the interval between the proximity sensor state check).

I used "xdotool" for left/right button pressing or mouse dragging.

Any ideas for improvements are welcome.

You can see a demo moving between desktops and pictures with photos application:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJPrQ...ature=youtu.be

Script is attached.

There is already an app for that. Not quite the same as it only pops up a bunch of icons that one still needs to tap but perhaps you could use that as a base to address your CPU usage problem.

Caveat: Just an idea. Might be complete rubbish. I do not use the media bar. I tried it but it interfered with my screen layout so I took it off. So my experience with it is something like 9 months old.

It would be nice to have some funky apps did anyone remember the gud old handwave by samir on s60v3??

Neat idea Impeham.
Wonder if it could be used for next track - previous track in a media player.
Maybe holding your hand over the sensor for x seconds could control play and stop/pause.

Is it actually picking up the left/right motion of the hand or is it the length of time the hand is over the sensor?

I would say that some feedback might be nice - like blinking the LED or showing something on screen.

It would also make possible to have quite a lot of functions - you just cover the sensor, wait for 4 blinks and then uncover it -> action number 4 is triggered.

Proximity sensor have IRQ breaks, so you could monitor it state without affecting battery, at all (unlike polling, which wakes CPU unnecessary). Ask people on #maemo-ssu, they seem to know exactly how t achieve it.

/Estel

stickymick - it can be used for anything really - you just need to set the bash commands as you like - i believe it might be possible to do that using dbus. it does not really pick up the left right - it was just looking nice

MartinK - nice idea but i think the LED is not a good thing since it is being hidden by the hand on landscape when you close the sensor. notification might be nice.

Estel - how do i get to this #maemo-ssu? is this used using regular IRC client?

Yea, it's normal IRC channel, hosted @ freenode. See:
http://wiki.maemo.org/IRC

Cheers,
/Estel

I made a few significant improvements - the attached script allows "next track/previous track/play" for someplayer application which I use a lot with my car mode.

When blocking the sensor - notifications will be displayed and cycled for these operations. When you see the notification of the operation you want executed - remove the sensor block.

The script is very customizable now - you just need to edit the 2 arrays in the start to set the commands to be executed and the text to be displayed as a notification for each of them. Multiple commands for a single operation (if needed) needs to be separated with ';' character.

The CPU usage is much lesser now since the interval for sensor close is larger (and can be modified if needed).

Be good if it could be made to work OMP too.
I wonder if it would be possible to create a UI for it.
Anyone want to have a try?