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HoloLens Clicker Documentation - set-up and buttons - uses are confusing
First I am thankful for the prompt and supportive help from the HoloLens support team.
I'll start and say that I did look at the small manual on the clicker that came in the box with the clicker. The actual button you depress to get it to pair is the same as the LED and there are really TWO buttons. I was really confused when I thought the main clicker was to be held to initiate the pairing process and when no lights illuminate when it is on the charger that this means it is fully charged I think.
I'd like to recommend that the instructions and buttons be documented a little more to help limit the frustration as this goes to new developers and eventually the public in general. I used a pen to push the pairing button as I am calling it to get it to work.
Since we're all working as a big team on all of this, I would be happy to look at any of these doc revisions if you folks want to share and get critique on this down the road.
Kindest regards,
Bill Herald
Comments
Clarification I learned, you may need to press the pairing button next to the elastic band with a pen tip to start the paining process. The LED is not the same as the pairing button. Thanks, Bill
Thank you all. Your suggestion for pairing (using a pen tip) WORKED!
While we're here... don't forget that the clicker can also do pathing -- it's not just a simple clicker device! A lot of people don't realize that and the name doesn't really help. Try holding the button down and moving it in 3D space, like a click and drag movement on Windows desktop.
I am a former lion tamer and an avid collector of butterflies.
Has anyone found a fix for the clicker dropping out entirely during a session and requiring re-pairing to recover?
UX Designer @ Anki
https://www.twitter.com/wintermoot
@willmanning Nice! Thanks for posting this
N6MAA10816
No prob
enjoy!
I am a former lion tamer and an avid collector of butterflies.
I'm experimenting with the clicker and trying to see if it's possible to capture 3D movements in space while it is moving, and saw this comment. Is this indeed possible? Can you get positioning/orientation data from the clicker?
Found one of the reasons for my clicker dropping out - it does not appear to be sleeping properly and the battery drains out between days of use.
UX Designer @ Anki
https://www.twitter.com/wintermoot
I've not found that to be true at all. I don't think the clicker itself is any more complicated than a garage door opener.
Of course, I assume that when you hold it in your field of view, the HoloLens would try to track it as the same way that it does your hand/finger, but in my experience, tracking isn't very reliable when I'm holding the clicker. In order to do any drag/hold actions I need to tuck the clicker in my palm and use the native gestures with my fingers.
The clicker is great for not having to hold you hand in the air in front of your face all the time, especially in click-heavy experiences like RoboRaid, but I haven't found it good for much else.
I could be wrong about this, I suppose. Does anyone know if the clicker actually has any kind of sensors, like a first-gen Wiimote or better even?
You have quite a bit more experimenting to do, my friend
Let me help: pair your clicker, open up Edge, depress and hold the clicker while your gaze is in the browser pane then move the clicker around. Observe what happens. Do it behind your back where the cameras can't see. Come back and tell me what discoveries you've made.
I am a former lion tamer and an avid collector of butterflies.
Yes. I've done that, and it's been utterly unreliable. That's what I was talking about.
Can you describe w/ specifics how it's unreliable? I won't say it's the most accurate thing I've ever used (and it wasn't designed to be that), but I definitely wouldn't call it unreliable. If you have specific scenarios where it doesn't work as intended that would be helpful.
I am a former lion tamer and an avid collector of butterflies.
RE: your original question, yes it does have an accelerometer onboard. No, it does not use camera hand-tracking.
I am a former lion tamer and an avid collector of butterflies.
I'm not sure, but I didn't develop the clicker and haven't tried to use it specifically in any app. There might be someone on here whose knows more than me. I don't think we can get absolute position information from the clicker, only relative (due to the way it works w/ accelerometer onboard). Orientation seems like it would be easier, but again I don't know if this data is exposed anywhere. Hope that's at least somewhat useful...
I am a former lion tamer and an avid collector of butterflies.
Mostly, "tap-hold-drag" simply will not work when I initiate the "tap-hold" from the clicker. Sometimes it seems to work for a tiny moment, but when that happens I feel like maybe I'm just fooling myself.
I will certainly do more testing (I'm only a few days into using the device, so I'm mostly just powering though the Academy tutorials and building Unity prototypes). I suppose it could just be that I haven't charged the clicker fully.
That's what I assumed initially, but as I said, my experience has been flaky at best, to where I'm not able to reliably determine (from use) what (if any) information is coming from the clicker itself and what is being sussed out and extrapolated by the headset.
Interesting. That's what I was hoping to learn. I wasn't looking for snark or gifs ;-) . So, does the headset just ignore normal gesture recognition when the clicker button is being held down (that would track with my experience)? Could the headset ever work in tandem with the clicker to recognize more complex gestures or other input? I can imagine some interesting UX possibilities.
It is a kind of suffering when you try to input something via the soft keyboard. I have to hold my neck to make sure I gaze at the correct character stably. So if we can get the position of the clicker, we can create a cursor based on the position of the clicker instead of gazing, it would be much easier to aim the far and small objects.
Is it possible to get any information from the clicker when the button is not pressed? I'd like to use it for general pointing in the scene, laser pointer style, and then use the click to select.