Gadgetory

so if you walked into a store in the 1990s and asked for a motion sensor they'd probably hand you some contraption that you hang on your garage that automatically lights up to scare away a novice burglar or that bloody raccoon that keeps tipping over your garbage can but while sensors that detect the motion of something else are still a mainstay of home security systems the subject of today's video is actually the sensors that detect their own motion so how do those work let's start with the kind you've probably got a couple of in your hand or pocket right now a micro electromechanical system or mends for short a couple of examples of which are accelerometers and gyroscopes well that sounds pretty fancy line is what the heck are those well they're both engineering and manufacturing marvels but the basic concepts behind them are actually pretty simple accelerometers are for movement of your device and the kind you'd find in your phone or a game console motion controller is pretty much a very small mass suspended by like tiny micro Springs with some fixed electrodes within a housing so let's say shake it off starts playing in your forensically going like this try to shuffle your playlist the masses position relative to the electrodes will change thanks to inertia changing the capacitance between those electrodes which your phone interprets as a shake and suddenly you're listening to some even more deeply embarrassing song you've had on your phone so long you forgot it was there gyroscopes serve a similar purpose but because they are not to surrender by Springs and therefore affected by gravity they are more useful for measuring rotation although a good accelerometer can do a reasonable job of this unless it's in freefall as well so these bad boys have shown up alongside accelerometers to improve input speed and accuracy we motionplus anyone oops red shell but consider the following these types of devices are limited in that they can only detect a change in position relative to a starting point what if you wanted to know exactly where your smartphone was last night oh then you'll need something that can detect absolute position like a light detection motion controller the place that you're most likely to find one in your house being on your video game console the original we used infrared or IR light emitters two of them on a little bar under your TV and cameras in each of the controllers to pinpoint the exact location of the controller in the room to further enhance the motion control experience the disadvantage of a light based system is that breaking the line-of-sight makes them stop working entirely and without high frame rate cameras performance can be a little leggy and uninspiring but fortunately we've made a lot of progress since 2006 and newer systems like the one found on the HTC vive head mounted VR device use a combination of MEMS chips laser position sensors and passive base stations called lighthouses that work with the camera on the headset itself to perfectly determine the user's orientation and position within the room pretty freakin Smurfs but the applications of these technologies go way beyond gaming of course with medical rehabilitation fitness and sport performance tracking and even augmented reality devices like microsoft's hololens that overlays virtual objects on the real world you live in unlocking all kinds of amazing possibilities in the future speaking of amazing futures what if you didn't even have to read books for yourself I guess that's today with audible.com the leading provider of audiobooks with more than 180,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature including fiction nonfiction and periodicals audiobooks are great to listen to when you're driving stuck in traffic on the subway or the bus doing chores around the house at the gym by the way another use for motion sensors is you know fitness tracking doing errands shopping whenever and for our audience members audible is giving a free audiobook as an incentive to try out their monthly audiobook service which gives you an audiobook every month and further benefits like discounts on other audiobooks one super hot title you might want to check out right now is the Elon Musk biography titled Elon Musk creative Ashley Vance you guys are going to want to check this out if you're into future technologies and one gentleman who is trying to take them to the mainstream so to download that audio book for free or another one of your choice go to audible.com slash tech quickie and sign up for the club alright guys I think that's pretty much it like the video if you liked it dislike it if you thought it sucked leave a comment if you have suggestions for future fast as possible and as always don't forget to subscribe and follow and all of that good biz