The Gesture Based Technology Professional Learning Community (PLC) owes it's existence to Somantics- an interactive gesture based iPad, Kinect and camera program developed by Cariad at Cardifff Met University in 2011.
www.somantics.org
It is free, designed for purpose and gets great results and engagement from otherwise very hard to engage pupils- it encourages failsafe and creative interactions using technology as an intermediary to activities and interaction.
We had such great results from Somantics, as did the other schools that began using it then on the PLC, that we expanded and sourced a whole load of other Kinect based interactive programs- all of which can be found on the wiki:
https://kinectsen.wikispaces.com/
and in the blog post I did on our Kinect Interactive Room:
http://gesturetechsen.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-movement-room-kinect-set-up-for.html
Well now the team are back with Somability- developed with Rhondda Cynon Taf Skills for Independence and coded alongside it's users in a series of workshops.
It's already out as a free download for the Xbox Kinect sensor from here:
http://cariadinteractive.com/2015/03/26/somability-ready-for-release/
Hopefully it'll be out soon to download on the Microsoft Store for KinectV2, can't wait for that.
But that's not the only news!
It'll be on the Raspberry Pi as well! I've spent the last two days at the Fab Lab at Cardiff Met University setting up the Raspberry Pi and taking a look at the coding process using Openframeworks and C++.
Why is this good news- well, you won't need an expensive PC, laptop or an iPad to run Somability- you can buy a Raspberry Pi kit (for under £100) and use it on that. So that's a massive leap.
This is the home screen for the Pi version of Somability:
There's the sound responsive (and programmable) Sound Wheel (make a noise and the shapes move around then the picture changes):
Flow- where the lights respond and follow camera movement:
Space- where movement makes the coloured shapes go all funny:
There's others too- like the mirror but I didn't get photos of that- that's the Raspberry camera on the keyboard with the little red light on it- costs about £10.
It's not out just yet but when it does it'll hopefully be availiable as a kit- so you can buy all the bits you need at the same time- and then of course you also have a Raspberry Pi kit for coding, Minecraft and everything else you can do with that wonderful bit of kit.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/
Good times!
Anthony Rhys
Trinity Fields School
Naace SEN Impact Award Winner 2015
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