ThinkPad = Nintendo Wii? Not quite, but close.
I had the opportunity to try out the Nintendo Wii over Christmas. It was an absolute hoot. Interactivity through motion adds so much to the experience of game play.
Did you know you can get a similar experience from your ThinkPad? The magic that makes this work is our built in accelerometer, a.k.a. our Active Protection System, a.k.a the Airbag. Built upon an Analog Devices model ADXL320 chip, its day job is to help protect your hard disk drive. It does this by sensing motion and parks the head of the HDD so that if it gets bumped or dropped, the head of the disk does not crash into the surface of the HDD.
An IBM engineer came up with the brilliant idea that this would be an ideal platform to control games. Here are a couple of examples:
This first video shows a ThinkPad being used to control the game TuxRacer where you race Tux the penguin down the hill. Tilting the machine forward makes Tux go faster. Pulling back towards you slows him down. Left and right do what you would expect them to.
This next video shows Blazetris — a version of Tetris. Tilt away from you with a brisk motion to rotate the piece. Tilt towards you to slide the piece home faster. Left and right moves the pieces into position.
If you want to play along, below are some instructions of what you need to do. Before you do this, it is important I point out that this is technically not supported by Lenovo or IBM. Hard disk drives are designed to work when the system is stable and are not designed for a system that is constantly moving around. There is a small but measurable chance that doing this might cause the drive to crash and you could lose your data. If you are uncomfortable with the risks, then it is best to leave this alone and just enjoy the videos available online. In all cases, use common sense. Treat your ThinkPad with respect and you should be fine.
- You need a ThinkPad with an Active Protection System chip built in. The ThinkPad T41 and newer, X40 and newer, all Z series, and R50 and newer all have these built in
- Go to the following web site and read the instructions for enabling your system, plus more of the history behind this project
- Download the file you will need.
- Download a compatible game from here. There are over 50 available. The research page suggests TuxRacer and NeverBall as good examples. I also suggest that if you are a Tetris fan, that you try Blazetris. As someone who has spent hundreds of hours playing Tetris on the original Nintendo, this is by far my favorite.
- Using the instructions provided on the site, replace the stock .dll file with the modified file you downloaded in step 3.
- Have fun!
When playing, I found that I had the sensitivity of the APS sensor set too high and got unpredictable results. You can lower the sensitivity of the APS sensor using the icon in Windows Control Panel called ThinkVantage Active Protection. There is also an icon in your system tray that if you double click it, it will do the same thing. Drag the slider lever for the shock detection sensitivity down to low for the best playing experience. After you are finished playing the game, you should set the slider back to its original position for the best protection for your HDD.
Besides games, there are also other ways to use an interface like this. A fashion vendor in Italy is playing around with the idea of having a user “walk around” a 3D handbag model and control the experience using their ThinkPads.
Another enterprising person has written an API to interface with Google Maps.
SmackPad is an application where you can use the accelerometer to switch between open application windows. Unfortunately, I think it is Linux only at this point. Check out this video of it working on a Mac.
Give these a try and share your experiences with us. Also, if you know of any other applications for this type of technology, feel free to share them too. Have fun, and don’t waste too much time at the office.
Lenovo Meet the Modder Dean Liou
Lenovo Meet the modder- Chris Blarsky Dairy 2
Lenovo Meet the modder- Chris Blarsky Dairy 1
Lenovo H320 desktop
January 30th, 2007 1:03 pm
Brilliant! I know why I have bought an T60p now!
January 30th, 2007 3:11 pm
Simply ingenius. I can’t wait til my X60T (sxga+…hopefully soon) ships. TuxRacer ThinkWii, lol, will be the first thing goin on there now….i will never get any work done ever again.
January 30th, 2007 5:32 pm
[...] Head out to LenovoBlogs: Did you know you can get a similar experience from your ThinkPad? The magic that makes this work is our built in accelerometer, a.k.a. our Active Protection System, a.k.a the Airbag. Built upon an Analog Devices model ADXL320 chip, its day job is to help protect your hard disk drive. It does this by sensing motion and parks the head of the HDD so that if it gets bumped or dropped, the head of the disk does not crash into the surface of the HDD. [...]
January 30th, 2007 5:56 pm
[...] Matt Kohut, over at LenovoBolgs.com, has elaborated on some of the methods and games that you can use to get your game on. The site has details of how this works and demos with games called TuxRacer (make tux go by tilting your laptop!) and BlazeTris (a tilt controlled version of Tetris). [...]
January 31st, 2007 4:14 am
It however would be nice if we had a more comprehensive understanding of what each of the sensors actually did. Most people who have implemented APS drivers have only used a fuzzy description of what exactly each of the sensors did released on some IBM developer’s APS blog, and that isn’t really all that helpful.
January 31st, 2007 11:14 am
[...] Since IBM Thinkpads come with a built-in accelerometer, which serves to protect thehard drive if sudden movement is detected, some enterprising folks figured out a way to use the entire laptop as a motion controller similar to the Nintendo Wii. They have a simple file to download that works with a few games like Tux Racer and Blazetris (a Tetris clone) – you just move the laptop physically around to control the game action. This isn’t some third-party hack but an actual research project at IBM. I am tempted to try this out, though the idea of shaking my precious laptop in the air has me abit leery… [...]
January 31st, 2007 4:01 pm
I got carried away and flung my brandnew X60 tablet into my 60″ plasma TV. Will Lenovo’s warranty cover this?
January 31st, 2007 6:14 pm
Pretty nifty. I wonder what sort of reactions I could get from people if I tried playing a game like this out in the open.
February 1st, 2007 1:57 am
Very interesting use of the motion sensor!
I would like to try SmackPad on my Thinkpad if there is a windows version of it. It is a good design indeed to make the direction of slapping and the switch of virtual desktops to the left or to the right intuitively related (but Quartz and its OpenGL capability plays a role here I believe, regarding the animation involved; so I guess Vista is capable of having similar desktop applications, but may not for XP)
However, the large hand motions during the use of SmackPad contradicts the TrackPoint philosophy — the philosophy of letting fingers stay on keyboard’s home-row: this is genuine well-studied and hard-core usability
http://www.research.ibm.com/jo...../zhai.html
(Having similar quality of ACM’s CHI… I like it…)
Here’s a link of “improved” SmackPad making use of the light sensor of MacBook Pro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slZDN7zeMWI&NR
Seemingly cool features-
1. Zooming: fast zooming of Quartz seems cool but sadly I can tell you that many Mac users have to and are habitual to zoom in to read small fonts (especially font sizes smaller than 12 on screen). This is because of the anti-aliasing font rendering algorithm of Quartz tends to make small size fonts on screen blurry and fuzzy and illegible, while the algorithm of Windows ClearType always makes font crisp clean even down to font size 9 or even 8. Obviously I’m typing in text using font size 10 or 9 and I’m still very comfortable with it; and I can imagine the hard time I have if I do it with such a font size on Quartz
http://www.macobserver.com/col.....0523.shtml
(hardware quality of display panels may contribute a bit, but I have done similar thing on an identical LCD monitor to compare, you can try it yourself)
— So, quick zooming is not so necessary if you don’t have sightedness or if the fonts are not small and blurry, and instead, crisp clean easily legible text that resemble printouts are much more important for users
2. Hand motion to trigger the light sensor for switching between desktops:
Looks cool but with no tactile interaction and touch sensation for the user, should be at most just as “reliable” as the laser virtual keyboard projected on a desk… or feel even not so… you know… depends on waving in the air, and virtual keyboard at least let you ‘type’ on a wooden desk
The point I want to make here is
There is a lot of fancy “inventions” in the consumer computer industry nowadays. However, among those “inventions”, most of them have their patents “proudly filed” before having their usability and ergonomics properties thoroughly studied. Of course, there is a trend that computer users focus on features that are fancy to look at although possibly not so or even counter-productive (at workflow level, GUI level, keystroke level, and cognitive level)
I am a user of Thinkpad because many of its landmark innovations and designs are following the IBM tradition of having solid grounds — supports from thorough and decent quality usability studies — contrary to the trend of having superfluous inventions in recent years
My worry is Lenovo may join the side of those superfluous advocates… Please don’t join them, and please continue the IBM tradition of having well-thought usability studies on your innovations, and please publish them in the name of Lenovo or IBM and let us know
I definitely hope to see Lenovo continue to have some nice quality publications in the HCI journals, in the arena of personal computing
February 1st, 2007 2:27 pm
Hi
Really impressive video. I am really glad you liked our game (Blazetris). The method of controlling figures like that is amazing and intuitive.
I am going to post a link to the video and your site from my personal blog (http://www.dminator.blogspot.com/) to spread the word even further.
February 2nd, 2007 8:43 am
Matt, does the thinkpadsensor works on 2 axis (2D) or all 3 axis (=3D, xyz-axis)??
February 2nd, 2007 10:08 am
Martin – It is a 2D accelerometer.
2D vs. 3D is probably a topic for another day and another topic for me to cover.
February 3rd, 2007 3:44 pm
Mr. Kohut,
It’s interesting you should mention it is a 2D accelerometer built in thinkpad (unlike MacBooks, which have 3D accelerometers). For its original purpose, which is to detect laptop motion during a drop, 2D probably serves fine. Since during a drop, the notebook is unlikely to move perfectly perpendicularly to the 1st and 2nd dimensions that the technology would fail.
February 5th, 2007 6:42 am
T60: This is however assuming you know in which axes each accelerometer is placed. For all you know, one accelerometer may be placed in the “z-axis”.
Even if they aren’t, you still are probably correct.
February 11th, 2007 3:05 am
[...] The Sudden Motion Sensor in IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads can be used for games, and with great success, too! [...]
February 15th, 2007 9:37 am
I have heard that the Lenovo sensor does NOT work on the “Z-axis”. Thats why I m asking.
February 25th, 2007 8:55 am
[...] This means that you can use your laptop to control e.g. a penguin sliding down a slide by tilting your laptop left and right. Going to http://www.lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=55 will tell you all you need to know and in just a few, quick easy steps you can be playing Wii-style in no time at all. [...]
March 1st, 2007 7:45 pm
Oh my god, this is the most retarded Idea I have ever heard. Has no-one else heard of the “tilt your CD player while playing and you’ll @%^@ up the CD” effect?
Spinning things take on angular momentum, and whenever you change the axis of their spin, you apply torque force to the spinning thing. So by tilting the axis of your thinkpad, it’s like actually pushing on the spinning parts of your hard-drive.
Plus the whole point of the sensor is that if you tilt the thing to wildly, it powers down the hard-drive to prevent damage. Why do you think it’s doing that, just to crash the machine? It’s a protection mechanism because excess torque is bad.
Yes hard-drives are pretty robust, but purposefully changing the spin angle of it quickly and for the purposes of games is just asking for some major trouble.
If you value your data, just buy some kind of motion sensor controler with USB interface to hook up to your computer. I’m sure that there are some out there.
March 27th, 2007 12:53 pm
[...] I like our accelerometer chip
April 29th, 2007 8:28 am
Another vote for Windows here. To be honest if you could just map a keystroke to left/right taps in windows would help with most of the virtual desktop software.
I’m currently using Virtual Dimension desktop manager for windows. Would love this tap feature in it.
May 11th, 2007 6:14 am
Hi, sorry for my English!
I have an IBM-Lenovo T60 with Active Protection System, correctly installed (Thinkvantage Real-Time status works). I’ve downloaded the tuxracer game and changed the SDL.dll file with the one you’ve recommended, but nothing changed in the game. I still cannot control Tux by moving the notebook.
I’m using Windows Vista Business Edition (32 bit) os.
Please help!
Thanks a lot! Kornél
July 26th, 2007 11:20 pm
[...] Thinkpad easter egg Its sad to see so many Thinkpads lying around in the office not doing what is supposed to do. Thanks to its Active Protective System aka Airbag, you can have Wii like experience in over 50 game titles available. [...]
August 14th, 2007 11:55 am
I have a wide-screen T60 that I use with an external keyboard and mouse. One of the things that I’d love to be able to do is similar to what you can do with many wide-screen LCDs: by tilting the display (the entire laptop in my case), it would be great if the screen re-configures itself to be in Portrait orientation (long-screen) instead of Landscape (wide-screen).
I suppose this needs something extra at the video card level, but maybe there’s an easy hack based on a 90-degree tilt detection from the sensors (?)
(This is a common thing to see in digital cameras these days as well – auto-rotation of your pictures after taking them and when viewing them on the built-in LCD. Why not laptops, too?)
December 16th, 2007 4:38 pm
My dream is to find a pinball game and use the accelerometer as a tilt sensor.
December 22nd, 2007 11:06 pm
[...] article is inspired by a recent post at LenovoBlogs.com by Lenovo’s Matt Kohut regarding "alternative" use of the ThinkPad’s built-in motion sensor. It’s a [...]
December 31st, 2007 3:35 pm
Do you know what input and output cords you need? I am having trouble hooking it up. I am wanting to play my wii on a laptop.
Thanks,
Adam
September 18th, 2008 7:01 pm
[...] http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=55 [...]
October 20th, 2008 5:19 pm
I cannot get neverball to work please help me. thanks
November 2nd, 2008 10:50 pm
NeverBall (and other games) for ThinkPad-Accelerometer / Windows can be found here:
http://usr.bplaced.de/index.ht.....c12b7c54c6
July 5th, 2009 10:38 pm
[...] ThinkPad = Nintendo Wii? Not quite, but close. [...]