Developer Mike DiGiovanni of Roundarch Isobar, is on a roll. Yesterday, we were the first to report on his lock screen for Glass, today we’re happy to announce Mike has done it again, enabling the hidden dormant code for taking a picture with Glass just by winking.
Winking lets you lifelog with little to no effort.
Introducing Winky, a native (Android app) Google Glass application that allows you to take photos with just a wink. Winky allows you to take photos with Glass while the screen is off, completely hassle-free. You don’t need to wake Glass up and say ‘ok glass, take a picture’. To get started, all you have to do is the install the app on Glass (via ADB), run the app, and use the touchpad to calibrate. After calibration is complete. Just wink.
How did he do it? Mike says:
“The big technical hurdle turned out to simply be that at least one spot on Glass does some checking against the build type and disables the wink gesture completely if it’s a user build and it ever detects a wink. I was able to get around this by intercepting the wink with a higher priority than anything else.”
Mike speculates that Glass is able to accomplish this by a sensor located on the black strip on the inside of Glass, the same area that a microphone exists. Glass does calculations on eye close length and rates your wink to determine if you blinked or if you winked.
To see Winky in action, you can watch Mike take a photo just by winking over on his Google+ page. For more information, checkout Winky on GitHub. You’ll have to compile it yourself as Mike won’t be providing any installable APK’s at this time.