MAKE_Conference_Badge-CESThey say you can’t judge a book by its cover, which is especially true on the floor of CES. Some of the most nondescript booths have some of the most amazing things and some of the largest, glitziest booths show nothing but ho-hum technology. In the former category, you have Leap Motion. Tucked in the back of one of the smaller halls, they only have a pair of conference rooms and a small sign with their company logo. It becomes clear that you probably need to have an appointment to see what’s going on inside. But that doesn’t stop people from trying to get a look, especially since Leap Motion is on the brink of releasing a product that technology enthusiasts are eager to get their hands on.

The Leap Motion Controller, a motion sensing human input device for computers, was first unveiled in a video last May and the excitement for it was viral. Since then, their engineers have been working with a select group of third party developers to create software so that the product can have commercial success when it’s released at the end of this quarter. But that doesn’t mean that small developers and hackers are locked out. Along with the release of the peripheral, they’ll be opening up their SDK for anyone to play around with it. According to Michael Zagorsek, the company’s Vice President of Product Marketing, they want “people to go far and wide and do whatever they can with it.” Check out the video above to see a demo of the technology and hear about their strategy for releasing a product that’s open to developers.

BY Matt Richardson

Matt Richardson is a Brooklyn-based creative technologist, contributing editor for MAKE magazine, and co-author of Getting Started with Raspberry Pi. He's also the owner of Awesome Button Studios, a technology consultancy. Highlights from his work include the Descriptive Camera (a camera which outputs a text description instead of a photo) and The Enough Already (a DIY celebrity-silencing device). Matt's work has been featured at The Nevada Museum of Art, The Rome International Photography Festival, Milan Design Week and has garnered attention from The New York Times, Wired, and New York Magazine.

9 Responses to MAKE at CES 2013: Hands on with the Leap Motion Controller

  1. Pingback: MAKE | MAKE at CES 2013: So Long, CES!

  2. SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY

  3. rocketguy1701 on said:

    Took my money last May, can’t wait to see what this does to the 3D modeling landscape. The biggest inhibitor to using my 3D printer to it’s full capacity is the absurd difficulty with the current state of UI in 3D modeling. Nothing is remotely as easy as it could be.

  4. Jack Van Gossen on said:

    Would love to see this as a 3D mouse for SolidWorks. Would make life much easier.

  5. Jim Gage on said:

    Minecraft…

  6. Awesome! Use LEAP to change the future of TV as we know it! Now I’d like to see that! http://www.bemyapp.com/tvhack/

  7. Pingback: MAKE | Hacking on the Frontier of Gestural Input

  8. Pingback: MAKE | MAKE at the Game Developers Conference

  9. Pingback: MAKE at the Game Developers Conference - IT Clips

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