Control Mouse Movement by your Hand or Head Gestures with NPointer

if you need to work much on the computer (like me) and tend to take small breaks to sit back and lean on the chair, then you must have felt the need of some wireless mouse controller then this post is worth reading. In case you just wish to have some gesture controlled mouse controller, then also this post is going to interest you.

There are lot of tools in the market using which you can control your mouse without any direct contact. Some of them use the webcam to recognize your movements and convert the signals into mouse movements. One good tool that does the same and does well is called the NPointer.

NPointer is an application for gestural computer control in which hand movements are recorded by the webcam connected to your PC and then translated into the mouse movements. The application can also decode the usual mouse operations like clicks, double-clicks, drags and scrolls. Also, disabled people can also use the head movements to control the computer.

To get started you just need to install the tool in your system and then configure it to recognize your hand/head movements. If you plan to use your hand for the mouse control, then place them on the table and keep the webcam straight up. You may wave the hands in air too but table method is better for error free recognition.

You then need to configure some settings like Motion Speed (how fast the pointer will move compared to the hand movement), Acceleration (how fast the pointer accelerates when hand motion speed changes), Menu timeout (how long the pointer should stay idle before action menu appears) and Movement cut-off (how fast the hand should move to ignore the movement. This is used when you wish to remove the hands without disturbing the pointer position). If you check the Head/Frontal Control box, then you can use you head in place of hands to control the mouse movements.

You will now see some controls on the screen which can be used to perform the same operations as performed otherwise. The tool is free to use and works well on all versions of Windows. You can read more about it at the link below.

Download NPointer

Some Mouse Tricks you might not know

Using mouse is very easy and comfortable which is why we use it daily in our lives. But there are some mouse tricks that not all people know, so here is a list of few of them.

1. Vertical Text Selection

This is one trick which 90 % people dont know about this so i am sharing this as not all people know that it is possible to select text vertically in a word editor like MS Office. This trick does not work in simple text editors like Notepad.

Just hold the Alt button before selecting the text with the mouse and this will enable you to select it vertically.

2. Multiple Text Selection

Similar to the tip above, if you hold Ctrl before selecting the text in a powerful text editor like MS Word, you can actually select multiple lines of texts independently.

The selected text will be appended when you hit the paste button.

3. Use of Right Mouse Button for Dragging file/folder

  

While dragging the files/folders using the left mouse button, there is couple of different options that we get like if you drag a file inside the same Drive, left button will actually move the file whereas if you drag it on to a different drive, then it will copy the file.

But if you use Right mouse button in place of the left, then you will get a hidden option asking you to either move or copy the file.

4. Close or Open Tabs quickly with Middle Mouse Button

Wondering what’s the use of the middle mouse button (or the scroll wheel click in newermouses)? Well you can quickly open a new tab if you middle click on a link without the need of actually right clicking and selecting the option of “open in a new tab”

Similarly if you middle click on a tab, it will get closed instantly. Don’t believe me, try it.

Note: Scroll wheel also acts as a middle mouse button, just click the wheel to record the middle click.

5. Hidden Context options

Whenever you right click on any file/folder you come across some standard options but do you know if you hold the Shift button before clicking the right mouse button, you will actually come across lot many hidden options.

Not only the context menu, there will be more options in the each context menu option like send to etc.