Leap Motion Controller (Interacts with your Mac or PC)

I got LeapMotion about two weeks after the launch, and like most people became sceptical following the mixed reviews. I'd like to say first and foremost that most of these bad reviews are naive, unjustified and unfair. As soon as I started playing with Leap Motion my faith was restored - thankfully!I'm sure that 90% of the bad reviews came from non developers, people who just expected to pick this up and never have to use a mouse again, that it would be as flawless as Minority Report and generally work perfectly from the offset. This kind of device is relatively new and therefore this was never going to be the case. As a would-be developer myself I fully appreciate the technical challenge that the team at Leap Motion have overcome and understand that it will take time to improve. I just wish other people would understand this as well.So should you buy one? Well, if you're expecting a mouse replacement then no. But if you appreciate great innovative technology, want a new creative way to interact with your computer, fancy yourself a developer and want to get ahead of the game, or simply have a bit of fun with some really cool apps then most certainly yes. And at £70 you can't really complain.

This is one of those products that is really not ready for Prime Time.When you buy it, you are expecting something that would give you the "Minority Report" feeling, but no...For this controller to be really useful, it requires that it be heavily integrated into the software application (the software really needs to be ready for this type of hardware, and you can see that with Google Earth. If you have it installed, the LEAP Controller allows you to "fly" over the earth, but this is as close as you get to the Minority Report feeling).Another problem I found was that, the LEAP, I think correctly, implemented an App Store (Like Google/Apple), BUT, most of the applications are pay only, and the ones that you really want to try, the Computer Control are either very limited, or Pay. I actually bought 2 of the remote control applications GameWave and Pointable, in order to try to fully explore the controller, but was disappointed by the functionality they provided.Even though both Apps show potential, they, like a lot of the of the apps in the store, lack polish. They are either have very limited documentation, or very limited configuration options, and when you are just starting with the controller, these things are killers.I found GameWave interesting, and it seems to be highly configurable, but it is not accompanied by documentation required (or tutorial / video tutorial) that shows you how all those options work together. I tried to set up a configuration for a game, and found that, outside of the basic movement, I really wasn't able to get very far. I couldn't adjust, or knew how to adjust, the controls to make it usable. For computer control, I tried the settings packages available and found that, it really wasn't as functional as Pointable, and do to the sensitivity of the controller, I really couldn't manage to control anything. Just to much jitters of the hands I think.Pointable on the other hand, was more directed to Computer Control, and it had pretty decent tutorial on how to use the hand gestures, but, on the other hand, no real configuration settings. I found the Pointable menus too big, but worse, the lock time of the pointer, so that you can do the click actions and such, to fast to really be usable. By the time I tried to do the click gesture, the pointer had already released, and I was clicking somewhere else on the screen.... This is one of those cases, where if adjusted properly, at least in the beginning, when you are trying to get use to the system, you might actually get it to work correctly (by making it less sensitive to hand jitter and increasing things like the lock time for the pointer).In all cases, I found that:1. Your hands trembling was a problem.2. Continued use, with your hands over the controller, really puts a stray on your muscles.3. Not really as accurate, or as fast, as a mouse (this won't be replacing the mouse any time soon).4. The apps either had, poor documentation, or poor configuration options.5. The basics, for what you want to use this controller, are payed. So you really can't use it without wasting more money. Most of the interesting apps like Pointable/Air Input, are all payable, with no demo mode. So unless you want to buy them, one by one, just to try them, you really are only left with the less used/developed and featureless remote control apps.This controller shows promise, if the applications decide to create hooks that allow it's use, but otherwise it would probably go the same way as speech recognition, just another interesting gimmick.

For me the leap controller fails at the first hurdle. Not because it will never replace a mouse: to be fair the company says that it isn't intended to. It fails because the videos used to advertise the Leap show many different types of activity being controlled effortlessly with an intuitive hand movement. Once you download the software, find the app store, work out what apps you need (including Touchless for Windows), you will probably share my view that it is far from effortless. Have you seen the video showing scrolling and selection of links in a browser window and then resizing of the page using pinch zoom? Unfortunately, implementation of this was horrible in IE9 or chrome (Windows 7). In IE 10 you can just about do what is shown on the videos, but it's fiddly and much of the time simple gestures didn't do what was intended, i.e. the Leap selected an item when page scroll was intended, or scrolled a very small distance when a larger movement was intended, or unexpectedly minimized the entire window etc. One basic problem is that the controller doesn't simply look at hand/finger movements. To implement an action, you have to advance your fingers into the vertical plane of sensitivity until markers on the screen turn green. This means that unlike a touch screen, where you make contact and then apply the gesture, you have to find the invisible activation plane and make the gesture within that plane. If you are doing this at normal speed, it is likely that some of the gesture will occur outside the activation plane, which will be wrongly or partially interpreted. Games might be better, I didn't investigate. However, before you buy the Leap, read the accumulating reviews on amazon.com (i.e. US) and other websites. Typically, they give a score of just over 2 out of 5, which seems about right. Perhaps Leap requires a new skill that must be learned. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that even if I developed this skill as completely as possible, the Leap would ever be the method of choice for anything other than games (possibly). As it stands, it's about as natural, intuitive and satisfying as attempting to pleasure yourself with your left foot. Finally, for those who have questioned whether I have a Leap Controller...yes, unfortunately I do. But not for long.

I bought this item in order to control my Windows PC without a mouse and keyboard.It works very well however I found that any items that enter the sensor will distort it such as a long sleeve or a watch, however this is to be expected.The item is fun and comes with a number of games which allow you to play with the abilities.I would recommend this item to others.