DIY Gesture Recognition Module: Control Your Devices with a Wave

We have seen many types of control methods in electronic devices, including simple switches, rotary encoders, touch screens and even voice commands. Even though all of these methods work fine, we are always eager to try new methods for controlling our devices. One of which includes gesture recognition. Even the tech giant Google has been working on their own gesture recognition sensor named Project Soli. Inspired by that we have created our own gesture sensor. Our DIY module can be easily connected to a PC or Mac via a USB-C port, allowing you to control media playback, navigate applications, and perform any action that can be executed using a keyboard, all through intuitive gestures.

For gesture sensing we are using the APDS-9500 sensor from Broadcom. It is an imaging-based gesture recognition IC with an I2C-bus interface. It can recognise nine gestures, including move up, move down, move left, move right, move forward, move backwards, circle-clockwise, circle-counterclockwise and wave. An RP2040 ARM SoC from the Raspberry Pi Foundation is being used as the main controller. When it is plugged in the RP2040 will enumerate an HID device and whenever a gesture is detected it will send a corresponding pre-programmed response to the PC using HID protocol. An ADM7171 ultra low noise LDO from Analog Devices is used for generating the 3.3V line for the SoC and the Sensor. To ensure the proper operation of the SoC we have also included an ADM803 voltage supervisor chip, which is also from Analog Devices.