Use the force, Maker!

Into

Controlling a servo just by the wave of your hand? The wet dream of every Star Wars fan, isn't it? Yeah, mine too! With Microsoft's Kinect or OpenCV and a webcam and a ton of programming you can do it! Or there is a tiny, little module for your Arduino or your Raspberry Pi that can handle some simple gestures. The APDS-9960 can do the job.
It can be set to three different modes. It can work as a proximity sensor. Well, of that we have quite enough in the Arduino world. It can also operate as a ambilight sensor. Not bad. With four of them - each for every corner of your TV - you can make your own low cost ambilight.
But the mode, we're looking for, is the gesture recognition mode. It can detect following hand-movements:
- left to right
- right to left
- up to down
- down to up
- close to far
- far to close

How to use

Well, this is a multi functional sensor. It is developed by SparkFun. Therefore SparkFun published a pretty good library with very useful examples. If you pick the GestureTest example, you can implement easily your own control mechanism.

Video

 Connections 

 Careful

There are some versions of the sensor, marked as APDS-9960, that are really a APDS-9930. That means they are lacking the coolest of all functions - the gesture recognition thing!

Links

SparkFun Library @ Github
APDS-9960 @ Amazon