APDS-9960 Gesture uInput

About

apds-gesture-uid uses the gesture recognition of a APDS-9960 to simulate keyboard input by using the Linux uinput kernel module. This small script uses python-apds9960 and python-uinput to allow to control your GUI with gestures.

The APDS-9960 is able to detect 4 directions which will trigger a virtual keypress. The default config maps:

Direction	Key
UP	Page Up
DOWN	Page Down
LEFT	Left
RIGHT	Right

Config

The python configuration file is /etc/gesture-ui.conf. The following settings are recognized:

I2C_PORT - the SMBus port number
GMAPPINGS - defines which gesture direction should trigger which key presses
POLLING_SLEEP - sleep between polling for new gesture recognition events

If the MQTT bridge modus is used, apds-gesture-uid-pub and apds-gesture-uid-sub are using the following MQTT settings:

MQTT_HOST - the MQTT broker hostname or ip address
MQTT_OPTS - connection options (see also connect method of the Paho MQTT python client)
MQTT_TOPIC - the MQTT topic used for publish and subscribe

Install

Prerequisites

On Raspberry Pi you need to enable the I²C bus. See also the documentation at the the python-apds9960 module.

Install git, python-smbus and virtualenv:

# apt-get install git python-smbus virtualenv

Download source

# git clone --recursive https://github.com/liske/apds-gesture-ui.git /opt/apds-gesture-ui

Kernel module

The apds-gesture-ui and the apds-gesture-ui-sub scripts require the kernel module uinput.ko to be loaded:

# modprobe uinput

Put uinput into /etc/modules to load the module during system boot automaticly.

Python modules

It is recommended to create a dedicated virtualenv where the python modules required by apds-gesture-uid will be installed:

create new virtualenv

# virtualenv --system-site-packages /opt/apds-gesture-ui/venv

enter the virtualenv

# . /opt/apds-gesture-ui/venv/bin/activate

install Python-uinput

# pip install python-uinput

install Paho MQTT python client (optional)

# pip install paho-mqtt

Configuration

Copy the example default config file and customize it:

# cp /opt/apds-gesture-ui/ex/apds-gesture-ui.conf /etc/

System service

This project contains example systemd.service files (see ex/). For activation copy the service file to /etc/systemd/system/ and change the containing paths to match you environment:

# cp /opt/apds-gesture-ui/ex/apds-gesture-ui.service /etc/systemd/system/
# systemctl daemon-reload
# systemctl start apds-gesture-ui.service
# systemctl status apds-gesture-ui.service