Connectivity / realtime

Lightgun and phone-gyro utilities

WebRTC tools that turn a phone into a lightgun controller or a gyroscope-driven desktop mouse.

Published

  • WebRTC
  • DeviceOrientation API
  • TypeScript
Read the lightgun intro on arcade.gkheart.ca →

What they are

Two related utilities built on the same connection layer as the MIDI controller. The lightgun utility lets a phone act as a pointing controller for lightgun-style games on arcade.gkheart.ca, with a calibration step. The gyro mouse utility uses the phone's motion sensors to move a desktop pointer.

Calibration

Motion sensors drift and every person holds a phone differently, so raw orientation cannot be mapped straight to the screen. The utility asks the player to aim at known points, records the orientation at each, and builds a mapping from phone angles to screen coordinates.

Smoothing is a trade-off: too little and the cursor shakes, too much and it lags behind the hand. The filter is tuned so small jitter is removed while fast, deliberate movements still come through.

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