This project will only be funded if at least $55,000 is pledged by .
Gestor is a cool looking air mouse with touch ring buttons. If you rotate it in your hands, it scrolls the content on your screen!
About this project
What is Gestor?
What is Gestor? First of all - it is an air computer mouse! Why air? Because you can use in without any surface. Just pick it up, touch the first, lower control ring with any of your fingers, it becomes operational, and you can move a cursor on your computer screen by tilting Gestor up or down, back and forth. You can use it with any computer and any device that supports a traditional USB mouse.
How is it different from any other wireless air mouse? Well, there is more than just a computer mouse and it looks very cool, don’t you think?
There is no much innovation in just making an air mouse. Our key innovation is that we brought an extra dimension to anything that existed so far. When conventional air mouse is tilted, the horizon “is lost” and such tilt is considered “a bad thing” for mouse operation. In Gestor, we make use of tilting! The tilting or rotating our air mouse is a good thing - we use it for scrolling or zooming the screen content. And with our algorithms, we always keep track of the horizon, or vertical if you wish, so when the scrolling motion is over and you start moving Gestor to the left or right, the cursor on the screen will also move to the left or right, correspondingly!
Gestor has three “rings”, that are touch sensitive. The lower ring or control ring (pictured black on the picture above) is the equivalent of “turn on/off” button. When it is touched by any of the fingers, Gestor is awake and operational. When it is not touched, Gestor is asleep.
Basic operation of the Gestor as a mouse - simply touch the lower control ring with your index finger to activate the device, then tilt the Gestor side to side to move from side to side, tilt Gestor up to move up and down to move down. Rotating Gestor enables you to smoothly scroll up and down, or zoom in and out, depending on the application.
When our Gestor goes into such scrolling or rotation mode, the mouse functions are frozen and the cursor is not moving. Ultimately, rotating Gestor can be configured to any action on the computer or specific device it is used with. By default, it is scrolling up and down if you are browsing the Internet or reading a book or a long document. If you are looking at Google maps, rotating Gestor will zoom in and out the map, so it becomes really fun exploring the world.
You don’t need to point Gestor to a screen, just visually align a cursor on the screen with your hand and use Gestor the way most suited for your current body position.
The next two rings are mouse buttons. By default, the next ring after the control ring is the left mouse button, the one touched more often. The upper one is the right button. The buttons can be re-assigned in our Gestor driver settings, available for both Mac OS and Windows operation systems.
Gestor buttons have gentle haptic feedback, so when they are touched you can feel tiny vibrations of the Gestor, strong enough to be assured that the button is touched and the action is completed. So using Gestor is really fun and no special training is needed.
Gestor has few special modes of operation. One of them is when it is close to being vertical or completely vertical, cursor movement on the screen is frozen (due to some very specific air mouse operation peculiarities) and Gestor only supports scrolling or zooming.
You can place the Gestor as on the picture above and scroll, for example, webpage or a book down and up by gently rotating Gestor with 2 fingers on the control ring.
The other is the option of fast-scrolling the contents. Just twist Gestor real fast and freeze it in your hand for a little bit - your screen contents will start constantly scrolling up or down and it will continue so until you either move Gestor or twist it a bit. Then, scrolling on the screen stops and you are in the place of your document where you wanted to be. Here is a short instructional video that shows how to use Gestor:
Gestor is battery powered with one AAA battery. When the lower control ring is not touched, it goes to sleep, consuming very little power. When the lower ring is touched, Gestor awakes in about a second and you can start using it. We estimate that with average daily usage, one AAA battery will last for several months or even more. To change the battery just unscrew the bottom cap and place the new battery and screw the cap back in its place.
Here are few photos summing up basic Gestor operation modes and buttons.
Scrolling or zooming is very easy - just don't forget to touch the control ring when you rotate Gestor in your hands.
All Gestors come with an USB stick. The USB stick is preconfigured and paired with each Gestor. When you plug in the USB gestor stick, the computer or other media interface accepts it as a conventional, wired mouse. There is no need to configure gestor to work with your computer Bluetooth interface. The gestor is connected via BT with the USB stick, and the USB stick works like a wired mouse. Easy and simple. This is the easiest way for a user to install Gestor on your computer.
Gestor is really not larger than a marker. We chose such size so it fits comfortably in most hand sizes, from small kid to men’s XL size. Gestor is pained with a soft-touch paint, giving a smooth and comfortable feeling when you touch it.
Use of Gestor beyond computers
You can connect Gestor to a media player that supports an USB mouse. Then, you can use as a mouse on the screen. If you roll it when you watch a movie from a media player, it will quickly fast forward screen contents. What a replacement of bulky remotes from 80s, eh!
Rotate the Gestor and it scrolls the screen content or does certain pre-defined action - this is truly a new dimension to modern UI, not limited or bounded by a home computer or laptop. This is our key innovation we are very proud of it. We believe that in future, such minimalistic approach to a controller with multi-dimensional functionality will be used for many applications - smart TV, media centers, VR helmets, smart homes, you name it.
One of the most uprising application is clearly personal VR sets. Having a helmet on your head does not give you much freedom in selecting convenient controllers to operate, such as a table mouse or a keyboard. You can comfortably use Gestor as a mouse with VR set that can take an USB or BT mouse as an input and enjoy the freedom of navigating and scrolling with Gestor!
Making prototypes and project timeline
We have made countless prototypes. Honestly, we can’t really count them backward! Tubes, plastics, colors, gestors with and without wire - you name it. This is the best gestor design and performance we have come up for today.
We have been working on Gestor for just over a year now. We have now manufactured and tested many prototypes, perfected the firmware, but we have also carefully selected our suppliers - well established, local companies in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. This should ensure you that we carefully planned for delivery and are all 100% dedicated to our promises.
Rewards
We offer Gestors in 4 colors: white with black plastic button-separating rings (white Gestor), white with black plastic button-separating rings and black touch control ring, black with white plastic button-separating rings (black Gestor), black with white plastic button-separating rings and white touch control ring. All gestors are painted with soft-touch paint, giving a smooth and comfortable feeling when you touch it.
All gestors, regardless of your color choice, cost the same. You may not worry about the color style right now, just pick the reward that suits you best and we will personally ask you in separate email for your color choices later. If for some reason, you won’t provide us a feedback on your color choice until the shipping date, we will pick a color for you!
There is a special offer on only 100 gestors in special, hand-made wooden case, with magnetically attached cover and laser engraving “GESTOR” on top. What can we say - it is a perfect gift for someone special!
These are the reward options:
The Team
Our team is truly international and covers all aspects of product life cycle - from equations to dollars! You can find more detailed bio about every team member on our website - www.gestordevices.com
Thank you!
On the course of our project, there have been a number of people who helped us one way or the other, and we thank them all! But few people shared and contributed with a bit more than their time and we would like to thank them personally. Here are our heroes:
Nick Degtyarev
Natalya and Paul
Konstantin Molokanov
Ruben Shakhbazyants
Maria Aldoshina
Andrey Dukov
Anatoly Emelianov
Risks and challenges
We have already spent a lot of time working on designing and testing Gestor. It is already close to being a serial product and is really far from the early prototype stage, when we started a year ago. We are absolutely confident that we will deliver the Gestors to you if our project will be funded. We’ve done our best to mitigate any risk but we understand that every new device faces challenges.
We have carefully selected subcontractors for the Gestor parts. It is local companies in Calgary for plastic injection molding, metal tubes cutting, painting, PCB manufacturing and final assembly. For initial non-recurring manufacturing costs, we need your help! The success of this project depends on you. So we hope you'll want to join us and be part of this new pointing device creation endeavor!
And we would like to hear feedback on how you, the real users of it, think it can be improved or made better. We are dedicated to keep working on it and make a perfect product for user experience!
Thank you,
Gestor Devices Team
FAQ
Have a question? If the info above doesn't help, you can ask the project creator directly.