SmartNav 4:AT Natural Point Hands Free Mouse

I am a long-term sufferer of repetitive strain injury in my hands and wrists, being a really hard-core computer user. It feels like I’ve tried everything to decrease strain and increase the amount of time I can actually spend using the computer pain-free. I’ve gone through six keyboards (many of them 'ergonomic' ones), tried vertical mice, tried adjusting my position with respect to the keyboard/mouse in every way possible. I just don’t think that people were meant to spend as much time using the computer with as much intensity as I do.I had kind of found a solution using Dragon NaturallySpeaking and a Logitech wireless touchpad. This was pretty comfortable, and I could get away with 5 to 8 hours of computer usage pain-free. However the limitation of voice recognition is that there are situations where you just need to point and click. Dragon NaturallySpeaking’s on-screen mouse is clunky at best. Moreover, I was finding that even using voice recognition for all text entry, the touchpad was proving an issue, comfort wise.So I decided to shell out the money for SmartNav and the SmartNav baseball cap. I have to admit that when I first got this, my first impression was that there is no way I going to use it. I felt like there should be some kind of auto-calibration or something, but instead, you have to manually adjust the cursor settings until you find something that works for you. It’s not easy, and I definitely wouldn’t say I was able to switch to using the SmartNav instead of a mouse as soon as I got it.It took me a couple of weeks to figure out the correct settings and to physically get used to it before I lost the strong urge to switch back to the touchpad. In order to have any precise control, I needed to bring the cursor speed right down (so I’ve set the pointer speed in the Windows 'Mouse Properties' to the lowest value and the SmartNav cursor speed to 10.) The other half of the coin is I did have to get used to the low cursor speed (e.g. if the mouse is in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, sometimes you have to move your head up and to the left to give yourself more room to move the mouse to the lower right-hand part of the screen). However, after some getting used to, it does seem natural.I find that the precision approaches that with the mouse, but not exactly. I still have difficulty with things like graphics design which require very exact precision, and for which I will switch back to the mouse/touchpad. It’s not that I can't do graphic design with the SmartNav; I definitely can, it just takes longer, and I get impatient. However, for pretty much everything else (word processing, navigating through windows, clicking web links, etc.) I’ve had no problems. As an aside, I’ve only really been using the device for about a month now off and on, and I suspect it’s one of those psychomotor practice things that you get better at the longer you do.But, I have had good results in terms of the repetitive strain with the SmartNav. For clicking, I use the Logitech touchpad buttons as they’re pretty easy to press. If the clicking gets a bit strenuous, which unfortunately can be an issue for me, I’ve also put the touchpad on the ground and used my toe to click. Obviously, with no hands involved, hand strain becomes a nonissue.In my view, the SmartNav was definitely worth it, although I was quite skeptical at first. I really think that with any manual input device, if you use it long enough, and hard enough, it will start to hurt. The SmartNav allows you to get around that, although it does take a bit of persistence.

The SmartNav 4:AT is an excellent hands-free mouse. I'm a computer scientist and use it all day long. Along with voice recognition, It allows me to use the computer often more efficiently than with a traditional mouse+keyboard setup. The support is very active on their forum in case you have any issue.How SmartNAV works:SmartNav uses an infrared (IR) camera to track your head movements. Learn more about the technology. You reflect IR light back to the SmartNav, which sends instructions to your computer to move your mouse cursor.HOW DOES THE TECHNOLOGY WORK? Infrared light is emitted from the LEDs and is reflected back to the imager by a corner cube reflector (3M safety material). This reflected light is imaged by a CMOS sensor and the video signal is passed to the preprocessing electronics. The video signal is thresholded against a reference level and all passing data is sent to the USB microcontroller to send to the PC for object tracking. In order to increase the signal to noise ratio an IR filter that passes only 800nm and above is placed between the imager lens and the outside world. The SmartNav can image any IR source; typically this is reflective material or an active IR source such as an LED. A user may track many different objects by placing reflective dots or LEDs on the object. The SmartNav has a 45 degree field of view and anything being tracked must stay in that field of view.HOW IS MY HEAD MOVEMENT TRACKED? SmartNav tracks reflections from a tiny dot, which you can place anywhere.Place our paper thin tiny reflective dot on the part of your body you'd like to control the cursor with. Preferred options include: Head Hand Hat Glasses Mic Boom You can also make your own reflective marker with NaturalPoint's high-quality tracking material available on our Accessories page.WHERE DO I PUT THE SMARTNAV? SmartNav mounts on top of your monitor, laptop or communication device facing you. SmartNav can also be threaded onto a mini tripod and sit next to your computer. The device can be placed anywhere as long as it can see the reflective accessory you've chosen to wear.HOW MUCH DO I MOVE? Less than an inch of head movement is more than enough to move the cursor across your entire screen. This is also adjustable in the software SPEED settings. SmartNav has a 45 degree Field of View (FOV), and usually sits about 2 feet away from your head. Thus you have almost two feet of free "head space" in which to move that simple inch.HOW DO I CLICK? SmartNav offers multiple clicking options. Hotkeys: Re-map keys from your keyboard and assign them to emulate the Left, Right and Middle mouse buttons. Dwell-Clicking Software: Click by hovering the cursor in one spot for a small (and adjustable) amount of time. A full dwell-clicking system and on-screen keyboard are included in the AT software package, allowing for total hands free operation. Ability Switches: Industry standard input switch support allows you to plug two click switches into SmartNav for more clicking options. Choose from our full selection of hand and foot switches on our Accessories page.I wrote an article about it exploring other solutions: francky.me/publications.php#mouse2012

I have owned the SmartNav 4 AT Natural Point less than two years and I have had constant problems with it. The system will run fine for a while and then the cursor will jump frentically all over the screen totally out of control. For someone who does not have hands this was seemingly the best option for computer usage. Until the company is able to work the problems out of the system, hopefully they can and when they do - send me one to replace this one, I would not recommend this to anyone. Because it becomes so frustrating for a handicapped person to believe they have bought something that would give them access to the computer world. It is totally frustrating... Sorry SmartNav