Blog Contact My Ace Centre Checkout 0800 080 3115 About Getting Started Resources Services Ace Centre Learning Get Involved < Back to general Ace Centre blog Introducing EyeCommander 26/11/2021 Share this article EyeCommander is a desktop application that uses your front facing camera to detect when you blink. EyeCommander then acts as a switch input to your communication software every time you blink allowing you to use switch scanning by blinking. Checkout this video which outlines what EyeCommander is and includes a short demo: Getting started with EyeCommander To install EyeCommander go to our page of downloads here and follow the instructions there. Watch our help series on YouTube which shows you how to install EyeCommander and calibrate it: Who would use EyeCommander? To help explain who might use EyeCommander we created two personas of individuals that would use EyeCommander. These personas are not based on specific individuals but a collection of people. Our first persona is Alexis Anderson. Alexis has had a brain stem stroke and we cannot find any body movement that we can use to trigger switches. She uses low tech AAC solutions, however she can only use these with a limited group of people who understand how to use them, she indicates to her communication partner using blinking. Alexis gets frustrated that she must rely on a communication partner especially when they aren’t available. A low-tech solution means Alexis has no means of environment control. Our second persona is Ben Brown. Ben has MND and currently uses EyeGaze in the morning when he has the most energy. In the afternoons Ben doesn’t have enough energy to use his EyeGaze so a low-tech solution. Ben is frustrated that he has learnt where all his vocabulary is on his high-tech device but can only access them when he has enough energy. Bens family is worried that he will be able to access his EyeGaze less as time goes on. Ben and Alexis are both examples of people who would benefit from using EyeCommander. Ben could use when he is tired, and he can continue to use the same grid sets no matter how much energy he has. Alexis can use EyeCommander so she can communicate independently with anyone and not rely on the presence of a partner. Prior art Detecting blinking is something that has been done before, however the solutions don’t work in every scenario. Android recently added a new accessibility feature to allow users to control their device using eye gestures. It is great and if an individual uses an Android app to communicate then this can be a great option to allow them to control is using Eye Gestures. Mac computers also have a similar solution built into their operating system to allow users to trigger switches using blinks or other facial gestures. Again, if you want to access your mac using facial gestures then this is a good option. We found that the Mac facial gestures don’t allow you to change and calibrate the detection enough for it to work for everyone. Another similar software solution to EyeCommander is SmyleMouse. Like EyeCommander it uses consumer grade hardware to facial gestures. However, SmyleMouse doesn’t detect blinks or other eye gesture we plan on supporting in the future. Other software solutions exist but we didn’t find they full met our needs. Other solutions include SViaCam and Blink1.5. Nous is a hardware device that users wear and detects their blinks. However, we wanted our solution to work on consumer grade hardware that was readily available. There are a variety of other hardware options on the market, such as IST Switch, EyeControl, and a-blinx. The main difference between EyeCommander and these previous solutions is that they allow you to control Windows and they work with consumer grade hardware meaning you can try out EyeCommander without having to purchase and maintain any hardware. Background EyeCommander was initially developed by a group of students and graduates as part of the Project Propel program to give professionals real world experience. They were given the brief to detect eye gestures using consumer grade hardware. The group created a machine learning model that could detect when someone looked up, down, left, or right. The machine learning model was trained using a varied set of videos of people doing these gestures. The model was then retrained to individual users so that it worked for them. The work the group did proved that it is possible to create a very accurate eye gesture detection algorithm. The current version of EyeCommander doesn’t use the eye gesture model but the plan is to include it in future versions. Future of EyeCommander EyeCommander will continue to be developed on by Ace Centre and the wider Ace Centre community. We have created a roadmap so you can see what our plans are for the project. You can see the roadmap of things we want to add here. If you want us to add anything to the roadmap let us know. We are looking for people to contribute to EyeCommander to help us add more features. If you want to contribute then check out the code on Github.. Have a read through of the open issues and comment if you want to get involved and we can help you get up and running. Feedback If you have any feedback on EyeCommander then email me at ghenderson@acecentre.org.uk More from General View all > General Service Finder Launch AAC AWARENESS MONTH – 31 TIPS FOR 31 DAYS General AAC Awareness Month – 31 Tips for 31 Days AAC AWARENESS MONTH General AAC Awareness Month 0800 080 3115 Office hours, 9AM - 5PM, Monday - Friday Help and support: Contact us Technical Support Home About Getting started Resources Services Ace Centre Learning Get involved My Ace Centre Ace Centre is a registered charity no. 1089313. Registered as a company limited by guarantee no. 04268143 (England & Wales). 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