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My idea for a project is to build a joystick/mouse that is held in the air by your hand and the direction is selected by tilting the joystick in the direction you want to go. This is similar to the way a Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad worked from a few years ago. An rough mechanical design would call for a pendulum-like object that and 4 to 8 optical or magnetic or mechanical sensors that would be tripped when part of the pendulum moved near. From here, a signal would be sent out of the device either to a preprocessor to amplify the signal and eventually into the DAQ card for the computer. From here, the input would be processed and a C program or Labview interface would have a cursor that the joystick would control with a graphical interface. It also would be possible to add a button to the controller that would start could make the cursor draw when pressed.