It can be complicated to manage your playlist while doing household chores such as mopping the floors and laundry because your hands might be wet. This recently unveiled app called Brainwave will allow you to control your playlist as it replaces having to pick up a remote or swipe your phone screen with a simple gesture of waving your hand. The new app, created by the Oregon-based company OnTheGo Platforms, enables mobile gesture recognition using the camera at the front of the phone, a system known as Ari.
“It’s kind of like the Xbox Kinect but for a smartphone and with no added hardware,” Ryan Fink, chief executive of OnTheGo, stated in an interview with MailOnline.
‘The phone has to be in landscape mode, then, you put your hand over the phone at least a foot to almost three feet away. If you want to play or pause a song, you can put an open hand in front of the phone. Waving skips the song, while a wave in the other direction will take you to the previous track.”
Gestures to operate the app must be done within 1-3ft (30-90cm) away from the phone in order to be recognised. An open hand gesture mean to ‘play’ or ‘pause’, while waving to the left moves onto the next song and waving to the right takes you back to the previous song.
The Brainwave will be able to play music from all compatible music apps which includes, Pandora, iHeart, Spotify, Beats and Google Play. After selecting your preferred music playlist, you will be able to switch off the screen and still operate the app as it runs in background.
Creators of the Brainwave also stated that they are hoping to add gesture control that allows you to control the volume and like or dislike tracks.
A car mode to enable automatic activation when a user is driving is also currently being developed.
Although the app is now only available to download for free on Google Play for Android devices, an iOS version will be released in the near future.