It is so cold weather these days that even the room heater is failing to properly warm up the room. I am tucked under two layers of blankets as I am writing this – trying to keep from shivering. In such conditions, using a mouse becomes a real trouble – partly because mouse is cold to touch and your hands become cold again and again as you use the mouse. If you have a webcam attached to your computer, then you can save yourself from using the real mouse and control the mouse pointer by just moving your head. Moving the head in a direction, moves the mouse pointer – and hovering the pointer using your head performs a mouse click.
For this functionality, all you need is any standard working webcam and the eViacam (Enable Viacam) software which is freely available. After the installation, you have to pick one of the webcams installed in your computer. Most people have only one webcam, so they will have no problem picking the right one.
After this, it will show you a webcam preview in a small eViacam window. You should make sure your head is visible in the webcam video stream. Then it runs a configuration wizard where you have to choose various settings like whether you want it to detect the face automatically, calibrate the pointer, adjust the pointer speed and choose clicking functions. You can later adjust the settings from the eViacam window.
In order to enable the eViacam, you have to click (using your regular mouse) on the green checkmark button in the eViacam window toolbar. After this, you can try moving your head in different directions to see the mouse pointer move in that direction on your screen. This is a great way to control the pointer if the users have some disabilities or cannot use their hands at the moment.
It can also show an on screen keyboard and a mouse pointer controlling guide toolbar on the top of computer screen. This helper toolbar shows visible icons that can help youto control the pointer, dragging or clicking on various objects.
Conclusion: eViacam is a very helpful solution for controlling the mouse pointer efficiently if users have some disability and cannot use their hands at the moment. It lets you control the mouse pointer using your webcam through the motions of your head.
You can download eViacam from http://eviacam.sourceforge.net/.