Precise, Error-free Mouse Control
SmoothPoint™ is an innovative software application that allows you to take full control of your mouse or pointing device. Advanced algorithms use linear and nonlinear physics equations to reduce the effects of tremor, uneven control, and overshoot, giving you ultra-smooth, ultra-stable pointing and drawing.
Point and Click like a Pro
Even with movement disorders, coordination difficulties, or difficult-to-use pointing devices, SmoothPoint helps to restore the ability to fine-tune your mouse motions. It also improves mouse clicking by filtering for fewer inadvertent clicks, or alternately provides advanced Voice Clicking mode to completely avoid the need to press mouse buttons.
Superb Versatility
SmoothPoint works with a large variety of hardware devices and software: standard mouse, trackball, touch pad, head tracker, joystick, or switch controls. More than 10 control settings to fine-tune the mouse motion and clicking to match to your needs.
Who can use SmoothPoint?
SmoothPoint may be of use to a wide range of people who experience difficulties or frustration with the standard PC mouse. This can range from conditions such as Arthritis, Stroke, Parkinson’s Disease, ALS, MS, Cerebral Palsy, and others. The technology may also be helpful for people who just need a little extra smoothness in their mouse control, if their mouse is used in cramped or bumpy spaces such as in airplanes, trains, or buses, or if they’re using a less-than-friendly trackpad, trackball, or touchpad. The SmoothPoint is compatible with most other pointing devices, such as pens, 3-D mice, wands, joystickes, and tilt-based controllers.
System Requirements:
- Windows 7 or newer
- 2 GHz Processor, 1 GB RAM
- 20 MB hard disk space
- Wired or wireless mouse or pointing device
- Microphone (optional)
Get the SmoothPoint Brochure
Advanced Pointing Technology
SmoothPoint uses advanced signal-processing algorithms that have been under development in our lab for nearly 10 years, for a variety of applications where vibration, tremor, or unsteadiness needs to be reduced. These algorithms use a combination of traditional and not-so-traditional methods that detect the differences between wanted and unwanted movements using linear and nonlinear methods.
SmoothPoint algorithms try to distinguish between wanted and unwanted motions, and apply filtering only to the unwanted motions. Not a simple task – but we’ve been working on this sort of thing for more than 10 years! You may have tried other mouse filtering software, but it’s probably nothing like the SmoothPoint. Unlike simpler approaches that reduce tremor and vibration by making the pointer much slower and “mushy”, the SmoothPoint will be a welcome relief, because it lets you move quickly when you want to, while allowing you to be precise and steady when you’re zeroing-in on your target.
Advanced Clicking Technology
Ever find mouse clicks happening when you don’t want them to? SmoothPoint also provides technology to help with that. Options range from being able to completely turn off the effects of the right or left mouse button, to filtering the button presses, allowing only definite, longer presses to work, to filtering-out any mouse clicks that happen when you’re moving the mouse. Another powerful option is called “Voice Clicking”, which allows you to tell SmoothPoint when and how to click. For example, you can simply say “Right Click”, and SmoothPoint will do the right thing at the right time.
History of SmoothPoint
With the help of research grant funding from the National Eye Institute (NEI) of the National Institutes of Heath, Vortant Technologies has for several years been developing technology enabling visually-impaired users to use a standard mouse, but with special features to provide magnified, high-visibility results.
Based on customer requests and countless hours observing people using computers, we realized the underlying mouse-pointing technology from this research would be of use to many other people who use a computer mouse. We combined features of the NIH-funded project with other interface technology, such as from our ViVo Mouse® headtracker, and voila – the SmoothPoint was born. We are looking forward to serving many existing and new customers with this exciting new product.
Simple, but advanced controls
SmoothPoint has a wide range of adjustments for making the mouse behave the way you want it to. Some of the adjustments include:
- Control the overall speed of the mouse pointer.
- Control how much the pointer slows down when you’re zeroing-in.
- Specify the extent of tremors and vibrations to ignore.
- Control what types of mouse clicks will be ignored, for example, ones that are too short, the right button, etc.
- Allow left clicks, right clicks, drag/drop, and double clicks all to be made with a single mouse click.
- Allow clicks to be made from the keyboard instead of the mouse (for example, by pressing the control key).
- Choose whether to listen for “Voice Clicking” speech commands.
Speech Recognition Details
The SmoothPoint Voice Clicking option allows you to tell SmoothPoint when and how to click. This is especially useful if you’d rather not use the regular mouse buttons at all. For example, with Voice Clicking enabled, you can simply say “Left Click”, “Right Click”, “Drag”, or “Drop” and SmoothPoint will do the right thing at the right time. Additional voice commands allow you to move the pointer to a different location on the screen, avoiding the need to move it there by hand. For example, you can say “Mouse to left” to move the pointer to the left side of the screen, or “Mouse center” to move it to the center.
Speech recognition taps into the built-in Windows speech-recognition system. When enabled, Smooth Point connects with the speech-recognition already built into your computer and defines a set of 18 special commands you can use to enhance your point and click experience.
Although you can usually use a built-in laptop microphone for these commands, we recommend an external headset boom microphone or a desktop USB or analog microphone for optimum speech-recognition results.