Leap USB Motion Controller for Mac or PC (Retail Packaging and Updated Software)

This review is as a UI developer interested in new ways to control both 2D and virtual environments. Before you judge it's ability to track movements, make sure you actually check out the visualizer in the control panel. Don't judge on the basis of a lot of the apps, which don't always translate the hand movements as well as they could. It does tend to get confused any time your hands are very close together or fingers are blocking other fingers, etc. This should not be especially surprising and is not something they'll likely be able to mitigate any further than they already have until they do the obvious and make it possible to add a 2nd sensor mounted on your screen to fill in the missing data that the software is currently doing best-guess work to fill in. That said, I think they're making excellent use of the limited perspective difference they have from those sensors in a product this young. What I have here is a very cheap way to start implementing wave of the hand type stuff, pinches, 3D manipulation, etc. There are some gestures that simply aren't going to work as well as others and that's okay for now. It's still opening up a whole world of opportunity that I'm looking forward to experimenting with and I don't think there's enough people out there taking a step back and going a little more abstract with 2D interface stuff. Getting it to run was as easy as it gets. I plugged it in. Drivers installed. I downloaded the core app from the web and immediately started using it. Whether this is a great product for non-developers really comes down to the quality of the software taking advantage of it and whether you have any use for it. In that regard, it certainly isn't indispensable yet. But for what it actually is, which looks like 3 IR sensors split about an inch apart looking to isolate and make sense out of your hands and forearms, the core software is doing a great job. The rest is up to the apps and the huge UI conversation that's starting to happen around these technologies. If you're curious about it and the cost doesn't require severe adjustments to your weekend plans, you'll definitely get a few hours of fun out of it and have something neato to show friends/family. That's not really a waste in my book but I suspect this product or something like it will eventually be standard equipment on laptops and possibly keyboards/monitors for desktops. With a second perspective angle, it should work brilliantly, but even with just one, it opens up worlds of possibilities.

The leap motion on it's own with the control panel & visualizer are excellent. Although calibration is a bit hard to do without a wide screen. I'd suggest using a tv, it works pretty quickly. For SteamVR users, trying to get the leap motion to work for steamVR and getting SteamVR to recognize it is very tough to get functional. It's taken me over 10 hours to get steamVR to recognize it using third party drivers from GitHub,Drivers4VR, and reddit. There is no stable intergration for most VR services for the leap motion even for VRridge or RiftCat. If there was a way for Leap Motion and SteamVR to make it stable & usable for VR games it would be such a blessing and worth the money.

Picked up Leap Motional controller on a whim and after figuring out it needed a USB 3 port got it working. Using it to add some animations to my 3d models. Not into VR, but this product might be the nudge I need to take the full dive.

Incredible tool! I researched well before buying and saw that the reviews were all over the board. I dismissed many of the naysayers and went ahead and ordered the controller. I quickly received it and, although my initial experience was not smooth as I had hoped/expected, once I was able the software loaded properly, I was completely amazed. It did take me a couple of hours from start to finish to actually have my hands appear on the screen (this issue could probably be because my lack of knowledge). I do not see this as being a placement for the mouse; instead, it can be a great aid to incorporate gestures in a novel fashion into one's program (I am using the Unity3d game engine - which is well supported by the Leap Controller).

Oh boy, where to start... I guess I should have read the reviews prior to making the purchase, though honestly, the reviews that exist aren't really enough. It's a cool idea, and I believe that the hardware itself is actually pretty capable, but it's severely underdeveloped. 1. This thing gets HOT, FAST. It didn't burn me, but even when idle, this thing pumps out heat like a freshly activated chemical hand-warmer. It's not necessarily surprising that it got warm, but this is much hotter than I could have reasonable expected. 2. Tracking is sadly rather atrocious. I'm actually really impressed with the software I tried this with as, based on what I saw with the provided visualizer, the data coming from the device is highly volatile and mostly inaccurate. Even with my palms flat facing the Leap and my fingers spread out, it struggled to properly represent my hands, regularly losing my thumbs and bouncing between having my hands face-up/face-down. It will easily lose fingers if they are too close together, unless all of your fingers are in the same position, then it may get the fingers right. Now, looking though verbiage littered around the product's website and store page, it is subtly marketed for gesture tracking with an innate capability for minor motion tracking. It doesn't really deserve to call itself a motion controller because it appears to be mostly useless on that front. I want to believe it has potential, but they have 7+ years of active development on this device and it's still, well, mediocre at best. I would like to throw in that it does seem pretty quick to respond, it's just too bad that the response itself is frequently wrong. 3. The cables they provide are too short, one is meant to be short as it's for desktop mode, but it's so short that I can't even use it for my setup despite my desktop being right below my desk. The longer cable is meant for VR mode, but again, you'll have to be right next to your desktop and you'll only be able to achieve about 180 degrees of movement with it. You may be able to connect it to the USB port on a VR headset to get room-scale, but they recommend you connect directly to a PC due to bandwidth limitations of the VR headsets [I can't speak for the Oculous, but the Vive uses a USB 2.0 connection for the Hub to PC connection, which would negate this devices usage of USB 3.0, and cameras on the headset[s] are going to eat up that bandwidth too]. Their website directs you to a developer page that has you download the main driver installer bundled with the SDK if you click the "VR setup" link, which is unnecessary as, from what I can tell, the bundled installer is the same as what is provided with the "Desktop mode" link. The SDK is useless for anyone who doesn't plan on using this for development, so directing people who intend to use this with VR is a bad assumption on their part IMO. The actual setup was pretty straight forward once you navigate through their questionable instructions, install the driver, plug it in, and boom, it works, no restart, no lengthy install process. All in all, this is probably the most disappointing purchase I've made in the past 6 to 7 years and I'm normally EXTREMELY forgiving with developing tech as I am a professional software developer and understand that good things take time and effort, but this just doesn't look like it's ever going to get anywhere. Since I am a developer, I plan on playing around with this device to get a better idea of what it can do and will update this review if I feel that it has some redeeming qualities, but that update will likely be geared towards other developers. As far as a consumer goes, I can't call this device "consumer ready" yet, but I may play around with more software/games and may update this to reflect my findings if I feel that most software out there makes up for it's current deficiencies.

It is definitely OK - it is well made and i had quite some fun with it. But maybe I had too high an expectation for this, as it was not exactly performing as well as I imagined it to able to. It does its intended job - scanning hand movement and position - pretty well, but is not yet sufficiently intelligent (or maybe it would never be due to the nature of such devices) to tell when does my actually movement start or stop. There are a lot of mis-recognitions and it becomes really hard to perform fine gestures. It can also be difficult to tell if your hand movements are registering or not, as the dimension of the 'box' is rather unclear. It is currently only a toy, not a day to day tool, even with helpers such as BTT - slant your hand by a couple degrees and it will fail to recognize the other two or three fingers and render many movements difficult to execute, and therefore costing way more time and effort than using either the mouse, the trackpad or the keyboard. I can only hope that this would improve, maybe with V2 tracking.

Got this device, thinking that it would be useful, but it is nothing more than a gimmicky proof of concept. The hand gestures are recognized as long as your palm is parallel to the sensor bar; the firmware update did mess up the device and windows was not even able to recognize it. Had to go through support just to have it working. The usage was spotty at best; you need to have a setup with certain conditions to get the best out of the device, so if you plan to use it as mouse replacement, look elsewhere.

This thing is Incredable as a MIDI Controller. Using the GEKO Midi app ($10.00) I can control ANY Midi linkable parameter in my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) or VST (Virtual Synthesizer) with hand movements. Right now I'm controlling the Massive VST in FL Studio, linked up to 40 individual parameters at once using just my right hand while I play the Synthesizer with my left. This is simply the future of music, and it hasn't caught on yet...

It is too expensive.....& it works awesome... My sincere request to all is "Do not buy unless you know what it is for". it some times does not detect but thats not a big deal but overall its a awesome product ..... I am finding difficult to find the applications, I have to still try other products. 1.Awesome Product 2.Accurate sensing 3.Packing is nicely done 4.On time Delivery 5.Brand new 6.Next generation product Leap Motion Device at its best... KUDOS....

Such a cool device. So extensible too!

muy buen producto ,el Software tiene una interfaz de uso intuitivo & es un excelente complemento para Oculus si eres desarrollador de contenido

Quick delivery and product was in great shape.

Utilized the Leap Motion for a final project where we made an interactive gesture based sushi preparation game. The accuracy and precision isn't quite there yet but that is forgivable as this type of input-gesture recognition technology is still at its infancy. I wouldn't quite recommend this for entertainment unless you are pairing it with an Occulus Rift as the amount of compatible games are still quite limited. For development purposes I think this is worth exploring as there are assets and libraries available online to get you going. I learned a lot about interactive development so I personally think it's a great learning and development experience. Leap Motion has recently released their new Orion assets which greatly improves accuracy and precision so I think it is a good time to buy it.