Ever since I read about the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music, I have been thinking about ways to get the vOICe to render it’s output in tactile form. The touch screen approach is one but we do not know how successful the phone will be in the market. Also, Java does not yet support the touch screen API since it is so new. Plus, not everyone will upgrade to the new phone and it would be nice to have the tactile feedback across phones.
1. You can control the vibrator of the phone using Java, python and C++.

2. In all of these cases, you can vary the duration of the vibration, the intensity of the vibration and the direction of rotation of the motor that vibrates.

3. So, here is the schema;
A. The motor’s clockwise and anticlockwise motion is used to simulate the left to right motion of an image. |This can be done by first turning the motor to the left by a small value and then turning it to the right by a much larger value. The exercise is then repeated probably giving the feeling of the left to right movement.
B. The intensity of the vibration could correspond to the brightness of the image.
C. The duration of the vibration could correspond to the height.
D. Alternatively, the intensity of the vibration could correspond to the height and the duration to the brightness.

4. I suspect this could be implemented as a special mode in the vOICe. It would eat battery so it would be off by default.

5. I recognize that the above is not as fluid as sound but it would perhaps make interpreting images easier.

I have thrown together a crude python script to try and simulate the feeling of left to right motion. It works on my Nokia E51 but does not quite give the left to right affect. You will also need to have python, the python script shell and Miso installed.

import miso
import time

miso.vibrate(1000,-50)
miso.vibrate(2000,50)
miso.vibrate(1000,-50)
miso.vibrate(2000,100)
miso.vibrate(1000,-50)
miso.vibrate(2000,100)
miso.vibrate(1000,-50)
miso.vibrate(2000,50)

print “Finished.”