MouseTrap is Underway!

I can’t believe that it has been months since I posted! I’ve been trying to get this post up for weeks now and I’m just going to put it out there and give updates when I can.

Some of the foss2serve  group have been working to bring the MouseTrap project to be current with GNOME. MouseTrap uses a low-cost webcam to interpret a user’s head movement to control the cursor. The project has only had language updates since mid-2010 and needs to be updated to GNOME 3 and Python 3.

Several Western New England University, Drexel University, and Nassau Community College students and professors started working on the project at the end of 2012. This fall, six CS seniors in my CS 490 Software Engineering course are working towards getting the code current. If you want to join us, we’re using the gnome3-wip branch.   We’d love company on our adventure into cursor movement via the webcam!

Our approach is to do some development in parallel with building documentation infrastructure for the project. We’ve got a set of requirements up and are working on design which we’ll post in a couple of weeks. We’ve also been fixing and filing bugs as we go.

Stoney Jackson and I are managing the project together and Stoney  has been chronicling his learning. He has become a git expert and we’ve both learned loads about how to manage bugs and enhancements in Bugzilla and how git works. We’re also learning about how to better operate within the GNOME A11y community.

In related exciting news, the Software Engineering students from Western New England University went to GNOME Summit in Montreal. They spent time hacking and learning. Many thanks to Joanie Diggs, Karen Sandler  and Ryan Lortie. Joanie and Ryan helped hugely in helping push MouseTrap code along and Karen provided insight into licensing and open source culter. There also appeared to be some time for fun as well!

CS 490 students enjoying the GNOME Summit!

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