If you claim you’ve never tried to control your TV or the lights in your house with a little hand movement you saw in Star Wars, you’re a liar. So what if we made it possible?

Hungarian maker Tamas, who goes by “Imetomi” online, has you covered. Tamas started with a Pebble smartwatch because it comes with built-in sensors which can detect movement. He used these to map certain gestures which send commands to a phone depending on the hand motions.

The phone pushes these commands to an Arduino-like microcontroller, the Particle Photon, inside of a specially made wall socket. This socket can be connected to home appliances, which can then be controlled using the Pebble.

The two examples given by Tamas include a lamp and a TV. Both can be turned on and off by using a gesture – a Force pull for the lamp and a Force push for the TV. The TV has an added effect, where flicking your wrist will change the channel. The old Jedi Mind Trick wave, with a bit more gusto.



Tamas has written up a full guide to replicate this project, which includes the code and wiring diagrams, over on instructables.

While this is all very swish and the mention of Star Wars always makes projects more exciting, this is nothing we haven’t seen before. The product that immediately springs to mind is the Kymera Magic Wand, a universal remote control that takes inspiration from Harry Potter instead of Star Wars.

What sets this project apart is its open source nature and a guide which anyone can follow to replicate it.