Introducing a New DIY VR Glove Project for VaM – With Force Feedback!

Hello hello, fellow Gooners!

I'm excited to share a new project I've been working on that I think will be of high interest to the VaM community, especially for VR users:
DIY VR Gloves with Force Feedback, designed specifically for VaM.

The project​

This is an open-source-inspired, budget-friendly pair of VR gloves that provide force feedback, giving your fingers physical resistance when interacting with virtual objects in VaM.

• Build-it-yourself with a 3D printer, some servos, sensors, and an ESP32 microcontroller.
• Estimated cost: Less than €120 (assuming you own a 3D printer).
• Exoskeleton design: The glove structure sits on top of your hand, mechanically controlling finger movement.
• The glove blocks or resists finger motion in real time, syncing with what’s happening in VaM (so when you "touch" something, you feel it).

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Technical Foundations​

The glove design is based on the open-source haptic glove by Adam Kurtis:
GitHub: EECS249_HapticGlove

From there, I’m building everything needed for VaM-specific integration:

• Firmware for the gloves
• A VaM plugin to detect hand collisions in real time
• Better, more ergonomic 3D models
• Full documentation for DIY assembly

As a software engineer with a some interest in robotics/3D printing, I’ll be handling the code, design improvements, and distribution so that even non-tech-savvy users can follow along.

Current Progress​

The project is still in its early stages, but the requirement for the project to work are already satisfied:

• Fully assembled prototype of the glove using 3D-printed parts
• A proof of concept of the firmware for finger movement
• Extraction inside a VaM plugin of the VR hand collision (for each finger and the exact position of the collision)
• Communication between VaM and the ESP32 is working via USB (Bluetooth next!)

What this means: the hard parts are done. From here, it’s about building and refining. I’m confident this is going to work.


I will try to make a first prototype working with a doc soon with basic functionality (i.e. finger movement restraint on contact to something)

Today I made a begining of V1 for the VaM plugin
Here is a video showcasing hand collision detection :




youtube link if video don't load :