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I am not sure what is this called, but maybe similar to motion capture. For example I want to animate a hand in Blender. Instead of motion capturing by pointing a camera at my hand and it tracks in 2D, I hold my phone and set the forward direction then I can move a point in blender as if my phone is that point.

Another case I would like to use something like this is camera animation. If I can hold my phone, set a starting position, and Blender's camera can move along with my phone I could record an animation to make panning or just holding a camera still looks more human. (with little noises and all)

If it does not exist in Blender but exist in other programs I would like to know a name of it. Or if this is not a common idea I might learn to contribute to Blender one day. (but first I don't want to reinvent the wheel if there is any) Newest iOS 11 has ARKit, it might have some interesting pre-made phone localizing function without using markers and I might try it.

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  • $\begingroup$ Which sensors do you have in the phone you want to use? You will probably need at least a gyroscope and an accelerometer. Those can accurately track rotation, but position is hard to track without external static sensors. What I mean is like the sensors the HTC Vive uses to track its position. Those sensors are hung in the walls of the room the headset is used in to track its position. $\endgroup$
    – Tooniis
    Aug 20 '17 at 3:27
  • $\begingroup$ Read: Visualizing an iOS device in Blender Through Quantum Entanglement $\endgroup$
    – user1853
    May 21 '18 at 14:04
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I'm searching for the same.

As far is I went, I have some experience using AndroSensorGTK. https://github.com/geooot/AndroSensorGTK

accelblend looks nice. https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=76991

Does what we want, but no source. https://rbteam.wordpress.com/2014/07/29/android-blender-connector/

Interesting project, no source found. https://ensiwiki.ensimag.fr/index.php?title=Use_of_smartphones_as_3D_controller

Uses android as virtual camera (no sensors). https://www.blendernation.com/2012/08/27/using-an-android-phone-as-a-virtual-camera/

I think this is just a website for controlling (didn't look into). https://github.com/joewashear007/BlenderWebController

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    $\begingroup$ Answers should be more then just a list of links. In this case explain the pros and cons of each, etc. $\endgroup$
    – David
    May 21 '18 at 13:17
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Start by looking into Blenders “camera tracking” features. These work by following the movement of points in a scene and tracking parallax movement. The result is a 3D track of the movement of the camera in space, which makes it possible to do things like build a small scale model to shoot on video and then copy that camera movement into your Blender scene.

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  • $\begingroup$ Are you talking about filming a room full of white dots beforehand and sending the video to Blender's motion tracking? What the OP (and me) are looking for is translating the phone's internal gyro information to coordinates Blender can use to animate the camera so you could do this in any room no matter how much junk surrounds you. $\endgroup$
    – Edward
    Feb 5 '20 at 18:39

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