Lighthouse Stylus_
An open-source, low-cost 6-DoF spatial stylus you can build and use for your own projection-based interface research. Sub-millimeter accuracy. Replicable. Yours to hack.
Measuring and sketching on a table with the stylus — the ruler and freehand tools of the browser Web UI, driven entirely by the device. 2× speed, no audio.
01 — Explore the source
Hardware files, firmware, and documentation are on GitHub. Fork it, break it, improve it.
View on GitLab →02 — Stay in the loop
Occasional updates on this and other projects — no noise.
03 — Read the paper
The full open-hardware contribution — design rationale, build instructions and the measured accuracy characterization — is written up for HardwareX. This site and the repository accompany that manuscript.
Lighthouse Stylus: A Low-Cost, Open Hardware, Spatial Input Device
● Pending publication — no DOI yet. Once it is out it will be listed on the author's ORCID record, which updates itself.
A short work-in-progress paper introduced the device at TEI '26. It is a six-page semi-archival demo paper, not the full hardware description — cite it for the interaction concept, not for replicating the device.
Read the TEI '26 paper →
@inproceedings{10.1145/3731459.3779348,
author = {Rijnieks, Krisjanis},
title = {Lighthouse Stylus: An Accessible 6-DoF Input Device for Projection-Based CAD/CAM Interfaces},
year = {2026},
isbn = {9798400718687},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3731459.3779348},
doi = {10.1145/3731459.3779348},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Twentieth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction},
articleno = {88},
numpages = {6},
series = {TEI '26}
}