I'm  Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra and S9 Ultra tablets, and normally turn pages with a BT pedal/keyboard. I'm trying to see if I can replace the extra peripheral by using face gestures, but I find them unreliable.

I've tried just about possible gesture, with different combinations of gesture size, hold time, resolution, minimum framerate, etc. And I still get numerous false positives and false negatives.

Of note:
1. "Tilt face up" often gets confused with "raise eyebrows," so I can't use either of those.

2. Gestures almost universally trigger as the gesture is initiated, and not (as the tooltip describes) when the gesture is made and returned to neutral.

3. "Move mouth left/right" is the hardest gesture to recognize, maybe that's just my own face shape.

4. "Open mouth" is the only really reliable gesture that doesn't false-positive. But in a performance situation, it also the goofiest-looking.

Are there any other potential options for gestures to use?

Also, is there a way to enable combined/daisy-chained gestures for actions? With a human page turner, the player often signals a page turn with an exaggerated head nod - up and then down. I'm wondering if a "head down, then up, then neutral" would be distinct enough to prevent false positives during normal movement, and it's natural/expected enough where a high gesture-size setting isn't distracting to see.

Anyone have other experiences?

I settled on 2 gestures only figuring I really only need page forward and back (the latter to correct an unvoluntary page turn only). I'm using head tilt-up for page turn and open mouth for back and disabled all the rest. It works pretty good for me. Yes, there is the occasional head move resulting in an  unvoluntary page turn, but a quick open mouth corrects that and if you have the right distance and height to the tablet it's pretty reliable for me.

Also I use half page turns so I'm not immediately lost when a wrong page turn happens.

Also see https://www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/f...l#pid61225

(06-05-2026, 04:40 AM)BRX Wrote: I settled on 2 gestures only figuring I really only need page forward and back (the latter to correct an unvoluntary page turn only). I'm using head tilt-up for page turn and open mouth for back and disabled all the rest. It works pretty good for me. Yes, there is the occasional head move resulting in an  unvoluntary page turn, but a quick open mouth corrects that and if you have the right distance and height to the tablet it's pretty reliable for me.

Also I use half page turns so I'm not immediately lost when a wrong page turn happens.

Also see https://www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/f...l#pid61225

Funny enough, that is exactly the setup I was trying. Forward/backwards only with head tilt or eyebrows for forward, and mouth open for back.

The main problem is when I look down at my hands and back up at the tablet, that often gets a head-up or head-down action and I seem to get a lot of false page turns. The mouth open to correct does work but there seems to be a debounce timer between gestures. 

Tapping the screen or pushing a footpedal is so bulletproof, I just wish we could get gestures to the same level of reliability.

Yeah, don't look at your hands. :-)

But seriously, you can try different preferences. Probably the best ones vary from device to device but on my Nextpaper 14 I have for head tilt up gesture size 6, duration 0,1 s, camera 640x480 and minimum time 80 ms. Same for open mouth but gesture size 1.

See if twealing these parameters gets you better results. Because of the gesture size 6 (I believe) I have reduced misfires marginally. Sometimes I have even to tilt my head a bit down to get a bigger tilt up to be recognized. But I prefer that to accidental page turns.

(06-05-2026, 05:12 AM)BRX Wrote: Yeah, don't look at your hands. :-)

Oh you and my teacher will get along splendidly

The biggest problem is the camera positioning on the S8 Ultra and S9 Ultra tablets unless you have them in landscape orientation. Can you please confirm whether you are using the tablet in portrait or landscape orientation? I think you'll find that the gestures work much more reliably in landscape orientation when the camera is on the top of the device and not the side.

Mike

(06-05-2026, 01:32 PM)Zubersoft Wrote: The biggest problem is the camera positioning on the S8 Ultra and S9 Ultra tablets unless you have them in landscape orientation. Can you please confirm whether you are using the tablet in portrait or landscape orientation? I think you'll find that the gestures work much more reliably in landscape orientation when the camera is on the top of the device and not the side.

Mike

Yep, the tablet is portrait,with the camera on the right. Plus, I sit a couple of inches left of center (middle C on the piano is closer to the bass side). As a test, putting the tablet upside down so the camera is on the left actually helps a bit.

I know that changing of devices probably is out of question, but 

I was worried if my aforementioned Nextpaper 14 works in portrait mode since the camera then indeed is on the right. But it works suprisingly well.

Anyway, Mike, have you considered my suggestion for displaying a window with the face recognition area in the preferences for the face gestures? One you maybe could move on the display (or if not you can move the tablet accordingly or change your own position) so you have the optimal angles for recognition?

There is a "Test Gestures" button that lets you see what the camera is viewing on the "Configure Gesture Actions" screen. I can't change what part of the video feed is being used (that wouldn't improve anything either) or what angle the camera is pointed at or anything of that sort.

Mike

Is it possible to assign combined gestures? Like head-tilt-up, followed by head-tilt-down within 0.3 seconds? I think that could cut down on false positives from spurious head movements/detections (at the risk of not triggering the action if the more complex gesture isn't recognized).

Or similarily a trigger? (As I asked above and in https://www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/f...l#pid61225 )

(06-06-2026, 05:17 AM)BRX Wrote: Or similarily a trigger? (As I asked above and in https://www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/f...l#pid61225 )

+1, that would work. Assignable a trigger gesture, along with a user-adjustable cooldown (no "action" gesture after 0.5 seconds deactivates the trigger), etc.

It's an interesting idea but will probably require a lot of work to get right with the way the face gestures work (and will involve additional UI changes). I'll have to wait until I have time to dedicate to this.

Mike

Nice. Appreciating you looking into this if time allows.

Please consider the option to reuse the trigger gesture as following action gesture (so to allow a double tilt up which I reckon would work best for me for page turns).