Initial Results

Comfortable breathing moves the mouse up and down the screen through about 100 pixels, with windows 2000 at its "fastest" mouse setting. This small range of motion constrained the Dasher display to be small. [It would be nice to have the mouse be `faster', so that the Dasher display could be made larger, and so that extreme breathing could be used to recenter the mouse.]

After writing for about 5 minutes, I gave myself some speed trials. I wrote using Dasher's 60-character English alphabet (a-z, A-Z, plus 8 punctuation characters) using Dasher version 3.0.3 in its one-dimensional mode, trained on the default English training text.

In the first trial I set the speed control to 3.01 bits per second, which felt a little too slow. I used a small (20mm high) Dasher display. I wrote 177 characters in 223 seconds (47 c.p.m, 9.5 w.p.m.).

In the second trial I set the speed to 4.88 bits per second, which was definitely too fast. I used a larger (40mm) display. I achieved 114 characters in 129 seconds (53 cpm, 10.6 w.p.m.).

In the third trial I set the speed to 4.07 bits per second, which felt like the limit of my ability. I had some difficulty with the hardware, which led to me losing quite a few seconds. I achieved 182 characters in 182 seconds (60 cpm, 12 w.p.m.).

Two other subjects

Two other subjects have also tried the breath mouse. One subject (female) found her natural breathing movements made almost no impression on the mouse. Another subject (male, similar build to me) was able to write with Dasher without difficulty.

Text

The text I wrote was

I once had a whim and I had to obey it 
To buy a french horn in a second hand shop. 
I polished it up and I started to play it 
In spite of the neighbours who begged me to stop.
----
To sound my horn, I had to develop my embouchure; 
I found my horn was a bit of a devil to play - 
So artfully wo
----
To give you a sound 
A beautiful sound so rich and round! 
Oh, the hours I had to spend 
Before I mastered it in the end.
But that was yesterday and just today
I looked in the usual