The present invention defines a system wherein a computer with an attached image capture camera can receive control signals from a user based on analysis of the captured images. Specifically, the user is interacting with the standard display output of the computer via a LASER pointer and these interactions are detected by analysis software modules operating on the captured images. These analysis modules use a series of algorithms to determine the intention of the user's LASER position and motion such as the intent to perform the equivalent of a standard mouse pointer device click, trace out a standard glyph representing a letter, or a custom input as determined by independent application software.