I got turned on to Phidgets recently.
Some interesting stuff here. One that looked really cool was the accelerometer. It’s a little board with a chip that can detect how it is tilted. It reports a value of -1 to +1 on each of two axes – left/right and back/forth.
It plugs in via the USB port. You run a little server that the phidgets connect to. There are AS2 classes (along with some other language stuff), which I converted to AS3. Then you just make an instance of PhidgetAccelerometer and listen to events on it, read values off it, etc.
I used it to control a 3D form.
Nice bro!! I have the LCD one. Can you release your AS3 library?
Very cool, Keith!
I’ve got a set of Phidgets, that I’m dying to play with, but never seem to have time for.
Whoa.
As someone say, totally insane, but wonderful.
Wanna go to develop some game for nintendo ?
Phidgets are nice but far too expensive and unflexible.
You should look into wiring or arduino, the latter being at ~ 20€ with USB Connectivity and loads of I/Os and even an additional Bluetooth module.
Phidgets is nice for getting started, but on the long run the “low level” boards are more versatile and far cheaper.
Should have used Brightcove.
Hehe, phidgets + flash are very fun. I’ve been using them a lot recently and I must say that they work amazingly well with flash. I’ve used everything from the sliders/knobs to motion sensors,RFID readers, force sensors. They all work great with flash and are fairly reasonably priced.
Cool. Just an FYI … but the final chumby will also supposedly have an accelerometer in it when it ships (the prototype does not yet) … this is in addition to the current bend sensor and touch LCD.
Too bad the chumby is only getting 12-16 fps (right now it’s capped at around 12 due to the shell swf being temporarily hardcoded to 12 fps).
I wonder if something like this would be worth experimenting with though … perhaps with some modifications to make it a bit less processor intensive.
Hey Keith,
Cool – did you know that Marcos Weskamp had put together a nice library for Flash/Phidgets AS2 and AS3- didn’t know if you had seen it or not: http://www.marcosweskamp.com/blog/archives/000115.html#more
Just mentioned that in my MAXUP presentation on Flash/Elextronics/Robotics last week at MAX. 🙂
Rob
That… is some 1337 stuff 🙂
FYI – Phidgets has added the support for Actionscript 3. Download is available under the Phidget21 libraries.
Actionscript 3.0 Library for Flash 9 / Flex 2
Description: This is an implementation of the Phdiget Library in Actionscript 3.0.
This requires Flash 9 or Flex 2 for Actionscript 3.0 support.
Also required is the Phidget Webservice – downloaded on or after December 7, 2006. The webservice is included in the library release for your platform.
Examples are provided for Flash and Flex, and usage examples are provided for all Phidgets.