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Having Fun With PowerBook Motion Sensors
mjk325 writes "Amit Singh has published a discussion on the 'Sudden Motion Sensor' feature in the latest revision PowerBooks. One utility he has released displays a 3-D view of the PowerBook that follows the actual movement of the physical machine. Another utility creates windows that rotate in opposite directions to the physical machine to appear always straight. My brand new PB has the motion sensor, but apparently the utilities work on any system using software faking."
This is cool enough to make me want a PowerBook.
Seems like this could be used to implement some sort of security feature. Turn on a utility, and when significant movement is detected the computer could send out a signal- in the form of activating an attached alarm, taking a picture with a webcam and emailing it, etc etc. When the owner returns, the utility could be quickly turned back off.
The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF
Obviously, you all have no imagination.
What is clearly needed is a plug-in that clears the screen when the unit is held upside-down and shaken!
Or a version of Marble Madness that uses the tilt of the machine to control the marble.
www.eFax.com are spammers
When the imac 2 (flatscreen, hemisphere base) first came out, the number of swivel specs interested me enormously - I thought you could rotate the screen, ie change from landscape to portrait, which would be great for editing A4 pages in photoshop, reading long documents, etc etc... this software brings back that interest, though I appreciate that the weight of the base might be a physical setup issue. Ooh. Screw the base upside down into a shelf above; the screen is upside down, use the software to turn it right way up. No cds and dvds, but clears a bundle of desk space.
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
What is clearly needed is a plug-in that clears the screen when the unit is held upside-down and shaken!
...are the greatest Hero known to mankind.
Wowbagger, I don't like to use the word Hero lightly but You...
Genius!!! - finally life has imitated art once more and the famous Dilbert and the PHB laptop strip can now be made a reality
Love it.
'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes'
Tilt games using ball bearings need to be developed as soon as possible to make use of this.
The pBook is light enough to make it feasible for a little while anyway. My only concern would be causing the drive heads to park to often due to "agressive" playing. The article implies that you can disable the head parking, but then I'd be worried about disk damage.
I wonder what the threshold is for head parking?
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
... Subtle Motion Sensor? Can the Powerbook detect even slight movements in its position? Or is this sensor just meant for drastic changes in X/Y/Z position? If it handles subtle, then I can definitely imagine plugging the machine into an external monitor and using my PB as a steering wheel to drive my way to ruin through Vice City.
The hacks are pretty cool, but the utility that displays the Powerbook orientation realtime in 3D seems to be exactly like the ThinkPad active protection util that IBM has been shipping for quite some time now.
Just stick one on the ground and wait for earthquakes, who needs all that specialist equipment
CJC
I own a Thinkpad T41 which has this feature. One of the coolest things, to my friends, is that you can set the applet, which monitors harddrive shocks, to display the laptop in real time. It doesn't display vertical movement, however, it will show you flipping it upside-down, angling it in any direction, etc. It is pretty neat.
Finally! My Powerbook can be an etch-a-sketch. You could even get two of these for the knobs, if you're really into it...
I'm still using my Radius Pivot, as the second monitor on my G3 Powerbook Pismo.
Of course the pivot feature hasn't worked since OS 7 or 8 or something.
Maybe there's something in this new approach that will let me once again turn the Pivot monitor to Portrait. I sure hope so.
I just hate landfilling still functioning tools.
Wait just one minute...Wouldn't that just look like regular 2-D windows on a flat monitor?!
Creative Demolition
what new approach?
-mkb
In spite of the author's quote, "Needless to say, it is quite a hellish experience trying to use the computer in this manner," it's just asking for someone to install it on some poor clod's computer, getting him drunk, and then have him try to do something productive like code in Perl.
"Hey... WTF does an upside down exclamation point stand for?"
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
i did not know my powerbook had that feature.
what other 'environment monitoring' features does it have?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Someone's written software that lets the Macintosh rotate what's on the screen, as I understand it, so if the screen is turned 90 degrees to "portrait" mode, the text remains readable -- if I understood the story. (Not Apple's software; third party software.)
Forget about the motion sensor aspect, all I want is to be able to tell the Mac that it has a monitor in portrait position -- like used to work.
This is the first piece of software that's had me drop my jaw for ages. Well done. I swear I will pay good money for the first "shake the machine and the window clears" etch-a-sketch plug-in for Pages or Keynote :)
it only works on macs with a motion sensor, which is only the new powerbook upgrades.
you may have an option
-mkb
Hmmm... differential GPS just depends on having a local waypoint to give you a very accurate position, beyond the 1-3 meter resolution of GPS.
:)
Now why not keep track of the accelerations, integrate (SUM) over time to get the velocity, integrate once again to get the spatial location. You could keep a log of where the laptop goes while it's on. Hmm... I might have to buy one of these toys, make the software and put it in the passenger seat of my car and see what I can make it do...
I remember a circuit cellar article about a 3-d accelerometer, but I didn't feel like dinking around with a soldering iron that year. Looks like a new powerbook will let me accomplish that long-delayed task with software alone.
Must acquire cash for purchase NOW
You can build something like this for any laptop. The parts would be something like a USB module like this ($20 unless you're happy just using a regular serial port), an Atmel AVR microcontroller (this ($30 for the development board which is easier to use than just the component). The accelerometer outputs a pulse with a width that varies linearly with acceleration you can just write a simple loop on the AVR (using avr-gcc) to count the pulse length and then report back via the USB (or serial port). Total cost: probably well under $100 including building an AVR programmer.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Oh come on Art Hur!
He's "a jerk, a complete asshole."
Oh wait. That's what wowbagger said to Arthur.
"She's furniture with a pulse"
Still using it? You're lucky. I remember at work some colleagues had one, (being used as a second monitor beside one of the monster 21" displays), and it was very cool to watch (it was also very cool to watch bouncing ball screensavers adjust to the different screen dimensions). They had to leave it alone after a few months, as it made worrying buzzing moises when tilted one way. I think they had played with it so much that they were close to breaking the mercury switch that triggered the mode change.
"She's furniture with a pulse"
I've just been trying this on my new 15" pb, but it seems to be a bit confused - the AMSVisualiser image is at about 20deg, when the laptop is flat on the desk.
Is there any way to recalibrate the sensor?
If anybody is interested, I have recorded a video of the rotation of the two programs on the website.
You will notice that with the StableWindow, sometimes its a bit off, and with the AMSVisualizer, the Y-axis animations seem to be backwards. But, who cares? It's neat anyway.
PowerBook Tilting!
Could you imagine the possibilities on this thing if you added some Looking Glass features and used an iSight?
Most people would surely have no use for it, but it could lead to some interesting games. Maybe something like virtual geocaching?
did you read the article? He has it working on a Mac without a motion sensor, he uses the mouse to give input to the routine. It would be simple to have a button to click to rotate 90 degrees.
Lasers Controlled Games!
If you read TFA, you'll find out that he did this hack to use as an example for his forthcoming book on OS X. Amit Singh is a very original thinker with what I consider a deep and dry wit. I'm really looking forward to this book.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Set aside an ungodly huge frame buffer, and move the notebook around like it's a tiny window into another dimension. Imagine having a rendevous moment where you have to walk across the street to retrieve a stray iChat window. You might even want to upgrade to WiFi with triangulation, then everybody's notebook could share this "framebuffer dimension" If you put your notebook back to back with somebody else's and read their screen backwards! Don't forget to have a well firewalled desktop, preferably with a brick tile ;)
See also: Croquet
Does anyone know how to turn this off? Because it's supposed to open my chute in about 3 seconds.
instead of adjusting the screen to the movements of the PowerBook...have it lunge at u everytime someone fires a rocket.
or if u want to stick to the technology at hand, u could use it to control the flight of the redeemer.
heck, if u run fast enough, u can make it go faster...just don't jump the railings if u're more than 10-15 floors up. u'll lose too many health points.
"I was... erm... just holding it like you normally do. Honest! Can I keep my warranty?"
He has it working on a Mac without a motion sensor, he uses the mouse to give input to the routine. It would be simple to have a button to click to rotate 90 degrees.
But it's not the same as having the monitor resync automatically when you tilt it.
-mkb
Thanks for posting that so those of us without a PB could see this software actually in action. It looks much cooler seeing how it actually works on a real machine that's being tilted.
Yeah, I downloaded it about 5 minutes ago. The hurdles event was pretty cool. I'm trying the discus now#)@VZ[[[[NO CARRIER
-- Dan in Canada