Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Experimenting With Light on Apple Laptops

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the the-joy-of-light dept.

venkatg writes "Soon after Apple introduced sudden motion sensors in their PowerBooks in early 2005, Amit Singh had shown how these sensors can be used for creative purposes (covered by Slashdot earlier as Having Fun With PowerBook Motion Sensors and PowerBook As A New Kind Of Human Interface Device). This time around Singh discusses 'Experimenting With Light' in a new article whereby by light he means the ambient light sensors and the illuminated backlight keyboard sensors in Apple's laptops. The article shows (source code is included) how one can measure ambient light and do things with it. It also shows things like how to get/set illuminated keyboard brightness and display brightness or do fade transitions of the keyboard lighting. So now that we have all these motion and light sensors under control, is there a MacBook discotheque in the works?"

7 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Blackout Game by VorpalRodent · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I recall a game from not too long ago wherein one would push lighted buttons, and they would alternate the lighted status of those buttons around it. The objective was to turn off (or on, I forget) all the buttons on the unit.

    With this, assuming that each key has a light associated with it, one could do the same thing with a whole keyboard.

    And for those who don't have any issues with being violent towards their computers, you could reset it a la Etch-a-Sketch with the motion sensor.

    --
    Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
  2. Before the Mac bashers go crazy with this one.... by King_TJ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    .... I don't think this article is here as another "Oooh.... the Macbook and Steve Jobs are awesome!" story. The intriguing part is how its users are "thinking different" to an extent Apple themselves didn't seem to. Already, people have taken the relatively boring "sudden motion sensor" that Apple only thought of implementing to help prevent hard drive crashes, and used it for a motion-sensing laptop security system, to roll marbles around in maze games by tilting the laptop, and even to switch virtual desktops by lightly tapping the left or right-hand sides of the machine to "bump" the desktop over one direction or the other.

    Now, they're tackling the ambient light sensors, which again, serve a relatively "boring" (if still useful) purpose. I'm intrigued to see what imaginative people will end up doing with this one too. For starters, I could envision some usefulness in things like making the backlit keyboard blink in a repeating pattern to indicate completion of recording in certain audio programs. (Many recording studio environments are kept dark so you can easily see all the readouts on the displays of the equipment while working. Macbook Pros are going to be popular in these environments, and it might be nice to get a subtle indication it finished transcoding or recording some audio - even if the display went blank due to a screen saver?)

  3. Sounds like fun by ronanbear · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Don't really know if I see much useful application in it but I suppose it can't hurt. It could be really useful for power saving or even some scheduling stuff. It could also have some interesting security applications (say cover the light sensor as part of a keyboard combination)

    I saw a video of the sudden motion sensor being used to switch desktops and it looked really great. Good luck to anyone who thinks they can do something useful. Someday we could all benefit.

    I also find it interesting that sudden motion sensors were available on Thinkpads before Powerbooks but I never heard of people using them in different ways. That's a pretty good advert for Apple. Sums up the image that Apple put out much better than those TV ads.

    --
    the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
  4. Brilliant, New Mail indicator by TristanBrotherton · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Fantastic, I wanted to know how to do this so i could write a new mail indicator. Lots of itme i dont like my macbook to speak, so now i can write a script to pulse the keyboard backlights when i get mail. Brilliant, they are bright enough to blind bats so should be quite effective.

  5. Other appication by jackjeff · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Erling Ellingsen has also been playing with the sudden motion and ambient light sensors. He hacked a Virtual Desktop tool, where you have to hit the laptop, or put your hand over a sensitive area, in order to change desktops.

    http://blog.medallia.com/2006/05/smacbook_pro.html

  6. Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash by ronanbear · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Apple should use the motion sensor to detect when the powerbook is likely to be being used on a lap and automatically lower the power usage to reduce the temperature. That would be a really good way to show off the motion sensor.

    --
    the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
  7. Re:In the year 2000... by jacksonj04 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Screw that. Get a tricolour LED behind every key, make the keycaps a tad more translucent, and tie it into iTunes. Throbbing keyboard visualiser.

    --
    How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?