Gepatto Blog » Flash & More

Finishing off project

patrick — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:33:32 +0000

Finishing off a Papervision Project.

Getting everything nicely readable in perspective view was the main problem.
It’s a dutch website built around a poetry art-project.

Flash now talking to breadboard prototype

patrick — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:21:04 +0000

The Guys from Merapi pointed me towards their AS3-only branch on SVN.
It took me while the get my test running, mainly because I forgot to use the registerClassAlias function in flash, which ended up in Java not recognizing my messages.

After a succesful test, I quickly hacked a swf-module that could be loaded into version 2 of the Ukulele Chord Finder ( version 1 can be found at http://www.ukulele.nl ) that we have under development.
So now we can talk to Merapi Straight from the browser.

I also managed to turn the Java Side of the Merapi-Bridge into a Mac application.
So here’s a video of the things I made.

[See post to watch Flash video]

First breadboard prototype finished

patrick — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 09:18:23 +0000

Well, it took a lot of wires but here’s the first breadboard prototype:

The Arduino with Protoshield and Breadboard with ledmatrix

On the left we have an Arduino Decimila with a prototypeshield on top.
The prototypeshield contains a max7221 ic 2 capacitors and a resistor.
The breadboard contains 64 leds in a 8×8 matrix.
I was aiming for a 4×16 setup, but there was no way I could get the wiring done on one 1 breadboard.

The 8×8 ledmatrix

So far this is just a worked out example of : http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Main/MAX72XXHardware

The Arduino is now running a simple loop.
Next stop is writing an intelligent layer like firmata.
So more to come soon……

[See post to watch Flash video]

Merapi now open source, converted arduino experiment

patrick — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:36:35 +0000

At Flex360 The Merapi-project went open-source.
So I decided to convert the LivingColors Experiment back from a server client model (Wowza + flash client) back to a single machine setup.

So I got an arduino-board and custom shield, a java-application that connects to the serial port on one side and to an Air-app on the other via the Merapi Bridge. The Air app gets an average color from the center of a webcam image and sends it to the java, which in turn sends the number (color) to the serial port. That’s all.

I do need to tweak some stuff, so that there’s less jitter.

[update]
More on the Arduino – Livingcolors shield can be found here : http://static.knutsel.org/kits/CC2500_Arduino_Shield_v03/ (in Dutch).

[See post to watch Flash video]

The new arduino Experiment update

patrick — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:34:02 +0000

Here’s my latest Arduino Experiment.
It’s an arduino decimila board with a special shield designed by my friend Ivo Noorhoff.
The shield replaces the remote control for one or more Philips Living Color Lamps.

in this Example I’m taking the center 80×60 pixel of a webcam image an getting the average color.
I’m sending this color (if changed from the last sample) once every second to a wowza-media server app on my server that has the arduino board attached. (the server is close enough to a living colors lamp !!)
[ Now all it needs is some proper error handling.. ]

Et voila! Remote Controled Ambient lighting.

I’ll try to get a video up soon.

arduino funnel cmp03 Compass FirmataI2C & Google streetview

patrick — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:03:32 +0000

Had some fun with my arduino decimilia, a Devantech cmp03 compass Module and google streetview.I used the FirmataI2C library from funnel and wrote the simple as3 class to get my cmp03 working.Then hooked it up to the google streetview api example via ExternalInterface, and had the compass heading set the yaw of the streetview.

Video after jump:

Flashpolicyd for Centos

patrick — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:17:25 +0000

Running your own server and doing socket connections in flash?

Then you need a flash-policy server.
I tried the one on adobe devnet but it seems to require python 2.5

I found this one that runs fine on centos 5.2

http://www.devco.net/pubwiki/FlashPolicyd

ComputerVision and Flash10

patrick — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 15:29:34 +0000

Just a random thought

I wonder if Hydra (coming in Flash Player 10) could also enable us to do some computervision stuff.
For instance get multiple rectangles that enclose colored pixels, so we can isolate color regions.

I already have some nice experiments in mind

Microphone bug in as3?

patrick — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 15:05:10 +0000

[UPDATE]

Ok, so it really is a bug, Thnx Matt for the comment with the link:

“you need to pass a value of “-1″ to the getMicrophone() call to get the one you’ve chosen”

—-

Seems like there’s a bug in the As3 (or flash player 9) in the Microphone class.

I’m not able to switch between Audio-input devices using the Settings panel.
And Microphone.getMicrophone() always seems to get the First Audio-device,
and not the device the user has selected in the settings panel.

Try this:
do a Microphone.getMicrophone();
bring up the settings panel (through rightclick or code: Security.showSettings(SecurityPanel.MICROPHONE); )
switch audio-device.
Now, for me it’s still using the firts audio device, and NOT the one I just selected.

Can anyone confirm?

I’m using the latest Player. 9,0,64,0

Flash, Midi and Red5

patrick — Wed, 30 May 2007 07:07:05 +0000

Although I’ve had some real fun using the velleman k8055 to control flash with sensors, it only supports 2 analog inputs.
So I started looking for alternatives and was pointed towards the MidiSense page. It’s a small and affordable circuit that has 6 analog inputs and sends the data as Midi.
Midi huh, so how are we gonna get that into Flash? Well, I saw this wonderful post on John Grden’s blog.
So I hooked up my flash-file to Red5, converted John’s code (just a few lines) to AS2 (I’m still teaching my students AS2) and…
‘Hurray’ 6 analog sensors were available to flash…

In John’s Words… ROCK ON \m/