amBX on mac?

[flocked]

Nice! And what version of MacOS are you running?

Yep the next steps are the selection of the light to control and an automatic gradient.
Yes I am pretty sure it could be possible to modify it in order to connect to two systems, I just did not think of that yet.
For the plugins... well I think that is a bit far yet from being done, but the development steps are in that direction.

Great to hear that you are continue developing ambx for mac

Im on 10.6.2. on a 15" Macbook Pro (late 2008)

[XO101]

Great, finally someone out some effort into making amBX available on mac !!

Would be great if there could be some movie support VLC, Quicktime, doen't matter.
And maybe some hotkey controls, for switching to another templates/colors.

[twips]

Works great, thanks alot for some mac enthusiasm.

The only thing, it only turns out to work with one set of AMBX-lights at the same time. But I have actually three connected at the same time, which obviously is possible in windows. Will you be able to adress more than one AMBX concurrently? that would be so wonderful!

Also, instead of pressing the key, would it be also possible to make the shell skript being called with an argument - so I can use it ins programs like Automator?

thank you so much!

Twips

Hi,
I made a really simple terminal application which connects to the amBX system and is able to control the lights.
Basically they will all turn White when you run the app, then you can press r, g, b, y, c, p to choose between red, green, blue, yellow, cyan or purple.
All you have to do is double click the amBX4mac and change the colors as you wish by pressing color_identifier and return in the terminal that the app opened. The lights will change accordingly.
To exit the application press ctrl+C, the lights will stay on. To turn of the lights unplug the usb cable and plug it again :p

This is the first time I'm using xCode to do something so I don't even know if this will run on your macs, or if you need to install something in order to run it. I'm using a white macbook with snow leopard.

I will work more on this when I have some more time to improve and make new features available.

Please note that I am not responsible for any kind effect this app might have in your mac. You use it at your own risk.

You can find the app in http://web.ist.utl.pt/~joao.estilita/amBX/amBX4mac.zip

Try it out and post something here.

[Estilita]

Hi,

I guess it can be done to work with more than one system. The thing is that I won't have much time in the near future to work on this, I've developed the cocoa application which was my main goal so one can control the lights natively on MacOS.
Actually I will only be working on the cocoa app and not the console anymore.
I'll post something here while new features become available.

Keep up using and post what could be improved or added to the application.

New version available, it allows to control each light separately.
http://web.ist.utl.pt/~joao.estilita/am ... roller.pkg

[nymphe]

Dear Estilita,

Thank you very very much for this. It is working perfecty. This was simply everything what I was looking for. I really appreciate your effort and time on this.

You already wrote that you don't want to invest more time in this project, but I really can't stop myself for suggesting new stuff. Maybe you can add those stuff in very short time:

- ambX illuminate: If I remember correctly, this small utility simply fades the lights to other colors in loop, so that you have smooth ambient light which changes with time. Something like that would be very cool while listening music or having a party.

- Having this program as a control panel or a menu application would be very good.

- And of course an icon like this


)

P.S. I had a problem at the beginning, the application was crashing after it connects to the system. Plugging/Deplugging wasn't working. I removed the system from its power plug, and after that it worked.

Thank you once more.

Hi,

I guess it can be done to work with more than one system. The thing is that I won't have much time in the near future to work on this, I've developed the cocoa application which was my main goal so one can control the lights natively on MacOS.
Actually I will only be working on the cocoa app and not the console anymore.
I'll post something here while new features become available.

Keep up using and post what could be improved or added to the application.

New version available, it allows to control each light separately.
http://web.ist.utl.pt/~joao.estilita/am ... roller.pkg

[Estilita]

Hi,

Thank you for the suggestions.
The cocoa application is still in development I said I would stop with the console application (the first one I posted here in the forum) and not the cocoa application.

The next thing I want to get working is exactly that, something like illuminator.
And putting this on the menu is a very good idea, I don't know how to do it yet, but I'll work on that too.

[nymphe]

Excellent news!

Unfortunately I don't know how to write code at all, so the only help I can offer is being a beta tester

Finally we have some hope for usability of this product. Maybe we'll see a plugin from another developer for VLC or Movist or those kind of media players in near future.

Or maybe even amBX team help us too.

Hi,

Thank you for the suggestions.
The cocoa application is still in development I said I would stop with the console application (the first one I posted here in the forum) and not the cocoa application.

The next thing I want to get working is exactly that, something like illuminator.
And putting this on the menu is a very good idea, I don't know how to do it yet, but I'll work on that too.

[flocked]

Hi,

Thank you for the suggestions.
The cocoa application is still in development I said I would stop with the console application (the first one I posted here in the forum) and not the cocoa application.

The next thing I want to get working is exactly that, something like illuminator.
And putting this on the menu is a very good idea, I don't know how to do it yet, but I'll work on that too.

Again, thanks for your great work on the mac application. Have you figured out why always only one amBX kit works? And can you imagine to write plugins for iTunes and so on? I think it is really a new kind of programming. Maybe you can release the source code of your project or make it open source, so other developers could help you with the development.
I'm really looking forward to the illuminator for mac


@all: To get support from the official ambx-developers (for a sdk...), please sign the petition: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ambxmac/petition.html
Thanks!

And sorry for my bad English. I´m from Germany

Update:
Perhaps there is a possibility to use the idea of the Windows program "Aurora Synesthesia" and transfer it to a mac app. There is a mac version of the FMOD Ex and theoretically someone could write a program that receives the audio signals and converts them into RGB-commands via the FMOD Ex (if I understand the windowsprogram correctly). I think this is the "easiest" way to get a ambx support for all mac apps.

Here is the description of the programmer of the Aurora-app:

Being a programmer by trade, I set myself the challenge of solving this by making a system that would be as discrete as amBX Illuminate but work for any sound or music played through your computer, in a similar way to what the FXGen does for games.
I've achieved this by having a small tray program that listens to and processes the sound coming in from the recording input, via the use of FMOD Ex (http://www.fmod.org/), and converts it into RGB for each light based on a set of colours. These are Red = Bass, Green = Mid, and Blue = Treble (these will eventually be customisable). The only snag with this is that your computer's sound card or motherboard must support Stereo-Mix recording for it to work, otherwise it can only respond to a microphone.

[Estilita]

Hi

New version with automatic light control and the ambx logo :p
http://web.ist.utl.pt/~joao.estilita/am ... roller.pkg

[endymion75]

Hi thanks for the great work, but this package only works on 10.6(snow leopard), can you also compile it to make it work with 10.5? (leopard)

Keep up the good work, I hope to see a full working amBX with VLC in the near future!

Hi

New version with automatic light control and the ambx logo :p
http://web.ist.utl.pt/~joao.estilita/am ... roller.pkg

[Estilita]

Hi,

Now it must work in MacOS Leopard (10.5) too. Can you try it and post the result?
It seems like it won't work in versions older than 10.5..

[nymphe]

Thank you! If you maximize the smoothness, the ambient is superb.

Additional ideas:

- Automatically connect to amBX system and starts to illuminate...
- Making this a background application

Well both of them are trivia. Right now it works perfectly. I hope someone writes a plugin for video play...

Hi

New version with automatic light control and the ambx logo :p
http://web.ist.utl.pt/~joao.estilita/am ... roller.pkg

[endymion75]

I downloaded from http://web.ist.utl.pt/~joao.estilita/am ... roller.pkg
but it still says : "You cannot use this version of the application amBX Light Controller.app with this version of Mac OS X."

Hi,

Now it must work in MacOS Leopard (10.5) too. Can you try it and post the result?
It seems like it won't work in versions older than 10.5..

[Estilita]

Hm that's weird I must be doing something wrong, though it seems like it should work on i386 and x86_64 architectures...
What's your version number?

[endymion75]

I have an Intel Core 2 Duo cpu Mac with leopard 10.5.7.

Hm that's weird I must be doing something wrong, though it seems like it should work on i386 and x86_64 architectures...
What's your version number?