amBX on mac?

[djmirage]

Thanks for the light controller app, works fine for us mac people. But ofcourse the developer in me wants to do more. I'd like to see the input on the following application i'm working on.

I started a small project called combustd it's a daemon process that can run on mac/linux/windows using ruby and ruby-usb to control it. This however means that you need to install libusb and ruby-usb by hand at the moment.

But don't be sad just yet! The application i'm developing will accept tcp and udp sockets to control the lights, tcp sockets for webapplications (enables us to access it with javascript / xmlhttprequests) udp sockets for when an application demands a bit more speed, for instance with a vlc plugin. I'm currently looking at the vlc AtmoLights plugin to see how they analyse the image and control the lighting. It will be a few months until I finish that part, because im focussing on javascript support for now.

One of my idea's is to enable custom iTunes LP's to access the ambx lights in order to sync it to the custom backgrounds/theming. It will also allow me to create games online that use ambx to set a mood.

A small demonstration video of the first steps:
http://www.sexybiggetje.nl/moblog/2009/ ... bustd.html

[endymion75]

Wow if you can make it work under OSX Leopard, than you are great, I can't wait to see the results. Do you know if it is going to work under VLC then , will it also work under apples Media Center app Plex (based on XBMC)?
Great (geweldig!)

Thanks for the light controller app, works fine for us mac people. But ofcourse the developer in me wants to do more. I'd like to see the input on the following application i'm working on.

I started a small project called combustd it's a daemon process that can run on mac/linux/windows using ruby and ruby-usb to control it. This however means that you need to install libusb and ruby-usb by hand at the moment.

But don't be sad just yet! The application i'm developing will accept tcp and udp sockets to control the lights, tcp sockets for webapplications (enables us to access it with javascript / xmlhttprequests) udp sockets for when an application demands a bit more speed, for instance with a vlc plugin. I'm currently looking at the vlc AtmoLights plugin to see how they analyse the image and control the lighting. It will be a few months until I finish that part, because im focussing on javascript support for now.

One of my idea's is to enable custom iTunes LP's to access the ambx lights in order to sync it to the custom backgrounds/theming. It will also allow me to create games online that use ambx to set a mood.

A small demonstration video of the first steps:
http://www.sexybiggetje.nl/moblog/2009/ ... bustd.html

[djmirage]

I am working on 10.6, but there should be no problems running it on as low as 10.4. Plex isn't a media center application by Apple. XBMC/Plex support is on my todo list, but it's low priority. My todolist:

- implement tcp socket server
- implement javascript library
- implement udp socket server
- implement vlc plugin
- implement XBMC/Plex plugin

Also looking for someway to make distribution easier, because currently you need XCode, libusb and ruby-usb, which can be a turnoff for non-developers.

[Estilita]

Hi, those are great news since I think I won't have much time to develop new stuff for now.
If you feel that my source code might help you in any of those steps just tell me and I'll send it by e-mail or something.
I developed it under Xcode in C and Objective-C.

By the way a new version of my app is available in http://web.ist.utl.pt/~joao.estilita/am ... roller.pkg

[nymphe]

Great news for all of us! Thank you developers!

Estilita, I'm in vacation now, but still I've installed your app to see the differences. It's great to see new settings. Thank you a lot.

Because I don't have my ambx set here, the program crashes if I try to connect. Can you put there a code so that the program can tell me he couldn't connect. It is a minor issue of course.

A plugin for viewing media would be awesome. As main player I am using Movist, which is a great program for watching movies and series. It is probably not possible to have a plugin for each player, but still any work on this plugin issue is much much appriciated.

Thank you again

Hi, those are great news since I think I won't have much time to develop new stuff for now.
If you feel that my source code might help you in any of those steps just tell me and I'll send it by e-mail or something.
I developed it under Xcode in C and Objective-C.

By the way a new version of my app is available in http://web.ist.utl.pt/~joao.estilita/am ... roller.pkg

[beukhof1]

Hi,

First of all great work on the amBX for mac!

Im an programmer to and would like to help u make the software better and make a Mac VLC plugin. Could you please share the source code with me? And maybe some documentation.

[endymion75]

Estilita, thanks for this version , it work now on 10.5.

update: after using this app a while, I discovered that you see alot of "phyton" processes in the activity monitor"

Hi, those are great news since I think I won't have much time to develop new stuff for now.
If you feel that my source code might help you in any of those steps just tell me and I'll send it by e-mail or something.
I developed it under Xcode in C and Objective-C.

By the way a new version of my app is available in http://web.ist.utl.pt/~joao.estilita/am ... roller.pkg

[hillyhill]

Hey,

great work guys! I'm very curious too see what ambx has to offer on a mac, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it has even more potential on it !

Keep up the good work!

[makeluv247]

Hi

This is BRILLIANT! Been waiting ages for this. Just disappointed this wasn't developed by Philips or whoever is responsible for drivers!

Just a couple of things:
Any chance of it running on startup in the menu bar up top rather than in the dock?
'Cold' works nicely, but 'Hot' shows as much greens as it does anything else.
I closed the window, and could not get it up again through any menu, so had to re-enter the program.
How about that circle that loads of mac apps use where you can move around a point to select a specific colour? Could something like that be used to set a manual colour?

Thanks for the great work!
Dan

[Estilita]

Hi Dan thanks,

I agree with you, the amBX guys should really develop something professional for the MacOS.

Yep there are some bugs as you mentioned and those features you referred are all possible, I just don't have time now to correct/implement them...
Meanwhile if I correct/implement any bugs/features I'll post here.

Regards,
Estilita

[makeluv247]

of course whenever you have the time. we all waited long enough for philips to sort something out, and what you've done so far is already better than I'd hoped. I was considering selling mine until i read this thread again! a shame philips can't just pay you to develop a mac driver for them...

and can't wait for djmirage's project to grow. things look promising for us mac folk

[djmirage]

I'm glad people are being so positive. Thanks for your comments. Haven't been around for the last week, so didn't get much done yet. Because my brother started to join in on the project I have created a google code project with a *very basic* example. This is far from usable, but this will be the place to look at for progress and documentation.

http://code.google.com/p/combustd/

My brother already wrote a small application that can work with BobLight to react to video. This BobLight application is for Windows and Linux if I am correct. Expect it to be raw, but there is a small demo video of it on youtube: here.
This sample application hasn't been committed to the source tree yet, but expect it to follow somewhere in the following 24 hours.

Please note, combustd has now changed a little bit. We are building it into a small library that can be used by multiple applications. My tcp/udp server will be one of the applications, this Boblight helper application is another application. We will try to keep every application working on mac/linux/windows, where primary focus being mac/linux.

[DGTL_Magician]

Hi, I'm his brother.

I wrote a set of applications in ruby based on CombustD to set a fixed color and to communicate with Boblight. This enabled us to make amBX useable on multiple platforms. My workstations and mediacenter run on Ubuntu Linux.

What I did was to use the popen device type from Boblight. This exports an R, G and B value for each channel to STDOUT. You can specify an application which should receive it. This application listens to this and sets the color accordingly. Not everything works perfectly, I now just read the values in order, in Boblight you can specify which channel should be which color seperately, but it's very useable for video and stuff.

I use boblight-x11 to render this, this works on every application that outputs graphics, be it mplayer, vlc, XBMC or whatever. It even doesn't matter if you're using VDPAU or something like that.

Another teaser video, the applications will be up soon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00itDwamxQs

[makeluv247]

so we'll be able to use amBX with mplayer? cool

[hillyhill]

Any updates so far? Very curious!

Tom