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."

Security?

[caerwyn]

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.

imac 2

[FirienFirien]

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.

Physical Tilt Games...

[fracai]

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?

Re:imac 2

[mmkkbb]

Do you remember the Radius Pivot? [gifford.co.uk]

Re:No imagination

[ameline]

You (and the moderators too) think you're joking. But I'm not. If, and as soon as, that capability is available in any widespread manner on a tablet PC (or a, purely hypothetical, tablet mac), Alias Sketchbook will exploit it in the way you describe. (There will probably be a preference to turn it off and/or adjust it's sensitivity. Wouldn't want it to happen accidentally.) Cheers

Thinkpad

[Vaystrem]

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.

Radius -- maybe my Pivot will work on my Pbook now

[ankhank]

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.

Re:Security?

[Pirogoeth]

How about a security feature where besides entering a password, you need to tip your PB around in a certain pattern before it will unlock?

Whoa!

[CaycePollard]

Just checked this out on my Al 15 1.67 and it's so cool it superconducts.

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 :)

Acceleration Detector + GPS = differential GPS

[kris_lang]

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 :)

Don't worry, you don't need a powerbook

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

You can build something like this for any laptop. The parts would be something like a USB module like this [pololu.com] ($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 [overta.ru]) 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 [kuro5hin.org].

Re:Radius -- maybe my Pivot will work on my Pbook

[BeerCat]

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.

Personal Experiment...

[DoctaBu]

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! [dotsomething.net]

The ultimate application of a notebook acceleromet

[Anonymous Coward]

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