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News Repurposing the Powerbook Motion Sensor

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by GreatOldOne, 4 Mar 2005.

  1. GreatOldOne

    GreatOldOne Wannabe Martian

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    Gizmodo reports on another act of geeky hackery on Apple hardware. This time round, another guy with far too much time on his hands (tm) has managed to subvert the sudden motion sensor found in new Power Books and get it to do other stuff:

    This isn’t something new for you to buy (sorry), but it’s so cool I had to share. Amit Singh patched into the six-axis motion sensor in the new Apple Powerbooks—originally designed to measure quick movements, like drops, and park the hard drive to prevent damage—and wrote a program that rotates the windows based on the orientation of the laptop to the ground.

    More info, with link here

    Useful? maybe, maybe not. But hey, who cares. It's cool. :hip:
     
  2. Risky

    Risky Modder

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    I'm amazed.

    I'll even forgive it being a Mac story :p
     
  3. Firehed

    Firehed Why not? I own a domain to match.

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    I think it needs to be rotated relative to your head.... I don't care if the apps are facing upwards as it's tumbling off a table! Although it would be a cool effect... kinda like watching the LCD on your digicam as you rotate it.
     
  4. Fod

    Fod what is the cheesecake?

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    hmm. IBM thinkpads have a similar sensor.
     
  5. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    I see a new input system for playing Marble Madness! :D
     
  6. planki

    planki ...

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    how much fun would that be though, mind you would you get some proper mad looks sitting there rotating your laptop moving the marble around on the screen.
     
  7. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    Great fun. Remember that old game where you have to guide a marble through a wooden maze with holes in it, by controlling two tilt buttons? They made one for the Palmpilot. Someone found a way of patching a solid-state tilt-sensor chip into the Palm's PCB so you could just tilt the palm as if the screen that the game was diplayed on was a physical plane. :D
     
  8. A13n0rma1

    A13n0rma1 Wannabe

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    I'd like to see sensors like the one in the powerbook and the thinkpads used to make actual laptop-use much more fun.

    For instance, if I'm lying on the couch and reading a website with my right leg over the left tilting the machine... The whole OS and everything on the screen should tilt with me :D

    That'd be freakin' cool and you know it.
     
  9. Krikkit

    Krikkit All glory to the hypnotoad! Super Moderator

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    But depending on the tilt-angle you'd lose loads of desktop space or you'd have to run like 640*480 in the middle of a 1280*1024 display to make sure it would have room to rotate.
     
  10. A13n0rma1

    A13n0rma1 Wannabe

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    Possibly, or it could be a minor tilt and just shrink the window vertically a tad.
     
  11. offroadracer789

    offroadracer789 What's a Dremel?

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    Somebody should make an online game where you see you go around in circles the longest without dropping the power book. j/k :D
     
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