Experimenting With Light on Apple Laptops 120
venkatg writes "Soon after Apple introduced sudden motion sensors in their PowerBooks in early 2005, Amit Singh had shown how these sensors can be used for creative purposes (covered by Slashdot earlier as Having Fun With PowerBook Motion Sensors and PowerBook As A New Kind Of Human Interface Device). This time around Singh discusses 'Experimenting With Light' in a new article whereby by light he means the ambient light sensors and the illuminated backlight keyboard sensors in Apple's laptops. The article shows (source code is included) how one can measure ambient light and do things with it. It also shows things like how to get/set illuminated keyboard brightness and display brightness or do fade transitions of the keyboard lighting. So now that we have all these motion and light sensors under control, is there a MacBook discotheque in the works?"
Great (Score:3, Funny)
How does the keyboard backlight work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How does the keyboard backlight work? (Score:1)
Re:How does the keyboard backlight work? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:How does the keyboard backlight work? (Score:1, Insightful)
Dumbass...
Re:How does the keyboard backlight work? (Score:1)
I suppose you could also make use of that idea to light up hotkeys applicable to RTS games, MMO games, etc.
Guess it just depends on whether individual key lighting is possible, and then how much programming would have to be implemented into an application to use the feature.
Re:How does the keyboard backlight work? (Score:2)
Re:How does the keyboard backlight work? (Score:5, Informative)
The mechanism is a mat of fiber-optic cables which are illuminated by just two leds, which also cannot be independantly controlled.
Re:How does the keyboard backlight work? (Score:1)
Okay. I'll bite. I admit I have no theoretical knowledge of the lighting system in the backlit keyboards... but, if they can't be independently-controlled, then why can they independently malfunction, as mine did on my 1.25 Aluminum?
Apple wants $220 to restore 'one channel' of the backlighting. []which governs most of the numeric keys along the top, Shift, Fn, Control, etc,
Re:How does the keyboard backlight work? (Score:1)
http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus/ [artlebedev.com]
Re:How does the keyboard backlight work? (Score:1)
Just wait 'till the blackhats get ahold of this! (Score:4, Funny)
Coming soon, from a black-hat hacker near you:
Siezure-O-Rama 1.0 !! Now, with 38% more unconsciousness!
Re:North Korea (Score:3, Funny)
Torrent?
Re:North Korea (Score:2)
Duh! Both!
Re:North Korea (Score:1, Offtopic)
Obviously the solution is for the law-abiding citizens to eat the dead cannibals!
Oh wait...
Re:North Korea (Score:1, Offtopic)
At least it would make things interesting. Certainly from an enforcement aspect.
Re:North Korea (Score:1)
Jackass.
Re:North Korea (Score:1)
In the year 2000... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In the year 2000... (Score:2)
What would be better is keys that light independently - imagine keys flashing in rows or in circles (like sound waves in water) or in random order, looking like old-school mainframes shown in movies.
Re:In the year 2000... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In the year 2000... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In the year 2000... (Score:3, Funny)
A controller for the Wii? (Score:2)
Re:A controller for the Wii? (Score:2)
Re:A controller for the Wii? (Score:1)
Re:A controller for the Wii? (Score:1)
Re:A controller for the Wii? (Score:1)
Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:1, Insightful)
Lets focus on basic principles first before adding superfluous features lik
Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:2)
Perv!
Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:2, Insightful)
You didn't know MacHeat(TM) was a feature in and of itself? Just fold your book down and place your Starbuck's ® coffee mug on top of it. Vwa-la! Your coffee is hot for hours.
Those mac guys are so clever.. and the PCs are so user friendly!
Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:4, Funny)
Rumoured upgrade for os 1.5 -- face recognition engine uses built-in camera to detect pain threshold. Automatically throttles back CPU if user faints, or collapses from blood loss.
Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:1)
Y'know, things that make us better at war.
Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:2, Insightful)
The backlights have been on there for years. (Score:4, Informative)
Honestly, shut up until you know what you're talking about.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:2)
Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:2)
So the principles of engineering, the one that most companies ignore, is to create an optimized system. There is no reason to put in high speed hardware with a slow bus, even though such a thing might look good in
Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:1)
Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:1)
Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:2)
Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:2)
Basically there are 3 sensors which could be combined to good effect. The ambient light sensor might be useful (not very likely), the accelerometer and the cpu thermometer. Your legs are usually warmer than room temperature and conduct heat differently. The co
Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:1)
A warm topic... (Score:1)
Turned out I had a plug-in in my Mail.app (a junk mail filter program I wasn't using anyway, but I installed and left there like a busy doofus) that was running the CPU AND making it take forever to mark email as junk, or to quit the program
Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:1)
Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:3, Insightful)
That's one of my favorite features... I went thru 3 power supplies on previous laptop from tripping over the power cable...
Re:Perhaps keyboard backlighting could flash (Score:1)
Blackout Game (Score:5, Interesting)
With this, assuming that each key has a light associated with it, one could do the same thing with a whole keyboard.
And for those who don't have any issues with being violent towards their computers, you could reset it a la Etch-a-Sketch with the motion sensor.
Re:Blackout Game (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Blackout Game (Score:2)
"Lights Out" (Score:2)
I have the game. It's called Lights Out. Here [hasbro.com] is the manufacturer's page (it's made by Tiger [tigerelectronics.com]), and here [clara.co.uk] is an interesting page about it.
Re:Blackout Game (Score:5, Funny)
(of course one could surmise that anyone who wants this in leu of therapy might have issues - but I'd call those people just plain nuts)
Re:Blackout Game (Score:1)
Before the Mac bashers go crazy with this one.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, they're tackling the ambient light sensors, which again, serve a relatively "boring" (if still useful) purpose. I'm intrigued to see what imaginative people will end up doing with this one too. For starters, I could envision some usefulness in things like making the backlit keyboard blink in a repeating pattern to indicate completion of recording in certain audio programs. (Many recording studio environments are kept dark so you can easily see all the readouts on the displays of the equipment while working. Macbook Pros are going to be popular in these environments, and it might be nice to get a subtle indication it finished transcoding or recording some audio - even if the display went blank due to a screen saver?)
The really 'amazing' thing is... (Score:2, Informative)
That said.. those new SONY VAIOs (OMG ROOTKIT PONIES!) have a fingerprint reader built-in... c'mon VAIO us
Re:The really 'amazing' thing is... (Score:1)
Re:The really 'amazing' thing is... (Score:3, Insightful)
I know you can get accellerometer and other sensors for the PC easily, but they were usually external, and internal built in ones were usually hidden from software view. All it took was Apple to start making it easy to ac
Re:The really 'amazing' thing is... (Score:3, Informative)
So, I guess it just took one clever Apple hacker to get the idea to use the SMS for something - looks like it wasn't that hard to access the data on a PC.
What?! Mac users are more creative than PC users?! (Score:1)
Re:Before the Mac bashers go crazy with this one.. (Score:2, Informative)
If you shake it like an etch-a-scetch you get a window that pops up and tells you the heads are being moved to a safer place or something similiar. The one I saw doing it had an Intel core duo chip in it. A fine piece of machinery. Until something simple broke in the mouse
The killer app (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The killer app (Score:1)
Re:The killer app (Score:2)
What? and provide a weak security mechanism that can easily be web accessed to leak Paris Hilton's celebrity contacts?
Sounds like fun (Score:3, Interesting)
I saw a video of the sudden motion sensor being used to switch desktops and it looked really great. Good luck to anyone who thinks they can do something useful. Someday we could all benefit.
I also find it interesting that sudden motion sensors were available on Thinkpads before Powerbooks but I never heard of people using them in different ways. That's a pretty good advert for Apple. Sums up the image that Apple put out much better than those TV ads.
Brilliant, New Mail indicator (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Brilliant, New Mail indicator (Score:2)
Concentrate that light! (Score:2)
Re:Concentrate that light! (Score:1)
ideas for other applications (Score:2)
auto screen lock - if laptop is not moved for X seconds, lock the screen - analagous to someone using on their lap putting it down on a table
burglar alarm - if laptop is moved, send a distress call
intruder detector - if a beam of light shone onto light detector flickers, then intruder detected
Lightspeed network (Score:1)
Re:Lightspeed network (Score:1)
Burglar alarm (Score:1)
Other appication (Score:3, Interesting)
http://blog.medallia.com/2006/05/smacbook_pro.htm
Obvious application (Score:2)
We all knew that Apple users were already "way cool" and this will put them over the top. There's no way we can compete now.
No. (Score:2)
The MacBooks don't have a lit keyboard or an ambient light sensor, only the MacBook Pros do.
Must be a slow news day... (Score:1)
Re:Must be a slow news day... (Score:2)
Woohoo! Boktai for the Mac! (Score:2)
I smell updates for all popular Mac GBA emulators coming :-)
Finally, a properly emulated version of Boktai [wikipedia.org] for Macs! Or maybe even an official Mac version? One can dream, can't one? :-)
Not bashing but a real use..... (Score:1)
With the ambient light sensors, you could display an image on the screen and adjust the lighting acording to the ambient light (there were left and right sensors). You could even turn your computer into a sundial (ever post needs a link to the Wiki, so here's mine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_dial [wikipedia.org]). Point your notebook due north and check the time. Too bad the motion sensor didn't include an electron
or... (Score:3, Insightful)
Where are the ambient light sensors? (Score:1)
Disco (Score:1)
Consider, for a moment, the traditional Mac user. These are often very smart, very intellectual people. They enjoy culture, fine achievements and the arts. They enjoy long philosophical discussions that, whilst boring to many others, are deeply important to them. They prefer an environment that isn't necessarily the most competetive but has a reassuring sense of doing everything right rather th
Light show! (Score:2)
Gamma Adjustments (Score:1)