# Uhh.. Can I hack this?



## pagan (Sep 9, 2009)

The extent of my affliction has finally become apparent to me.. I won an iPad this weekend and my first thoughts were how to use it as a controller for lights,fog, and sound..


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## hedg12 (Jul 6, 2008)

I've been working on a setup to do just that (well, I _was_ working on it, till things blew up here at work.) I'm using VSA, Helmsman, and EventGhost to trigger VSA routines. Ran into a little glitch with page caching on the iPad/iPod/iPhone browser, & that's where I stopped. Hopefully I'll have time to get back to it soon.


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## Zombies R Us (Jul 9, 2009)

You won an Ipad! You are so lucky! I asked for one for my Birthday but never thought how I could use it in my haunt.


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## pagan (Sep 9, 2009)

Zombies R Us said:


> You won an Ipad! You are so lucky! I asked for one for my Birthday but never thought how I could use it in my haunt.


I actually did get lucky, cause my wife kind of put the brakes on my buying one. Something about "needing" it or some such.. As if THAT ever stopped me before.


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## pagan (Sep 9, 2009)

hedg12 said:


> I've been working on a setup to do just that (well, I _was_ working on it, till things blew up here at work.) I'm using VSA, Helmsman, and EventGhost to trigger VSA routines. Ran into a little glitch with page caching on the iPad/iPod/iPhone browser, & that's where I stopped. Hopefully I'll have time to get back to it soon.


Work schmirk.. Help a brother out here!


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## Front Yard Fright (Dec 23, 2005)

I'd sell it and take that money to buy prop controllers... Make the most sense to me!
.


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## hedg12 (Jul 6, 2008)

pagan said:


> Work schmirk.. Help a brother out here!


Busy at work is a good thing!

Hopefully I'll have it done a day or two before Halloween so you'll have time to work it in this year! :googly:


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## Warrant2000 (Oct 8, 2008)

Selling it is a good idea. I only use an iPhone, as I'm scared I'd put down the iPad somewhere and forget to pick it up.


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## pshort (May 6, 2008)

How would you connect anything to the ipad? It doesn't have any useful ports...unless maybe you attach some photo-transistors to the screen...

Or are you just using the networking capabilities over WiFi to trigger something on a PC or some other WiFi device?


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## fritz42_male (May 5, 2009)

The iPad has bluetooth and there are bluetooth relay boards available so it's not a pipe dream. There is bluetooth servo control around as well - just a bit more awkward.


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## randomr8 (Oct 24, 2009)

pagan said:


> The extent of my affliction has finally become apparent to me.. I won an iPad this weekend and my first thoughts were how to use it as a controller for lights,fog, and sound..


Voiding warranties is the natural state of a creative mind. IMO

After all its only BSD in some form.


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## hedg12 (Jul 6, 2008)

pshort said:


> How would you connect anything to the ipad? It doesn't have any useful ports...unless maybe you attach some photo-transistors to the screen...
> 
> Or are you just using the networking capabilities over WiFi to trigger something on a PC or some other WiFi device?





fritz42_male said:


> The iPad has bluetooth and there are bluetooth relay boards available so it's not a pipe dream. There is bluetooth servo control around as well - just a bit more awkward.


I'm pretty sure the iPad only supports bluetooth HID (human interface device - for keyboards) and A2DP (stereo audio) profiles. I don't think there's any way to get any control output from either, unless you embed it in an audio file.

Network via WiFi to another networked device / server seems to be the most viable option.


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## fritz42_male (May 5, 2009)

http://www.commandfusion.com/products/view/iviewer

TCP/IP

http://www.engadget.com/2004/07/27/how-to-turn-your-ipod-in-to-a-universal-infrared-remote-control/

http://www.l5remote.com/

http://www.9to5mac.com/redeye-mini-4359035

IR

Plentry of IR relay boards out there or use a Picaxe circuit.


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## randomr8 (Oct 24, 2009)

This guy controls his whole house from one.

house control


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## psyko99 (Jan 11, 2008)

randomr8 said:


> This guy controls his whole house from one.
> 
> house control


I think he's actually on to something. He uses a mac mini which is set up as both a home media server and a home automation server. The interface is a website he wrote to control his home automation stuff.

I'm sure something similar can be done to control VSA, or Vixen, or some other software as hedge12 is trying.


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## hedg12 (Jul 6, 2008)

psyko99 said:


> I think he's actually on to something. He uses a mac mini which is set up as both a home media server and a home automation server. The interface is a website he wrote to control his home automation stuff.
> 
> I'm sure something similar can be done to control VSA, or Vixen, or some other software as hedge12 is trying.


That's pretty much what I've been playing with. Eventghost was originally intended to act as a bridge between ui devices like ir remotes and home theater computers. Basically it triggers an event based on whatever input you've associated with that event. It includes a simple web server, which makes designing an interface as simple as building a web page. I've been using it with VSA and Helmsman. Monkeybasic built in the ability to trigger VSA routines by keyboard shortcuts, so I just configured event ghost to send those keyboard shortcuts when it sees input from the web server. I ran into trouble, because the browser on the iPad caches the web pages & you only get one or two button presses before you have to reload the web page. I've tried all the "no cache" tags I can find, but I'm still having problems.
Eventghost also has a native iPhone app (looks fine scaled up in the iPad), but the buttons aren't configurable. I'd imagine it would work, if you don't mind using the preconfigured buttons to trigger your routines.


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## pshort (May 6, 2008)

I'm still stuck on the I/O issue.

The guy who is doing whole-house is apparently using wifi to connect to the mac mini. This would be fine if the show setup already uses a networking. If it doesn't, then adding networking means that you are spending a lot of time and effort on IT, possibly at the expense of attention to the show and to props.

The other links all seem to involve using the audio output to drive an IR transmitter for the purposes of controlling entertainment devices (slow & limited). This would be more useful if there was a device with multiple tone decoders, and figure out some way of sending triggers to the ipad/ipod (a bluetooth kbd emulator?)

I think that the Ipad is a neat device, enough so that I'm doing some light-duty applications programming for it. But it just seems to me that it wouldn't be a natural fit for all (or even many) shows, and that an iphone or a touch would work just as well.


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## hedg12 (Jul 6, 2008)

pshort said:


> I'm still stuck on the I/O issue.
> 
> ...adding networking means that you are spending a lot of time and effort on IT, possibly at the expense of attention to the show and to props.


That's a good point - networking in general and wifi in particular can be a pain in the rear.

The tone decoder idea is interesting. There are quite a few keyboard apps available, but most of them are single octave. I've never played with the LM567 - can it resolve tones that close together, or would you be limited to 3 or 4 outputs (or fewer) from a single octave?

I agree that the iPad/iPod touch/iPhone really isn't the best fit as a trigger, but there is a cool factor that appeals to the geek in me. I originally started playing with it as a control for my HTPC, but since i've had Halloween on the brain 24/7 lately I got a little sidetracked with the thought of mapping out my yard on the screen & triggering props by touching their icons. Practical? No. Fun? Definitely!


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## pagan (Sep 9, 2009)

hedg12 said:


> i've had Halloween on the brain 24/7 lately I got a little sidetracked with the thought of mapping out my yard on the screen & triggering props by touching their icons. Practical? No. Fun? Definitely!


Sounds like a marketable app to me! And let's face it, what were doing is not done for the sake of practicality"


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## Zombies R Us (Jul 9, 2009)

I got my birthday I Pad! now I will be looking for a way to use it for Halloween. I will be keenly interested in the discussion here on the ways to utilize the tech.


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## pshort (May 6, 2008)

The discussion here seems to have died out. My suggestion is to keep looking around for ready-built stuff that can be purchased or hacked.

What is are you interested in, anyway? What do you think that the ipad application (whatever it is) should do? And how do you think that if should control things, if that's what it does? The wi-fi route, something plugged into the audio output from an ipad, or something else altogether?


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## charlie (Jul 9, 2007)

Awesome idea, but I don't think the hassle of programming an iPad app is worth it (unless you're going to try to commercialize the product). My recommendation would be to find some browser based control software and use the iPad to access it that way.


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## The Pod (Sep 15, 2009)

Being into Home Automation I found the iPad a perfect fit. I use a software package called HomeSeer to control the lighting in my home. They have a interface for the iPad with a windows GUI designer to create your own screens and controls. Here is the screen and controls I created for my iPad to control the lighting for my house.


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## Dr Morbius (Sep 21, 2004)

That's a neat interface...I would drive the family nuts with it though flipping the lights on and off all the time playing with it.


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## Jaybo (Mar 2, 2009)

Ok, how about something that's actually designed to work with DMX show controllers and runs on an iPad/iTouch/iPhone?

Here you go:






Granted, this is probably a little on the expensive side of things.


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## pshort (May 6, 2008)

Perhaps a bit off-topic, but this thread aroused my curiosity about a Circuit Cellar article from a few years ago.

This article inspired me to create a little widget that plugs into the headphone jack from a computer, ipad/ipod or mp3 player to control servos. This device takes an input signal that is like that of the old 300 baud modems, decodes the tones, and used it to control the settings of up to four hobby servos. The input consists of six 300 baud characters, encoded with a dual-tone audio signal. I've tested it on a solderless breadboard, and I've also designed a 1.4" x 2.1" PCB that could be fairly cheaply manufactured.

Right now I'm trying to decide whether to do anything with this or to just drop it. The biggest issue that I have right now is finding cheap mp3 players, since I think that a standalone servo controller is probably the main application. In this case one of the stereo channels could be used for servo control and the other wired to a speaker for sound.

Comments?


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## pshort (May 6, 2008)

Perhaps a bit off-topic, but this thread aroused my curiosity about a Circuit Cellar article from a few years ago.

This article inspired me to create a little widget that plugs into the headphone jack from a computer, ipad/ipod or mp3 player to control servos. This device takes an input signal that is like that of the old 300 baud modems, decodes the tones, and used it to control the settings of up to four hobby servos. The input consists of six 300 baud characters, encoded with a dual-tone audio signal. I've tested it on a solderless breadboard, and I've also designed a 1.4" x 2.1" PCB that could be fairly cheaply manufactured.

Right now I'm trying to decide whether to do anything with this or to just drop it. The biggest issue that I have right now is finding cheap mp3 players, since I think that a standalone servo controller is probably the main application. In this case one of the stereo channels could be used for servo control and the other wired to a speaker for sound.

Comments?


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## Otaku (Dec 3, 2004)

Off-topic again...
Here's a deal on MP3 players, but they use micro SD cards. Doesn't look like they have any minimum qty, either. Don't know about hackability.

http://www.lightinthebox.com/Card-R...upport-5-Colors-Available-SZM871-_p69494.html


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## fritz42_male (May 5, 2009)

pshort said:


> Perhaps a bit off-topic, but this thread aroused my curiosity about a Circuit Cellar article from a few years ago.
> 
> This article inspired me to create a little widget that plugs into the headphone jack from a computer, ipad/ipod or mp3 player to control servos. This device takes an input signal that is like that of the old 300 baud modems, decodes the tones, and used it to control the settings of up to four hobby servos. The input consists of six 300 baud characters, encoded with a dual-tone audio signal. I've tested it on a solderless breadboard, and I've also designed a 1.4" x 2.1" PCB that could be fairly cheaply manufactured.
> 
> ...


I'd be interested. Is it Picaxe based or discrete circuitry? Doesn't matter, I'd still buy one.


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## hedg12 (Jul 6, 2008)

pshort said:


> Perhaps a bit off-topic, but this thread aroused my curiosity about a Circuit Cellar article from a few years ago.
> 
> This article inspired me to create a little widget that plugs into the headphone jack from a computer, ipad/ipod or mp3 player to control servos. This device takes an input signal that is like that of the old 300 baud modems, decodes the tones, and used it to control the settings of up to four hobby servos. The input consists of six 300 baud characters, encoded with a dual-tone audio signal. I've tested it on a solderless breadboard, and I've also designed a 1.4" x 2.1" PCB that could be fairly cheaply manufactured.
> 
> ...


I'd be really interested to see what you've come up with! Are you using DTMF? 
I had a similar idea, only my thought was to sync animations with video on a DVD. I'd thought to use either unused audio channels or frequencies above audible to send pulses to LM567 decoders. I have no experience with the decoders, and have no idea if it would work or not. My concern would be resolving the audio pulses cleanly and with a fine enough resolution to control the servos reliably.


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## pshort (May 6, 2008)

FSK encoding...1200/2200 hz, as in the early modems. I'm using a pair of PICs, one for FSK decoding and software UART receiver, the other one for four-channel servo pulse generation. The PICs are both little 8-pin parts, quite inexpensive.

The design is working, but still needs a bit of refinement and finishing touches. I've designed a pcb, but haven't built any. Also, there are a few spare pins on the first PIC, and I may add either some LEDs or a serial EEPROM.


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## Spooky56 (Jul 31, 2009)

I love Halloween as much as I love my iPhone...to use them both together would be a freakin' DREAM COME TRUE!!!!  HAHAHAHA! I will be following this thread for sure!


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## pshort (May 6, 2008)

Spooky56 said:


> I love Halloween as much as I love my iPhone...to use them both together would be a freakin' DREAM COME TRUE!!!!  HAHAHAHA! I will be following this thread for sure!


There are VNC apps out there for the iphone/ipod/ipad, this might be the surest path. You should be able to use the VNC on your iphone to control VSA/Vixen or whatever running on a PC. Sort of rube-goldbergish as far as I'm concerned, but I think that it should work.


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