Iron Coder Live: PoorLocation!
Monday, September 8th, 2008
We’re just back from C4[2]. Fantastic speakers and loads of Mac nerdery made for an amazing weekend trip to Chicago. The most unexpected part of the weekend for us was winning the Sunday contest. Having won Iron Coder Live last year, we weren’t planning on entering again—that is, until we found out about the amazing prize package. If there’s anything you can never have enough of, it’s Macs… and software to load onto them. If you weren’t there to watch, the entry is a bit difficult to describe but here goes.
In the spirit of the contest, we procrastinated until late Thursday afternoon and hatched a plan in a Starbucks-fueled brainstorm. (The employees at Starbucks are thoroughly convinced that we have no job.)
We had some Core Location-related ideas, but they would have involved lots of running around Chicago with iPhones, and since Wolf had given explicit permission to deviate from the theme “if the hack was cool enough”, we decided not to go the Core Location route. Once we came up with the stupidest idea on the planet, we headed out to buy Radio Shack’s last four remaining infrared LEDs and some tiny calculator batteries.
Six hours later, we had our hack ready: Using the WiiRemote.framework and some Apple sample code, we created a Mac app which could track infrared light sources using a Bluetooth link to a Wii Remote to draw colorful lines on the Mac screen. We also added an HTTP server using Cultured Code’s Simple HTTP Server Cocoa project. We then created an iPhone application to send HTTP requests to the Mac via Wifi. These requests controlled what kind of “artwork” would be generated by the Mac application. (Line color, thickness, etc.) As a finishing touch, we taped the infrared LEDs and batteries to the front of the iPhone. This allowed for a “digital whiteboard” effect. By pressing button on the iPhone’s cool UI and waving it around in a drawing motion, we were able to paint designs in the Mac program.
Friday was something of a blur and no work happened on the hack. I think I signed up for Twitter at some point. Tweet.
Saturday afternoon, we decided that we needed a “clincher” feature. A new mode was added to the application (using a UITabBarController of course) which allowed for the positioning and stamping of image files. We also added iPhone X-axis accelerometer data to the mix to allow for rotating of the stamped images by simply twisting the iPhone.
The next 24 hours was spent trying to decide what images we would use. We finally decided on Ken and Glen heads, tinfoil hats, nose glasses and fake moustaches, inspired by Josh and Dave’s Mr. Shuffle app, and the “paranoia” theme.
After spending Sunday morning in Photoshop lassoing fake moustaches, the live demo was a complete disaster. We positioned the Wii remote too far away from the Mac for the Bluetooth link to function, and our iPhones randomly jumped from out of our ad-hoc network to the conference network midway through the demo. Much awkwardness was twittered.
In the end, we somehow managed to take first place. Thanks for your votes, and thanks to all of the companies who donated software and t-shirts!
Here’s the source (875k) for our hack including Mac and iPhone projects. You’ll need Xcode 3.1, iPhone SDK and the WiiRemote.framework if you would like to build it. You’ll also need infrared LEDs… and tape…
Known issues: HTTP did not prove to be the best way to send rapid-fire requests from the iPhone to the Mac. The iPhone’s HTTP request system seems to freeze up if we send requests too quickly. Also, the IP address of the Mac server is hardcoded into the iPhone app for extra credit laziness.
One more thing: This code was mashed together in a few hours, and just barely. It contains some nasty bits and should not be used as an example of proper or efficient Cocoa programming!
So will anyone actually try this themselves? Let us know if you do!
Actual Program Output
