Carpenter's Level Dashboard Widget
Make your laptop feel like 'one of the guys/girls'. Make it feel perfectly at home with your other household tools. Now a hammer, saw and a laptop can form a meaningful, friendly bond to last a lifetime.
(May 30, 2006) Lincoln Ramsay has created a unified version of Motion that probes your laptop to find out what kind you have and reacts accordingly. He's also got it under an LGPL license instead of BSD. More info here: http://ramsay.webhop.org/programs/unimotion.html and if you have any nifty ideas for further development, don't hesitate to dive in.
(April 1, 2006 *no, this is not an April fool's joke*) Thanks again to Randy Green, we now have a version of the Carpenter's level dashboard widget for the MacBook Pro! Check out Randy's new Motion-enabled security application, iAlertU at http://www.ialertu.com
Get it here (attn. This version is *only* for MacBook Pros. Owners of other models, look below.)
(March 18, 2006) Congratulations MacBook Pro owners, you now have your very own version of Motion, the program that the Level widget uses to read the motion sensor data from your computer. Huge thanks to Randy Green for this. A MacBook Pro version of the Level widget should be available within the next day or two. Watch this space.
Download MacBook Pro version of Motion here (source-code, makefile and binary(it's recently come to my attention that the binary doesn't work because I compiled it on my non-intel PB. So just delete the existing binary, recompile using the makefile and all is well))
(Jan. 24, 2006) In the latest mad rush to get the level widget, I've noticed some people accusing me of coming from a place where gravity works in reverse. I don't. For some reason, it appears that the polarity of the accelerometer is flipped. I have no idea why. If you're one for digging, just dive into the code, find (in level.html) where it says: AMSout = (AMSsplit[0]*2)+172; and change it to: AMSout = (AMSsplit[0]*-2)+172; and the world will be a better place (or vice versa).
Get Level for Hi Res PowerBooks *ONLY* here (others use the 3.0 download below) Thanks to Steven Riggins for fixing the swapped +/- issue.
Get version 3.0 here (for other than new Hi Res PowerBooks)
You know it's sad, but a typical sign of today's pop-culture; I'm an artist. I have a number of projects online that I'm very proud of. But it's beginning to look like the most useless thing I've done (my average monthly hits have gone up by about 25,000 since I created the Carpenter's Level), is going to be my best known, my greatest contribution to society. Pall Thayer
(Nov. 30, 2005) Using wifi/airport? Then you're invited to The Party at the Center of the Universe!
(Oct. 31, 2005) UPDATE: If the Carpenters Level isn't working for you, run Software Update (System Preferences) and update to Mac OS X 10.4.3. Hi Res PowerBook users still use the seperate download below, others still use the 3.0 download farther below.
(Oct. 30, 2005) UPDATE: It came to my attention recently that the Carpenters Level Dashboard Widget was not functional on the brand new Hi Res PowerBooks. I have a quick fix available for download and will try to incorporate the changes into the main version as soon as possible (thanks to Jonathan Chan and Mark Hamlin for their invaluable assistance).
Get Level for Hi Res PowerBooks *ONLY* here (others use the 3.0 download below) Thanks to Steven Riggins for fixing the swapped +/- issue.
Get version 3.0 here (for other than new Hi Res PowerBooks)
If you just want Motion click here for source-code, makefile and compiled binary.
Motion is Copyright 2005 Christian Klein. All rights reserved.
David Chatting and friends are useing Motion to turn their powerbooks into puppets. David has also created a Java wrapper for Motion. See it all here: http://cefn.com/curiosity/?cat=36
(Oct. 21, 2005) VERSION 3.0 OUT NOW, MAJOR UPDATE...We finally broke the barrier! The widget now works on both PowerBooks and iBooks. It also uses less resources because Peter Vohmann made it sleep when widget's aren't visible. We're still using Chris Kleins excellent and BSD licensed (open-source) Motion instead of AMSTracker. See how cool open-source is? I knew I could eventually get this stuff working on iBooks, but closed, proprietary software like AMSTracker makes it impossible. Since Motion is open and distributed with full source-code I was able to see how it worked, why it wasn't working on iBooks and fix it. Didn't have to wait for the original developer to do it. If only EVERYTHING could be open-source...
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***NO LONGER RELEVANT, HERE FOR POSTERITY'S SAKE*** UPDATE: OCT. 15, 2005 - I HAVE A TEST VERSION THAT SHOULD WORK ON IBOOKS HERE. THE POWERBOOK ONE IS STILL DOWNLOADED FROM BELOW. IF YOU TRY IT OUT, PLEASE DROP ME A NOTE AT pall@fa.is AND LET ME KNOW HOW IT WORKS. IF YOUR JUST LOOKING FOR A WAY TO READ FROM THE AMS SENSOR ON AN IBOOK, INSTALL THE WIDGET, THEN GO TO ~/LIBRARY/WIDGETS/, CTRL-CLICK ON THE LEVELWIDGET AND SELECT "SHOW CONTENTS" THERE YOU WILL FIND THE "MOTION" TERMINAL APP ALONG WITH SOURCE CODE AND MAKEFILE. HAVE FUN.
UPDATE: SEPT. 19, 2005 - WE DON'T NEED AMSTRACKER ANY MORE! CARPENTERS LEVEL NOW USES "MOTION" ©2005 CHRISTIAN KLEIN WHICH HAS A FREE-ER LICENSE SO I'M ABLE TO DISTRIBUTE IT ALONG WITH THE WIDGET (IT'S EMBEDDED, YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING). HERE'S THE BAD NEWS THOUGH, APPLE MADE SOME WEIRD CHANGE TO THE MOTION SENSOR ON THE NEW AMS ENABLED IBOOKS AND NEITHER AMSTRACKER NOR "MOTION" ARE CURRENTLY ABLE TO READ FROM THE SENSOR. BUT IT'S BEING WORKED ON AND WILL HOPEFULLY BE RECTIFIED SOON.
Download the latest widget here. (Powerbook only)
UPDATE: SEPT. 4, 2005 - MY HOW TIME FLIES WHEN WE'RE HAVING FUN! JUST STARTED AND ALREADY UP TO VERSION 2.0! WE NO LONGER REQUIRE THE PERL SCRIPT. IT'S ALL IN JAVASCRIPT NOW. SO, JUST FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW, BUT SKIP THE PERL SCRIPT PART. HOWEVER I'M LEAVING IT ON THE PAGE FOR HISTORICAL REASONS.
This is a Dashboard Widget that turns your Apple Motion Sensor enabled iBook or Powerbook into a carpenters level.
***NO LONGER REQUIRED***The first thing you have to do is to download and install amstracker at http://www.kernelthread.com/software/ams/download/AMSTracker.html
If you have the default settings, it will download to your Desktop so open a terminal and type:
cd ~/Desktop
sudo mv amstracker /usr/bin/
amstracker has to be in the /usr/bin/ folder for the widget to work.
***NO LONGER REQUIRED*** Next, download this Perl script . Again, if you're using defaults, Safari will download it to your Desktop, open a terminal and type:
cd ~/Desktop
tar -xzvf split.tar.gz
mv split.pl ~/
split.pl has to be located in your users root folder for the widget to work.
Now all that's left is to download the widget and level your digital existence. Go fix the fence, level your washing machine to reduce the noise, build a garage. Although your computer will work fine as a level, I don't recommend using it as a hammer unless you don't plan on using it for anything else in the future.