Shared Phidgets Toolkit (Version 3)
With the Shared Phidgets toolkit developers can easily build prototypes of distributed physical user interfaces. Physical sensors and actuators (e.g. servos, sliders, motion sensors, temperature sensors, buttons, displays) can be combined to information appliances that bring the interaction with computing technology into our everyday environment.
Note: The Shared Phidgets toolkit 3.0 is the completely rewritten version of the toolkit, with an extended and modified developer library API. Therefore it might be necessary to modify existing Shared Phidgets software before compiling with the new version. The documentation of the previous toolkit versions can be found here.
Contents
Download and Installation
The setup installs all required tools: the connector software, plug-ins, developer library, and advanced development utilities. The .NET programming components and interface skins are automatically added to the Visual Studio 2005 toolbox. Furthermore, the setup installs a new Shared Phidgets development template, and a Visual Studio add-in.
Recipes and How-To's
- How to start with the development of a new appliance
- How to use the VisualStudio AddIn to automatically create the code framework of an appliance
- How to use the infrastructure exploration utilities
- Which interface skins are implemented in the developer library
- How to manually use the Connection Manager
- How to close the Shared Phidgets connection
- How to program with the shared dictionary directly
- How to get information about a Shared Phidgets dictionary path
- How to use serial number or location filters
- How to get the selected hardware device from the Device Manager Skin
- How to manually edit the connector-config.xml file
- How to iterate through all available physical devices
- How to work with metadata entries
- Path conventions of entries in the Shared Dictionary
- How to use the existing Phidgets.NET applications with the new Shared Phidgets toolkit
Troubleshooting:
Getting started
Programming Examples Step-by-step
Links
- Shared Phidgets: A Toolkit for Rapidly Prototyping Distributed Physical User Interfaces. Academic paper, Marquardt, N. and Greenberg, S. (2006), Report 2006-829-22, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2N 1N4. April.
- Phidgets Inc. Here you can buy the Phidget devices directly. The user forum is very useful for new information about Phidgets.
- Phidgets USA