Phidgets on OS X

Phidgets [1], or physical widgets, are building blocks that help a developer construct physical user interfaces. Phidgets arose out of a research project directed by Saul Greenberg at the Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary. Phidgets were built and mostly programmed by Chester Fitchett who now sells them through his company, Phidgets Inc..

In 2004, Fred Leboucher and myself developed a framework for programming phidgets on Mac OS X. The following phidgets were supported at that time:

• interface kit (analog input, digital input and output)
• text LCD
• servo
• RFID tag reader
• text LCD with interface kit (digital output works but not digital input)

Phidgets Inc. now provides an OS X framework, making our work obsolete...

References

[1] S. Greenberg and C. Fitchett. Phidgets: Easy Development of Physical Interfaces through Physical Widgets. In Proc. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, UIST 2001, Orlando (USA), pages 209-218, November 2001. ACM Press. [Google]