Wonderfl Physical Computing

July 31st, 2009

Any of you out there who are code-minded may have come across wonderfl. Its something I’ve wanted to play with for a while, and now there is another great reason.

Wonderfl is (was) a web-based flash development environment. Perhaps that might sound a bit dull… not the case . The idea is: you type code into the web page, and compile it in the same page. A few seconds later, and your code is a fully functional demo sitting alongside what you’ve just written. This in itself is a major step, bearing in mind where flash came from: a big old application for timeline animation. What’s really great though is the ability for you to browse other user’s source code, test it, and add to it. By default, your code is covered by the MIT Open-Source License so in most cases you are free to use these other projects.

Add to that, the Funnel Server. Funnel is a set of libraries for Actionscript 3 (and Ruby and Processing), that provide a simple interface between these languages, and your hardware. You can use Gainer or Arduino or XBee… just add the libraries and you’ve got it all at your fingertips. Now, Wonderfl is a web-based physical computing development environment!

It is as simple as taking an existing experiment that uses mouse position as an input, for example, and swap the inputs for physical ones. As an introduction to physical computing, without the hassle of spending time understanding the ins and outs, it is perfect. Not for first time Actionscripters, perhaps, but there are a good mix of simple and complex projects, look through them here. I’m gonna go away and try it out.

This is the first project I came across on the site:

Entry Filed under: Architecture