this is portable

I’ve been wanting to try out the Phidgets boards for a while but didn’t have a chance until recently when I finally ordered myself an RFID starter kit. I didn’t know anything about robotics or anything at all about how the boards work, and honestly I pretty much still don’t. I was really impressed with how easy it was to get it up and running. It took maybe 10 minutes while I was watching TV.

For this past PittMFUG meeting I decided to make the simplest possible app using phidgets to show how easy it was to use.

What do you do with a phidgets RFID board and a packet full of RFID tags? The first thing everyone seems to think of is to put the RFID tags into a person. Not a good idea. The kit even comes with a warning specifically saying not to do that.

I went with the next best thing: toys on my desk.

Each toy in the app got an RFID tag taped to it and it’s photo taken. Then, I made a note of which tag ID was on each toy and set up the app to show the picture that matches the toy when it is within range of the RFID board.

All in all, this app took less than an hour to build. And most of that time was spent taking the pictures! While the toys are a silly subject, a few tweaks and this could easily be turned into some kind of simple kiosk application. So, if you’ve been thinking about trying phidgets and think it’s too hard, you’re wrong.

Here’s the source for my super toy reading app. You’ll have to get your own phidgets board and toys though.

A couple of notes..

Here’s a few other things I discovered while playing around with the RFID kit:

It does work through a table, but not through someone’s leg. So you could easily mount the board underneath a table or board to conceal it and thing will work just fine.

If two tags are both within range, neither will be read.

You can’t read the RFID chips in your pets. Trust me, I tried…. and then finally did the research to find out that those use a different kind of chip.

I was not able to detect any RFID tag besides the ones that came with the kit. So, if you have crazy plans to read your pet’s RFID tag or that fancy one that unlocks your door at work, you’re out of luck. Sorry.

While reading comments on this post by Mike Chambers, I noticed that in quite a few of those comments — and in many conversations at PittMFUG meetings — you find the best argument for improving the code editor in the Flash IDE I’ve heard.

It seems like we mostly discuss the difficulties of migrating to/learning AS3 and the very lacking code editor in the Flash IDE as two totally different topics. But they’ve got a lot in common. An improved code editor would make it easier for anyone who is not already a hardcore developer to pick up AS3. Finding the right tools can be almost as much of a barrier as learning the language right now.

Think of your typical designer type that picks up Flash. They want to do some cool effects and animation stuff, then slowly graduate to picking up some code here and there. If they start to realize the potential and want to really learn AS3, they’re in for a shock. The editor in the IDE offers so little guidance you pretty much need to know how to code already to use it. (And don’t look to the help files for examples, or even help you can understand half the time… but that’s a different story.)

So, what do they do? Either give up on AS3 all together, or press on and deal with the headache of finding, setting up, and possibly buying a third party editor to get the job done.

None of those things are easy: How to you know which one to pick if you’ve never used one before? Getting one set up isn’t intuitive. Will your boss really pay for more software? … and so on.

A big reason AS3 seems so hard to people coming from a non-developer background is that you’re forced to look outside what you know as “Flash” to get very far with it. Improving the editor in the IDE would be a big step to eliminating that problem. And improving the editor would also benefit more advanced users that span the designer+developer gap. There’s your common ground.

Sure, that’s easier for us to say than for Adobe to do. But, maybe their interest in helping folks pick up AS3 will lead to the IDE editor improvements we’ve been looking for.

There’s lots more suggested as possible ways that Adobe can help make learning AS3 easier. Check out these comments for a really good (and long) list!