Reach out with ASProxy

Brian Jepson, in his Control The World article for Macworld, describes his efforts at teaching his Mac to talk to the outside world; a feat that is near-and-dear the heart of any home automator.

Brian cogently describes how he used an Arduino micocontroller board to interface his Mac with a simple pressure sensor switch, creating a timer that reminds him not to spend too long seated at his desk. It looks like a great project, and all you need to get started is explained in the piece. Brian is an editor for the book series from MAKE, so you know it's a worthy example project.

But what really caught my eye was his use of ASProxy. It's a freeware application by Massimo Banzi that lets you trigger AppleScripts based on serial port input. It's designed for use with the Arduino board, but it will work with anything that can send single-character trigger signals over a serial connection.

This is exactly the type of "glue" application that lets home automators teach their systems new tricks. It reminds me of an old-school telephone ring detector that I once built for my Atari ST. (It signaled by sending a fake button press over the joystick port.) This is much more flexible, and as the comments on Massimo's site indicate, useful for a variety of projects. If you dive in, let the rest of us hear of how you put this to work.