Get access to an ActiveWire USB board with Lingo. This Xtra provides a Lingo API to access and manipulate a single ActiveWire USB I/O card. Have fun.

Introduction

My name is John Lianoglou. I'm an art school graduate. This thing started off as part of my senior thesis. You can use it for anything you like (providing you follow the terms of the license). I wrote it what now seems like a pretty long time ago, and had always inteneded to make it open source.

Within the past 7 days, I received 2 emails requesting it. So I sat down on a Sunday in Rome and made this website.

Hopefully this is just the beginning of some good developments. Have fun.

Included along with the Xtra itself in the download is basic documentation in PDF format, along with the source code (duh).

System Requirements

• Mac OS (only tested with 8.6 and up)*
• ActiveWire USB Driver
• The Xtra itself
• Director (only tested with 7 and 8)

I'm not a Mac snob, but I do prefer to work on a Mac. I produced this Xtra for myself. That pretty sums up why there's no Windows version. I would sorely like that situation to change, I will help in any way I can, but have no Windows programming experience, and no PC to do anything with.

* Although I haven't performed any testing at all as yet, I'm pretty sure this Xtra won't work with Mac OS X, as I don't believe USB drivers are transferrable between Classic and X. I could be wrong.

Some credit

Steve Lianoglou, helped me get through the whole Xtra creation process from moral support to actually trying to decipher Macromedia's Xtra development documentation! He is now teaching math, science, and computers to highschool students as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana.

Eric T. Brewer of ActiveWire, Inc. answered all sorts of questions I had while I was developing the Xtra. His help was invaluable (and, come to think of it, prompt). The cats at ActiveWire in general are doing some cool shit. If you haven't already, you should check out what they're doing with ActiveX and their I/O card.

Jason Ditmars is a bad-ass electronics artist in Brooklyn and was my advisor for the project that produced this Xtra.

License

I like open source. Details here.

I'm an artist and enjoy creative interaction. I'd love to hear what you're doing with this thing! Even if you don't think I'd be particularly interested (because I assure you, you'd be wrong).

Useful Links:

ActiveWire, Inc.
You'll need the driver (I'm assuming you already have the board). Get it there.

Macromedia
You'll need Director, without which this Xtra is pretty much useless.

If you want to compile the source, you'll also need the D7 XDK (the Xtra SDK).