Sean wearing the Mindset

Read and process data from your brain in ActionScript 3.0 with this open source API that I’ve created. You’ll need the Mindset hardware to utilize the full power of the API but you can run the ThinkGear Connector in “demo” mode and it will send simulated brain data to your app.

I’ve been interested in Brain Computer Interfaces for a few years now and was pleasantly surprised to find that Neurosky is now selling an affordable headset that reads brainwave data. The development tools are available for download from the Neurosky website for free. They provide a small piece of AS3 that shows how to read data from the ThinkGear Connector through a socket using ActionScript 3.0. I’ve abstracted the raw socket code into an easy to use API with documentation. Events are generated as the connector captures brainwave data from the BCI headset. You can register to listen for these events and get notifications as the brainwave data is read in one second intervals.

I’m currently working on a dashboard that displays the data my brain is generating using this API. It’s still a little rough but you can see the beginning in the video below. I’m also working on another project that feeds the brainwave data to some particle based visualizations in Flex. I think combining the brainwave data with Flash/Flex based visualizations could produce some very interesting results!

I’m planning on making this API open source and encourage developers to get involved. I can’t think of anything more exciting than reading your brain with ActionScript 3.0, Flex, AIR, etc. I truly think BCIs are the future of computing and we’ve hardly even seen the full potential yet. I currently need more examples to add to the project so if you’re interested in contributing those or anything else to the project please get in touch.

The game market is a great area where a BCI can be utilized. There is currently a demo game included with the Mindset when you purchase one. It’s pretty cool and if you are as interested in BCIs I encourage  you to take a look.

You can use the links below to find additional information about Neurosky and the Mindset BCI. You can also download the ThinkGearAPI SWC, browse the API documentation and download the source for the API and the Flex example using Subversion.

ThinkGearAPI SWC

http://kannopy.com/thinkgear/ThinkGearAPI.swc

ThinkGearAPI ASDoc Documentation

http://kannopy.com/thinkgear/thinkgear-api-asdocs/

ThinkGearAPI Flex Example (Flex Archive)

http://kannopy.com/thinkgear/ThinkGearAPIFlexExample.zip

Neurosky MindSet BCI API (Subversion):

http://kannopy.com/thinkgearapi/

Neurosky MindSet BCI API Flex Example (Subversion):

http://kannopy.com/thinkgearflex

Neurosky MindSet Development Tools

http://store.neurosky.com/products/mindset-development-tools

Neurosky Homepage

http://www.neurosky.com/

Neurosky Brainwave Visualizer

http://www.neurosky.com/mindset/visualizer.html

ArcGIS API for Flex
The ArcGIS API for Flex allows the creation of Rich Internet applications on top of ArcGIS Server. It is based on the free Adobe Flex framework. The Flex framework is a client-side technology that is rendered by Flash Player 9 and above, or by Adobe AIR. All Flex 3.x SDK versions are now supported.
http://resources.esri.com/arcgisserver/apis/flex/

asaudio
ASaudio is a small AS3 library dedicated to simple and efficient sound handling.
http://code.google.com/p/asaudio/

as3ansi
Library for parsing and viewing extended ASCII (IBM code page 437) into AS3 for use in Flash and Flex applications.
http://code.google.com/p/as3ansi/

ActionScript 3.0 Client Library for Facebook Platform API
The new ActionScript 3.0 Client Library for Facebook Platform API, fully supported by Facebook and Adobe, makes it easy to build applications that combine the strengths of the Flash Platform and Facebook Platform.
http://code.google.com/p/facebook-actionscript-api/

ascolourlovers
ColourLovers API for ActionScript 3. This library provides all the tools needed to bring palettes, colors, patterns and more from the ColourLovers API in your AS3 projects.
http://code.google.com/p/ascolourlovers/

AS3DAC
AS3DAC parses an AS3.0 class or instance file and adds asdoc documentation stubs. Follows the Flex SDK Coding Conventions where applicable.
http://code.google.com/p/as3dac/

as3flexdb
AS3FlexDB project is a open source lib that allows Adobe Flex applications to connect to a MySQL server.
http://code.google.com/p/as3flexdb/

as3growl
An ActionScript 3 API for working with the Growl notification service.
http://code.google.com/p/as3growl/

AS3 Http Client Library
An http library written on top of flash.net.Socket (and as3crypto) to be used with AIR or flash runtimes.
http://github.com/gabriel/as3httpclient

as3midilib
MIDI for ActionScript 3.0
http://code.google.com/p/as3midilib/

as3openxmlformats
ActionScript 3 lib for MS Office Open XML Formats
http://code.google.com/p/as3openxmlformats/

as3-scaffold
as3-scaffold is a lightweight as3 framework with an accompanying set of scaffolding scripts to automate the tedium of setting up new as3 projects, with support for PureMVC.
http://code.google.com/p/as3-scaffold/

as3scriptinglib
This library aims to provide an API for compiling and executing runtime ActionScript/JavaScript within the Flash client (no server required) via Adobe’s ECMAScript 4 compiler (from the Tamarin project).
http://code.google.com/p/as3scriptinglib/

as3zlib
as3 port of zlib
This is a port of JZlib to as3. Was created because as3 in Flash9 does not support deflate in ByteArray. AIR does support deflate and doesn’t need this code.
http://code.google.com/p/as3zlib/

bitly as3 api
Simple as3 implementation for bit.ly API.
http://code.google.com/p/bitly-as3-api/

Diggbe
Diggbe is a general purpose DI engine. It is first conceived for unit testing purposes (to avoid xxxSet/GetForTest). But it can also be use for runtime code to allow service dependencies to be injected.
http://code.google.com/p/diggbe/

echo-nest-flash-api
An ActionScript 3 interface for the the Echo Nest API.
http://github.com/also/echo-nest-flash-api

Etsy API Wrapper for Actionscript 3
An Actionscript 3 class that wraps the Etsy.com API.
http://thunderfarm.com/etsy/

feedmeas3
FeedMe is a low level class for sharing data between objects.
http://code.google.com/p/feedmeas3/

fuelas3svn
This is the SVN protocol implemented in AS3. This library gives you the ability to write your own SVN client completely in Flash.
http://code.google.com/p/fuelas3svn/

Gigya AS3 API
http://wiki.gigya.com/030_Gigya_Socialize_API_2.0/030_API_reference/010_Client_API_%28JavaScript%29

googleas3api
AS3 library on Googles API’s, integrate the power of Google in your Flash/Flex/AIR application (searches, translation, suggest, weather, feeds).
http://code.google.com/p/googleas3api/

Kongregate’s AS3 API
The Kongregate AS3 API allows you to extend your game to communicate with the Kongregate back-end.
http://www.kongregate.com/developer_center/docs/as3-api

KoolMoves AS3 API
http://koolexchange.com/docs/km/

lastfm as3
Actionscript 3.0 API to access the Last.fm web services.
http://code.google.com/p/lastfm-as3/

Mappy AS3 API
Thanks to Mappy AS3 API, show your users advanced visual effects (zooming with transition effects, video integrations, animations, etc.)and render maps quickly on browsers with a Flash plug-in instaled (the vast majority of Internet users).
http://api.mappy.com/en/as3

MP3tunes Music AS3/Flex/AIR API
API to implements the MP3tunes Music API. The api consists of REST interface which gives you access to all data for a user within the MP3tunes Locker service. It gives you the foundation for using the service in a AS3/Flex/AIR project.
http://code.google.com/p/mp3tunes-as3-api/

nd3d
ND3D is a simple to use AS3 3D Engine. Aimed for speed and simplicity. Target use are small 3D effects and rapid 3D testing / prototyping. The compiled size of the engine is about 10k.
http://code.google.com/p/nd3d/

netflex-as3-api
An Actionscript 3 utility library to simplify the Netflix API for Actionscript 3 based applications.
http://code.google.com/p/netflex-as3-api/

Sekati API
Sekati API is a Pure Actionscript 3.0 framework designed to bootstrap the development of flash/flex projects & applications with an emphasis on high-level functionality encapsulation. The framework provides a flexible, feature-rich xml configurable application architecture through the implementation of it’s collection of behavior-specific core display objects, controllers, managers & utilities.
http://code.google.com/p/sekati/

Soundcloud AS3 API
Universal Soundcloud API wrapper for Flash, Flex and AIR projects, written in ActionScript 3.0.
http://github.com/dasflash/Soundcloud-AS3-API/blame/1aa2d25c072309a1e931b08e88f6c7218a135be0/README

tweensy
Tweensy is an extremely efficient Actionscript 3 property tweener. Contained within Tweensy is an expansion package called Tweensy FX which allows for motion effects to be applied onto DisplayObjects.
http://code.google.com/p/tweensy/

vyana
Light-weight Cairngorm-PureMVC like framework with care about modular applications
http://code.google.com/p/vyana/

wiiflash
Communication between the Wiimote and Flash
http://code.google.com/p/wiiflash/

• File System Access
• Network Detection
• Notifications
• Application Update
• Drag and Drop
• Local Database

The first code example is for File System Access. The next code example will be Network Detection.

Here is the source code that is used to open and read a .txt file with Adobe AIR. Note: this is a simple example created using the “Developing AIR Applications with Adobe Flex 3″ online manual. This manual is a GREAT resource and I highly recommend using it.

Adobe AIR: File System Access
Example Code:

<mx:WindowedApplication xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"
  layout="absolute"
  creationComplete="init();">
  <mx:Script>
    <![CDATA[

      private var file : File;
      private var fileStream : FileStream;
      private var fileContents : String;
      private const ISO_CS : String = "iso-8859-1";

      private function init() : void
      {
        file = new File();
        file = File.applicationDirectory.resolvePath("file.txt");
        fileStream = new FileStream();
        fileStream.addEventListener( Event.COMPLETE, fileComplete );
        fileStream.openAsync( file, FileMode.READ );
      }
      private function fileComplete( event : Event ):void
      {
        fileContents = fileStream.readMultiByte( fileStream.bytesAvailable, ISO_CS );
        trace( "fileContents="+fileContents );
      }
    ]]>
  </mx:Script>
</mx:WindowedApplication>

2007 was an AWESOME year for Flex and AIR. 2008 should continue this trend. Here are several different technologies and other items I plan on monitoring going into 2008. Some of these are bleeding edge, others are fundamentals which we’ve been studying for years.

“I’m sure that Flex skills will be one of the hottest skills to have in 2008.” – Yakov Fain

ActionScript 3.0
Essential ActionScript 3.0
Personally I plan on digging into the nitty-gritty details of the language. This includes refining knowledge of Errors, Events, Exceptions, Interfaces, Bitmap API, Display API and Namespaces to name a few. I’ll be reading Essential ActionScript 3.0 to do so.

Adobe AIR
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air/
The first full release of AIR should be coming in 2008. With the rapid growth and massive interest already I cannot even speculate what 08 will bring for this exciting, young technology.

Adobe Astro
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Astro
“The next major release of Flash Player, codename “Astro,” was first previewed at Adobe MAX 2007. The preview highlighted a few of the new capabilities the Flash Player team is working on for Astro: advanced text layout, simple 3D effects, and custom filters, blend modes and effects.”

Adobe BlazeDS
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/blazeds/
http://livedocs.adobe.com/labs/blazeds/html/index.html
“BlazeDS is the server-based Java remoting and web messaging technology that enables developers to easily connect to back-end distributed data and push data in real-time to Adobe® Flexâ„¢ and Adobe AIRâ„¢ applications for more responsive rich Internet application (RIA) experiences.”

API’s
http://programmableweb.com/apis/directory/1?sort=date
I always keep an eye on this area of Programmable Web for new ideas for applications and mashups.

ASDoc
Using ASDoc
“ASDoc is a command-line tool that you can use to create API language reference documentation as HTML pages from the classes in your Flex application. The Adobe Flex team uses the ASDoc tool to generate the Adobe Flex 2 Language Reference.”

Brain-computer interface
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-computer_interfaces
http://www.techrivet.com/2007/07/23/NeuroSkyMovingBeyondConceptBCI.aspx
“brain-computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain-machine interface, is a direct communication pathway between a human or animal brain (or brain cell culture) and an external device.” The WII in Flash was cool, let’s see one of these plugged into the Flash Platform!!!

Cairngorm
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Cairngorm
http://www.cairngormdocs.org/
“The Cairngorm Microarchitecture is a lightweight yet prescriptive framework for rich Internet application (RIA) development.”

Cloud Computing
http://tnerd.com/2007/10/14/cloud-computing-the-next-big-thing-is-cloud/
Cloud_computing_wp_final_8Oct.pdf
“is a computing paradigm shift where computing is moved away from personal computers or an individual server to a “cloud” of computers. Users of the cloud only need to be concerned with the computing service being asked for, as the underlying details of how it’s achieved are hidden”

Design Patterns
http://www.javacamp.org/designPattern/
http://www.exciton.cs.rice.edu/JAvaResources/DesignPatterns/default.htm
ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns: Object Oriented Programming Techniques
“In software engineering, a design pattern is a general repeatable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. A design pattern is not a finished design that can be transformed directly into code. It is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations”

E4X
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/training_e4x.html
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-357.htm
E4X: A new approach to XML processing
http://www.w3schools.com/e4x/default.asp
“E4X offers a natural, fluent set of language constructs for manipulating XML. In contrast to traditional XML-parsing APIs, XML with E4X performs like a native data type of the language. E4X streamlines the development of applications that manipulate XML by drastically reducing the amount of code needed.”

EcmaScript 4.0
http://www.ecmascript.org/
http://www.ecmascript.org/es4/spec/evolutionary-programming-tutorial.pdf
Microsoft trying to derail ECMAScript 4?
“ECMA-262 Edition 4 is the next-generation version of ECMAScript being developed currently by the ECMA TG1 working group.” This space is heating up, keep a watch on this one I have a feeling this is going to shape the future of the web in major ways.

Flash Media Server
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver
“an enterprise-grade data and media server from Adobe Systems Inc. This server works together with the Flash Player runtime to create media driven, multiuser RIA’s.”

Flex 3 & Flex 4
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/
Keep an eye on Adobe Labs. Flex 3 will be coming out in 2008 and who knows we may even see at least some more talk about or get to provide additional input on the future of Flex.

Flex Custom Components
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/creating_components.html
Flex Component Kit Alpha for Flex 2.0.1
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/creating_as3_components.html
I think creating custom components for Flex is going to increase in demand in 2008.

Flex Performance and Memory Profiling
Performance and Memory Profiling
“Memory profiling lets you look at objects being created, take snapshots and compare them. Performance profiling allows snapshots for looking at cumulative and internal time.”

Flex Persistent Framework Caching
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2007/08/player_update_p.cfm

Flex Refactoring
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/videos/refactoringdemo/

Flex Skinning
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex_skins.html
http://www.scalenine.com/resources.html
“If you want to redesign the appearance of the Flex components more radically, you can do so by creating a new set of skins for the Flex components that completely replace the built-in Halo Aeon theme.”

Hibernate
http://www.hibernate.org/
“Hibernate is a powerful, high performance object/relational persistence and query service. Hibernate lets you develop persistent classes following object-oriented idiom – including association, inheritance, polymorphism, composition, and collections.”

Hydra / Adobe Image Foundation
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/AIF_Toolkit
“The Adobe Image Foundation (AIF) Toolkit preview release includes a high-performance graphics programming language that Adobe is developing for image processing, codenamed Hydra, and an application to create, compile and preview Hydra filters and effects.”

Java 7
https://jdk7.dev.java.net/
http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2007/08/09/looking-ahead-to-java-7.html

Java 6
http://www.sun.com/training/catalog/courses/WJB-110A.xml
http://www.sun.com/training/catalog/courses/SL-275-SE6.xml
http://www.sun.com/training/catalog/courses/CX-310-065.xml
Here are a few links with training recommended for Java certification. Might be something to think about for the future.

JavaFX
http://www.sun.com/software/javafx/index.jsp
“The JavaFX product family delivers the ability to create interactive content, applications and services from the desktop to mobile devices to the living room.”

Microformats
http://microformats.org/
“Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.” Microformats are being used in conjunction with Adobe AIR.

Occasionally Connected Apps
Monitoring network connectivity
One of the draws to using Adobe AIR is the ability to monitor network connectivity. This is one area I want to work with and research a bit more in 2008.

OOP
http://www.friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=1590598458
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/oop_as3.html
“Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that uses “objects” and their interactions to design applications and computer programs. It is based on several techniques, including encapsulation, modularity, polymorphism, and inheritance. It was not commonly used in mainstream software application development until the early 1990s. Many modern programming languages now support OOP.”

Papervision 2.0
http://blog.papervision3d.org/
http://papervision3d.googlecode.com/svn/trunk
http://blog.zupko.info/?p=76
“Features: Faster! ShadeMaterials, Shaders, ASCollada (animation support), Frustrum Culling, Multiple Viewports, Render to Scene and more. More features expected soon.”

Prisim
http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/10/prism/
“Unlike Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight, we’re not building a proprietary platform to replace the web. We think the web is a powerful and open platform for this sort of innovation, so our goal is to identify and facilitate the development of enhancements that bring the advantages of desktop apps to the web platform.”

Refactoring
http://www.refactoring.com/
“Refactoring is a disciplined technique for restructuring an existing body of code, altering its internal structure without changing its external behavior. Its heart is a series of small behavior preserving transformations. Each transformation (called a ‘refactoring’) does little, but a sequence of transformations can produce a significant restructuring.”

Spring
http://www.springframework.org/
http://www.theserverside.com/tt/articles/article.tss?l=IntrotoSpring25
“The Spring Framework is probably best known for offering features required to effectively create complex business applications outside of the programming models that historically have been dominant in the industry. Next to that it is also credited for introducing previously unfamiliar functionalities into today’s mainstream development practices, even beyond the Java platform.”

SQLite
http://www.sqlite.org/
http://sqlitebrowser.sourceforge.net/
“SQLite is a software library that implements a self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL database engine.” This is used in google gears and Adobe AIR. Firefox also uses SQLite.

Struts
http://struts.apache.org/
“An open source framework for building Servlet/JSP based web applications based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design paradigm.”

Subversion
http://subversion.tigris.org/
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/svn-book.pdf
“Subversion (SVN) is a version control system initiated in 2000 by CollabNet Inc. It allows users to keep track of changes made to any type of electronic data, typically source code, web pages or design documents.”

Surface Computing
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
“Surface computing is the use of a specialized computer GUI in which traditional GUI elements are replaced by intuitive, everyday objects. Instead of a keyboard and mouse, the user interacts directly with a touch-sensitive screen, replicating the familiar hands-on experience of everyday object manipulation.”

Swing
Java Swing By Marc Loy
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/
“Swing is a widget toolkit for Java. It is part of Sun Microsystems’ Java Foundation Classes (JFC) — an API for providing a graphical user interface (GUI) for Java programs. Swing includes GUI widgets such as text boxes, buttons, split-panes, and tables.”

Thermo
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Thermo
“Thermo” is an upcoming Adobe product that makes it easy for designers to create rich Internet application UIs. Thermo allows designers to build on familiar workflows to visually create working applications that easily flow into production and development.

Technological singularity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
“There is no clear definition, but usually the Singularity is meant as a future time when societal, scientific and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our present perspective, and when humanity will become posthumanity.”

TouchLib
http://www.whitenoiseaudio.com/touchlib/
“Touchlib is our library for creating multi-touch interaction surfaces. It handles tracking blobs of infrared light for you and sends your programs multitouch events, such as ‘finger down’, ‘finger moved’, and ‘finger released’. It includes a configuration app and a few demos to get you started. It interaces with most major types of webcams and video capture devices”

UML
http://www.uml.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Modeling_Language
“In the field of software engineering, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a standardized specification language for object modeling. UML is a general-purpose modeling language that includes a graphical notation used to create an abstract model of a system, referred to as a UML model.”

Unit Testing
http://code.google.com/p/as3flexunitlib/
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/unit_testing.html
“Unit testing is a procedure used to validate that individual units of source code are working properly. A unit is the smallest testable part of an application. In procedural programming a unit may be an individual program, function, procedure, etc., while in object-oriented programming, the smallest unit is a method; which may belong to a base/super class, abstract class or derived/child class.”

WebKit
http://webkit.org/
http://webkit.org/blog/
“WebKit is an open source web browser engine.” This is the browser used within Adobe AIR.

This application should probably be broken down in terms of architecture. Refactoring this to PureMVC or Cairngorm would be a fun project. Perhaps after the remaining API examples have been completed.

http://www.seantheflashguy.com/flex/OdeoBasicExample/

First up is the uber popular YouTube.com. I was disappointed that the YouTube API does not have a means to provide a path to the raw FLV file via the API. That would be loads of fun considering what can be done with video in the Flash Player.

I started with the YouTube API hoping that pulling in video data would be supported, oh well. I did notice another YouTube example that Ted Patrick created that does appear to pull in the actual video. I was getting a #2044 error from his example so I wasn’t able to see that in action. I also received the same error when trying to upload this example to my server. That is why the working SWF/HTML isn’t available.

You can view the source here. You can also download the source here. Once you get the example set up in Flex Builder the #2044 error should cease. If anyone has any info on this please drop me a line..

This example uses Adobe’s as3youtubelib and as3corelib. You will need to download these using Tortoise SVN. Here is a decent looking tutorial on that if you need. Once you get the libraries downloaded you’ll need to add them to your Flex project’s Build Path.

The UI for this example has a very basic October/Halloween theme. I used a piece of vector art for the background and then used a Halloweeny typeface to kick up the look and feel a notch.

For the Top Ten video display a TileList was used. The TileList uses a drop in ItemRenderer.

One minor issue I had with the as3youtubelib was with regard to data binding. I ended up needing to create my own custom, bindable VideoVO class. This is because the properties of the as3youtube Video class are not bindable. I could be doing something incorrectly here, again drop me a line or leave a comment with any suggestions, info etc.

The next API slated is the popular podcasting service Odeo. I hope to keep these examples as simple as possible. Leave a comment with questions or suggestions.

And don’t forget to: “Flex it up a notch!”