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Written by Randy Green
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Tuesday, 18 April 2006 |
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iAlertU is the first of its kind alarm system for your Apple MacBook computer. Basically iAlertU is a car alarm for your Apple Mac. iAlertU uses the built in sudden motion sensor (SMS) device to detect movement of your Apple MacBook and triggers an audible and visual alarm. The alarm can also be triggered by keyboard and mouse/trackpad movement. The alarm is designed to continue sounding even after the Apple MacBook screen has been closed. iAlertU is activated and deactivated using the infrared remote control included with every Apple MacBook computer. User adjustable settings let you decide which type of alarm triggers you would like to use, the duration of the alarm, and motion sensor sensitivity. iAlertU also features functionality which utilizes the built in iSight camera to photograph the would be thief and then email the photo to a user specified email address. Check out the demo video on YouTube. 
iAlertU featured on CNET News.  iAlertU makes an on screen appearance during the 2006 Apple World Wide Developers Conference.
   
Features - Captured photo can now be emailed automatically to a user specified address
- Camera image capture improved
- May work on other Apple computers other than the MacBook line (this is untested)
- Added Sparkle framework for automatic update functionality
- Arm and disarm iAlertU without the remote
- Alarm now activates when power adapter is removed
- Alarm continues to sound after lid is closed
- Alarm status screen (last alert time, alarm type, number of activations)
- Flashing screen
- Adjustable motion sensor sensitivity
- Adjustable alarm duration
- Mute button disabled when alarm is sounding
System requirements - Apple MacBook or MacBook Pro
- OS X 10.4 or higher
- Quicktime 7.1.3 or higher
- Note iAlertU may work on other Apple Macs but this has not been tested.
Basic operation - Click and hold the "menu" button on the Apple remote or select "Arm" from the pull down menu bar on your status bar to arm iAlertU.
- Click and hold the "menu" button on the Apple remote or enter your password with the keyboard to disarm iAlertU. You must have set your password in the preference panel in order to arm iAlertU from the status bar menu.
- Check the ReadMe document included with the iAlertU application for further information.
Sparkle Updater Version 1.1 Copyright (c) 2006 Andy Matuschak andymatuschak.org/pages/sparkle Graphics and icons by Colin Anawaty www.cubedcompanies.com and Kyle Kesterson www.iamintricate.com Thanks to Tom Zappala for remastering the audio files. The audio sounds much better now. Check his site out at www.yeahtomdoesmyhair.com.
motion.c Copyright 2005, Christian Klein. all rights reserved.
AppleRemote and AppleRemote.h Copyright 2006 martinkahr.com. All rights reserved.
Special thanks to Pall Thayer creator of the Carpenter's Level Dashboard Widget for all of his help getting the motion.c code working on the MacBook Pro. His website is located at pallit.lhi.is/palli/dashlevel
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Last Updated ( Friday, 04 April 2008 )
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Written by Randy Green
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Friday, 30 June 2006 |
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NightSounds is a small application that reads the light sensor available in Apple MacBook Pro and PowerBook computers and plays sounds in low light conditions. This is just a little test application I wrote using sample code from Amit Singh's website. Download it from the "Downloads" menu on this page. |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 07 July 2006 )
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Written by Randy Green
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Thursday, 09 November 2006 |
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I am currently working on improving the iSight capture functionality of iAlertU and in doing so I have created a small command line utility that can be used to snap a quick image to disk. I realize that there is another application out there very similar to this (isightcapture) but I needed to write this functionality myself so I could figure out how it needs to work for iAlertU. Camcapture is a universal binary so it should work on most Mac's running OS X 10.4 or higher equipped with an internal or external camera. Go ahead and try it out and please let me know if you have any problems with it. You can download camcapture from the Downloads menu on this page. Here is an example of camcapture usage from the Terminal applications command line: 
The first command creates an image called imagea.jpg using the default jpg image format. The second command creates an image called imageb.png in the png image format with a date/time stamp captured from the 10th frame. |
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Last Updated ( Monday, 08 January 2007 )
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Written by Randy Green
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Friday, 12 October 2007 |
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iAlertU is now open source and the project source code is available on Sourceforge. I am currently looking for some developers that would be interested in helping out with the development of iAlertU. You can use the "Contact Us" link to send me an email if you are interested. |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 22 November 2007 )
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Written by Randy Green
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Wednesday, 14 November 2007 |
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"SwapMyDock" is a simple to use drag and drop application that allows you to easily change Leopards dock graphics. SwapMyDock will back up your original dock images and allow you to restore them at any time. There are a bunch of cool docks available for free at dockulicious.com, leoparddocks.net and leoparddocks.com so download a copy of SwapMyDock and go grab yourself a cool new dock. SawpMyDock is for Mac OS X 10.5 or later. Download 1.1 now | 1MB  |
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Last Updated ( Monday, 19 November 2007 )
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