Launch a Mac app to start with sound or another physical (real world) event

Question

Can anyone offer any tuning tips for getting real events, i.e. sound, visual, movement, to trigger events on a Mac?

The simplest event, which, I think, can be sound.

I just need the sound of a specific volume to run the application on the desktop,

This application will be web (i.e. javascript) or possibly standalone.

Most likely the first.

The first thing that comes to mind is Arduino, but it was interesting to me, since I am new to Arduino coding if there are other third-party applications that can make this possible.

Answer 1

The arduino website has several ready-made applications:

• http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/HomePage

They all need some tweaking, but hey, what is half the fun? Here is an example that seems to be doing something similar to what you are describing. You just need to write the application on your computer to listen to the correct serial output.

• http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/DigitalReadSerial

OR

• http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/AnalogReadSerial

And remember, you can always ask more questions here if you encounter a problem.

Answer 2

Yes, you can:)

1) First of all, you need Arduino to “listen” to the sensor. This can be achieved using the digitalRead or analogRead methods, depending on the type of sensor you intend to use.

2) You need to send something to your Mac when the condition you want to check happens. This involves using the Serial Port to send any message from Arduino to your mac.

3) On your Mac, you need to check the messages on the serial port. I often use Processing to listen on the serial port. You are lucky, you are on a mac, you have AppleScript :) This means that for processing you will need to run a simple Applescript that will show your selected application opening

What is it. For more information check google to find out how to send messages from arduino to processing, and how to run Applescript through Processing