Most probably you've already heard about firebug, if you haven't, I really recommend you go give it a spin right now.

Basically, firebug let's you lift the hood in your browser and see pretty much everything that's happening in there. It lets you edit, and monitor all HTML, CSS, Javascript live in any web page - it even lets you edit those objects on the fly!

It also gives you a fantastic console that lets you expose information about what's flowing through your scripts. Adding a global variable named "console" it exposes many methods that allow you to write to the Firebug console.

The really cool thing is that from flash you can call "console" using ExternalInterface, and any object you pass will be dumped as if it was a javascript object.

try it out, go:

ExternalInterface.call("console.log",{foo:123,bar:"da",boo:{da:12,beh:[123,145,"dfa",{fa:[0,1,2,4,5]}]}});

and you will see the output in the image above.

To save you some time and make things cleaner, here you will find an AS3 Class that exposes the console object to any of your Actionscript/flex applications.

All methods are static so you don't need to instantiate the class.

From actionscript, all you need to do now is:

Console.log({foo:123,bar:"da",boo:{da:12,beh:[123,145,"dfa",{fa:[0,1,2,4,5]}]}});

I guess the only drawback for this is that this will bong out if you are trying to dump an object with circular references, or your object is too big. - I can't find out what's the size limit right now, but I've seen it throwing an exception when the objects I passed where too complex.

In case you need something more robust to debug your code, then I really recommend you try out FlexBuilder's debugger.

download: Console.as

download:

Source and Samples (756 kb)
SWC (Compiled code) (38kb)

you will need to have installed Phidgets.msi and have the PhidgetWebService running in order to properly connect to your phidgets. PhidgetWebService is a super light socket server to which your flash application connects to in order to properly send and receive data from all phidget components.

To install Source and Samples in Flex Builder I'd really recommend you to simply choose file> Import > Archive File > Choose the zip you just downloaded

If you want to go the SWC way, which is probably simpler, just create a new AS3 project in Flex Builder, Choose a name click next, and on the Library Path Tab click [ add SWC... ] and choose the location of the PhidgetLibrary.swc you just downloaded.

Things are still very dirty, If you have any suggestions on how to improve the code, please let me know.

I've done my best to resemble the original AS2 API as close as I could. Still, I took the liberty of creating extra objects that allow for even easier Phidget management.

There's no documentation at all yet, but there's plenty of samples to dig and learn how to use most of them.

If anyone out there wants tp give me a hand with docs I'd really appreciate it.
I'll try in the following days to write up some simple tutorials, so if you can't deal with the samples, patience.

code sample after the jump.

package {
	
	import com.phidgets.*;
	import com.phidgets.events.*;
	
	import flash.display.Sprite;
	import flash.events.MouseEvent;;
	
	public class PhidgetServoTest extends Sprite {
		
		private var servoControl :PhidgetServoControl;
		private var servo        :PhidgetServo;
		
		public function PhidgetServoTest() {
                        servoControl = new PhidgetServoControl();
                        servoControl.addEventListener(PhidgetEvent.CONNECT, onConnect);
			servoControl.connect("localhost",5001,"pass");
		}
		
		private function onConnect(evt:PhidgetEvent):void{
			trace("onConnect");
			servo = servoControl.getServo(0);
	                stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN,onMouseDown);
		}
	
         	private function onMouseDown(evt:MouseEvent):void{
			servo.rotation = Math.floor(Math.random()*180);
		}
	}
}

[ What Are Phidgets?
Phidgets are an easy to use set of building blocks for low cost sensing and control from your PC. Using the Universal Serial Bus (USB) as the basis for all Phidgets, the complexity is managed behind an easy to use and robust Application Programming Interface (API). Applications can be developed quickly in Visual Basic, VBA (Microsoft Access and Excel), LabView, Java, Delphi, C and C++. ]

... and AS3 now of course!

I should probably mention all phidgets you see in the image above where an awesome present by Teiichi. After I told him how I almost cry after realizing my original Phidget Box was lost somewhere inbetween Tokyo and Milan, 3 days later he dropped by with a new kit under his arm. Thank you so much!

Alright, so here you go.
Happy Hacking!

package {
	
import flash.util.describeType;
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.display.TextField;
import flash.text.TextFormat;
import flash.text.AntiAliasType;
  
   public class Test extends MovieClip {
    
      // be sure this is pointing to a ttf font in your hardrive
      [Embed(source="C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\somefont.ttf", fontFamily="foo")] 
      public var bar:String;
      			
      public function Test() {
                	
          var format:TextFormat	      = new TextFormat();
          format.font		      = "foo";
          format.color                = 0xFFFFFF;
          format.size                 = 130;
						
          var label:TextField         = new TextField();
          label.embedFonts            = true;
          label.autoSize              = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
          label.antiAliasType         = AntiAliasType.ADVANCED;
          label.defaultTextFormat     = format;
          label.text                  = "Hello World!";
          addChild(label);
       }
    }
}

kiss the library bye-bye!!
I'm sure we are going to remember these days with a lot of nostalgia.

package {
   import flash.display.MovieClip;
   import flash.display.StageAlign;
   import flash.display.StageScaleMode;
   public class Test extends MovieClip {
      // be sure this is pointing to an image in your hardrive
      [Embed(source='c:\images\whatsup.jpg')] public var MyImage:Class;
      public function Test() {
         stage.align     = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;
         stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;
         var img:MyImage = new MyImage();
         addChild(img);
      }
   }
}