[Swinxs-Announce] New firmware, SwinxsLink and SDK

[Mark R. <mar...@sw...>]

Hi,

Something we had for a long time on our wish list finally came through: 
access Swinxs as a HID device. Currently, as soon as Swinxs is connected 
to a PC, it stalls running SwinxsTalk games and switches to the behavior 
of a plain memory stick. There was no way to access Swinxs sensors or 
actuators from the PC. Now we've added USB HID capacity to Swinxs, you 
can do the following when Swinxs is attached to a PC:
  - read out tags detected by Swinxs
  - read out button presses
  - program the LEDs
Although for the moment we have no real applications for Swinxs as a HID 
device, SwinxsEmulator implements an interface of HID via named pipes to 
SwinxsLink (client-server). So if you dock (using SwinxsLink) your 
Swinxs and start the SwinxsEmulator, it will recognize Swinxs' buttons 
and tags. In the future we hope to add other IO like playing audio by 
Swinxs (Swinxs as a USB speaker). Off course Swinxs is intended for 
disconnected (wireless) game play, but controlled by an Internet enabled 
PC gives a broad new set of exciting applications.

In a nutshell, these are the most visible changes of the SDK, 
SwinxsLink, and firmware released today:

SwinxsTalk:
[NEW] Implemented interface to delete a recording
[NEW] Added commands sound.check and sound.exists
[NEW] Added SwinxsTalk button.power.* command
[NEW] Added SwinxsTalk sound.volume.* command

SwinxsCoreTalk:
[NEW] DELETE input
[NEW] SND_EXISTS output

Emulator:
[FIX] Initialization boolean values.
[FIX] Implementation alway state in SwinxsTalk.
[FIX] Emulator logic with respect to set/val and equ.
[FIX] Allow "SILENCE" samples as the first in a sound.chain().
[NEW] Interface to Swinxs via SwinxsLink and HID.
[NEW] Added game design Guidelines.
[CHG] Make publishing to a Swinxs much faster in case of non-modified 
files in a non-production setting. As a criterion, we take the last 
modification stamp and file length.

Firmware:
[CHG] Sample voice recordings at 22 KHz (so these can be mixed with 
background audio)
[NEW] Implemented Swinxs as an HID/MSC composite device
[NEW] Skip game in game menu if it needs a more recent firmware revision 
(checks FIRMWARE in game.prp).
[NEW] When attached to PC, LED flashes red on read/write activity.
[FIX] Prevent flapping BAT_LOW.
[CHG] When voice recording starts, abort background audio (if it was 
playing).
[FIX] Prevent crash on truncated wav-files.
[FIX] If foreground volume is changed, the background volume should be 
recalculated too.
[FIX] If a background and foreground sample are started simultaneously, 
only the background sample was played. Fixed.
[FIX] Fixed bug in sound player. On some samples Swinxs would crash.

SwinxsLink:
[NEW] Play audio samples directly from Swinxs.
[NEW] HID support:
      - RFID tags and button events submitted to website and/or Emulator 
(SDK)
      - Set led color Swinxs via website and/or Emulatir (SDK)
      - Flash Swinxs with no need to disconnect cable
      - Set date/time accurate
[NEW] Support 64 bit Vista and Windows 7 for flashing new firmware.

You need to update your SwinxsLink, SwinxsSDK and firmware to take 
advantage of all this.

As promised earlier, we are now going to put a real effort to develop a 
Swinxs App-store. We want it to make it really easy for you to offer 
your games to the Swinxs community, paid or for free.

So stay tuned !

Mark Ruys
Swinxs Inc