The reflek:tor Project
reflek:tor is open software for working with the Violet mir:ror, a low-cost consumer-grade RFID reader.
Out of the box, mir:ror has a problem: it's totally dependent on Violet for any of its much-touted automation abilities. reflek:tor changes all that. For everyone, there's reflek:tor itself, which completely replaces Violet's mirware desktop software, and allows you to not only automate your mir:ror free of ties to Violet's servers, but still allows you to take advantage of many of the features Violet offers mir:ror owners (if you wish), such as messages "to your objects" and the "Internet of Things".
The mir:ror is capable of things Violet never exploits in mirware, such as volume control and "stealth mode" on the device, as well as custom-programmed sound-and-light choreography and on-demand invocation of stored choreography patterns. While the API for these functions is undocumented, we hope to elucidate at least some of these functions through a combination of reverse-engineering and requests to Violet for an open API like that of their earlier Nabaztag.
As well, reflek:tor has a plugin interface -- much like other open-source projects, such as Pidgin -- allowing extensions to its automation abilities. Best of all, except where you voluntarily opt to use the MyViolet plugin, you're freed from the potential insecurities stemming from relying on Violet's remote datastore.
For those whose aspirations run a bit higher, libreflektor is available as an interface library to the mir:ror, allowing it to be used as an RFID reader serving such functions as inventory checkout and access control, as well as possibilities in using physical tokens as input modalities to control software. (Imagine having a "knob" you can set on the reader in upright or inverted orientation to control volume -- the degree of change being determined by the length of time the "knob" is left on the reader.)
Project Status
Monday, June eighth, 2009
reflektor-0.1a is available for download. libreflektor is not yet available separately.
Friday, June fifth, 2009
I'm using a preliminary build of reflektor as my sole mir:ror-management software now. Target release date is 11 June 2009.
Thursday, June fourth, 2009
A pre-release alpha of libreflektor, and an accompanying protocol-level console, is completed. When this package is ready for alpha release, it will be placed here. At this point, all hardware functionality exploited by mirware is available via libreflektor, and can match or exceed the communications functionality of ruby-mirror and erawrim, two early mirware replacements. As yet, no automation functionality has been coded.
Help Needed
- Currently, libreflektor works only on Linux, due to its interfacing with the device over the
hidrawLinux kernel driver. Information on interfacing with the device on Windows, BSD, OS X, etc. would help greatly in designing other hardware interface backends.